Could hoard your hate for the coward chance
When a nation reeled in a wilder dance
Of death, than the Switzer drew!
Welcome, the sulphury cloud in the sky!
Welcome, the crimson rain!
Act but the dream ye dared to form,
Strike a single spark ! - and the storm
Of serried bayonets sweeping by,
Shall swell to a hurricane !
O blind and bitter! that could not know,
Even in fight, a caitiff-blow,
(Foully dealt on a hard-set foe,)
Ever is underwise;
Ever is ghosted with after fear,
Looking, with fevered eyes,
For sail or smoke from the Breton shore,
Lest a land, so rudely wronged of yore,
In flamy revenge should rise!
- ah ! wretched Flam!
Vile Farce of hammer and prate!
Trade! bids Darby — and blood! smirks Pam-
Little ween they, each courtly Sham,
Of the Terror lying in wait!
Little wot of the web he spins,
Their Tempter in purple, that darkly grins 'Neath his stony visor of state,
O'er Seas, how narrow!- for, whoso wins, base Auction of Outs and Ins,
The rule of his Dearest Hate;
Her point once flashing athwart her Kin's,
And the reckoning, ledgered for long, begins, —
THE MARCH OF THE REGIMENT. 123
The galling Glories and envied Sins
Shall buzz in a mesh-like fate!
Ay, mate your meanest ! — ye can but do
That permitted; when Heaven would view
How Wrong, self-branded, her rage must rue
In wreck and ashes! — (such scene as you,
If wise, shall witness afar);
How Guilt, o'erblown, her crest heaves high,
And dares the injured, with taunt, to try
Ordeal of Fire in war;
Blindfold and brazen, on God doth call -
Then grasps in horror, the glaring ball,
Or treads on the candent bar!
Yet a little! — and men shall mark
This our Moloch, who sate so stark,
(These hundred winters through godless dark
Grinning o'er death and shame);
Marking for murder each unbowed head,
Throned on his Ghizeh of bones, and fed
Still with hearts of the holy dead,
Naught but a Spectre foul and dread,
Naught but a hideous Name!
(ungloom, stern coffined frown!
Rest thee, Gray-Steel! aye, dead Renown!
In flame and thunder, by field and town,
The Giant-Horror is going down,
Down to the Home whence it came!)
Deaf to the Doom that waits the Beast,
Still would she share the Harlot's Feast,
And drink of her blood-grimed Cup!
Pause! - the Accursed, on yon frenzied shore,
Buyeth your merchandise never more!
Mark, 'mid the Fiery Dew that drips,
Redder, faster, through black Eclipse,
How Sodom, to-night, shall sup! (Thus the Kings, in Apocalypse, The traders of souls, and crews of ships,
Standing afar, with pallid lips,
While Babylon's smoke goes up!)
though an hour may blight,
In treason, a century's fame
Trust Greed and Spite! — sith Reason and Right
Lie cold, with Honor and Shame;
And learn anon — as on that dread night
When, the dead around and the deck aflame, From John Paul's lip the fierce word came,
We have only begun to fight!”
Ay, 't is at hand! — foul lips, be dumb!
Our Armageddon is yet to come!
But cheery bugle and angry drum,
With volleyed rattle and roar,
And cannon thunder-throb, shall be drowned,
That day, in a grander, stormier sound;
The Land, from mountain to shore,
Hurling shackle and scourge and stake
Back to their Lender of pit and lake;
('T was Tophet leased them of yore),
Hell, in her murkiest hold, shall quake,
As they ring on the damned floor!
O mighty Heart! thou wast long to wake, -
'Tis thine, to-morrow, to win or break
In a deadlier close once more,
If but for the dear and glorious sake
Of those who have gone before.
O Fair and Faithful! that, sun by sun,
Slept on the field, or lost or won,
Children dear of the Holy One!
Rest in your wintry sod.
Rest, your noble devoir is done,
Done and forever! Ours, to-day,
The dreary drift and the frozen clay
By trampling armies trod;
The smoky shroud of the War-Simoom,
The maddened Crime at bay with her Doom,
And fighting it, clod by clod.
O Calm and Glory! - beyond the gloom,
Above the bayonets bend and bloom
The lilies and palms of God.
BY A. J. H. DUGANNE.
MOUTH not to me your Union rant,
Nor gloze mine ears with loyal cant!
Who stands this day in freedom's van,
He only is my Union man!
Who tramples Slavery's Gesler hat,
He is my loyal Democrat!
With whips, engirt by chains, too long
We strove to make our fasces strong;
When rebel hands those fasces rend,
Must we with whips and chains still mend?
If "Democrats" can stoop to that,
God help me! I'm no Democrat !
Thank Heaven! the lines are drawn this hour
'Twixt manly Right and despot Power;
Who scowls in Freedom's pathway now
Bears "tyrant" stamped upon his brow;
Who skulks aloof or shirks his part,
Hath "slave" imprinted in his heart.
In vain of “Equal Rights " ye prate,
Who fawn like dogs at Slavery's gate;
Beyond the slave each slave-whip smites,
And codes for blacks are laws for whites;
The chains that negro limbs encoil
Reach and enslave each child of toil!
O Northern men! when will ye learn
'Tis labor that these tyrants spurn?
'Tis not the blood or skin they brand,
But every poor man's toil-worn hand;
And ye who serve them — knowing this
Deserve the slave-lash that ye kiss!
While Northern blood remembrance craves
From twice ten thousand Southern graves,
Shall freeborn hearts beneath the turf-
Lie always crushed by tramp of serf,
And pilgrims, at those graves, some day,
By Slavery's hounds be driven away?
The green grass in the church-yard waves;
The good corn grows o'er battle-graves ;
But, oh! from crimson seeds now sown,
What crops
On Shiloh's plain on Roanoke's sod
What fruits shall spring from blood, O God?
what harvest - shall be grown?
Spring-time is here! The past now sleeps -
The present sows - the future reaps!
Who plants good seed in Freedom's span
He only is my Union man!
Who treads the weeds of Slavery flat,
He is my loyal Democrat !
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