A "VIA SACRA."
[To THE EDITOR OF THB " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—What can be more admirable than this thought of your corre- spondent to make forests of sacred shade of the dreary wastes where our myriad dead lie Blain in battle ? What other memorial could so quiet hearts that mourn all through the years ? Here is the picture of It in a paraphrase of our poet Holmes :—
" And grey old trees of hugest limb Shall wheel their circling shadows round To make the scorching sunlight dim That drinks the greenness from the ground, And drop the dead leaves on their mound.
For them the morning choir shall sing Its matins from the branches high, And every minstrel-voice of Spring, That trills beneath the April sky Shall greet them with its earliest cry.
At last the rootlets of the trees shall fmd the prison where it lies, And bear the buried dust they seize In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that warmed it rise I" Clenburn, U.S.A.
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