LEE'S VISIONS FROM PETERSBURG

Through weary battle months, rood after rood,
Grant's Army moved, westwardly, steadily.
Slowly the Blue intrenchments neared the goal.

The great Confederate out of Petersburg
Beheld the enroaching lines of Federals press
His thin ranks backward, cutting one by one
The arteries of his army's strength and hope.
He saw the ominous tide of Sherman's host
From Chattanooga on Atlanta move, —
The Georgian Capital becoming fast
The prize of Northern arms. He heard anear,
Across his lines of trenches stretching close,
The shotted Union guns, a crescent row,
Sounding triumphal thunders of salute.
He witnessed Sheridan's ten thousand Horse
Sweep clear the Valley of the Shenandoah.
He saw emerge Sherman's exultant horde,
All ready for its whirlwind seaward march —
Its eastward turning, its wide swath of wreck,
Its far resistless sweep of ravagement,
Georgia become a zone of desolateness
'Twixt the Confederacy's dissevered ends,
And fair Savannah flaunting to the sea
The Stars and Stripes before Lee's sorrowing heart.

As though o'erlooking midst perspective mount,
He saw from Petersburg 'neath other shades,
Again the " Rock of Chickamauga " loom,
Hood's Army routed, his invasive storm
On Tennessee a failure ruinous,
And Nashville held in grip of Federal guns
Sealing the fate of the South's western arms.
For him it was a grievous Christmastide,
As Nashville and Savannah, war-worn gifts,
Graced waiting Destiny's Lincolnian hands
Upon the salvers of victorious ranks.
Savannah fallen; proud Columbia
In flames; fair Charleston, ruins wrapped in smoke;
And the bright Carolinian fields of wealth
Become vast wastes beneath the Victor's feet, —
All these he saw; and felt about his heart
The tightening cordon of impending doom,
Around his valiant army chains of fire,
And all the Southern dream turned dust and ashes.