Joy, O Land, for thy sons,
Victors by flood and field! The traitor walls and guns
Have nothing left but to yield (Even now they surrender !)
And the ships shall sail once more,
And the cloud of war sweep on
To break on the cruel shore,
But Craven is gone,
He and his hundred are gone.
O Mother Land! this weary life
We led, we lead, is 'long of thee;
Thine the strong agony of strife,
And thine the lonely sea.
Thine the long decks all slaughter-sprent,
The weary rows of cots that lie
With wrecks of strong men, marred and rent, 'Neath Pensacola's sky.
And thine the iron caves and dens
Wherein the flame our war-fleet drives; The fiery vaults, whose breath is men's Most dear and precious lives.
Ah, ever, when with storm sublime
Dread Nature clears our murky air,
Thus in the crash of falling crime
Some lesser guilt must share.
Full red the furnace fires must glow
That melt the ore of mortal kind:
The Mills of God are grinding slow,
But ah, how close they grind!
To-day the Dahlgren and the drum
Are dread Apostles of His Name;
His Kingdom here can only come
By chrism of blood and flame.
Be strong already slants the gold
Athwart these wild and stormy skies;
From out this blackened waste, behold,
What happy homes shall rise!
But see thou well no traitor gloze,
No striking hands with Death and Shame,
Nor shalt thou want one willing breath,
Though, ever smiling round the brave,
The blue sea bear us on to death,
The green were one wide grave.
U. S. Flag Ship Hartford,
Mobile Bay, August, 1864.
WHAT! hoist the white flag when our triumph is nigh?
What! crouch before Treason? make Freedom a lie?
What! spike all our guns when the foe is at bay,
And the rags of his black banner dropping away?
Tear down the strong name that our nation has won,
And strike her brave bird from his home in the sun?
*The Democratic Party Convention for the nomination of a candidate to oppose President Lincoln, of which Mr. August Belmont was temporary chairman, and Mr. Horatio Seymour permanent chairman, and which resolved, among other things, that "four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war," and "public liberty and private right alike stricken down," "demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities;" also that "the sympathy of the Democratic party is heartily and earnestly extended to the soldiers of our army," was held on the 20th of August, 1864.
He's a coward who shrinks from the lift of the sword;
He's a traitor who mocks at the sacrifice poured;
Nameless and homeless the doom that should blast
The knave who stands idly till peril is past;
But he who submits when the thunders have burst
And victory dawns, is of cowards the worst!
Is the old spirit dead?
That cravens so shamelessly lift the white cheek
To court the swift insult, nor blush at the blow,
The tools of the treason and friends of the foe?
See! Anarchy smiles at the Peace which they ask,
And the eyes of Disunion flash out through the mask !
Give thanks, ye brave boys, who by vale and by crag
Bear onward, unfaltering, our noble old flag,
Strong arms of the Union, heroes living and dead,
For the blood of your valor is uselessly shed!
No soldier's green laurel is promised you here,
But the white rag of “sympathy" softly shall cheer!
And you, ye war-martyrs, who preach from your graves
How captives are nursed by the masters of slaves,
Or, living, still linger in shadows of Death,
Puff out the starved muscle, recall the faint breath,
And shout, till those cowards rejoice, at the cry,
By the hands of the Union we fought for we die!”
By the God of our fathers! this shame we must share
But it grows too debasing for freemen to bear;
And Washington, Jackson, will turn in their graves,
When the Union shall rest on two races of slaves;
Or, spurning the spirit which bound it of yore,
And sundered, exist as a nation no more!
UP from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble and rumble and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan was twenty miles away.
And wider still those billows of war
Thundered along the horizon's bar,
And louder yet into Winchester rolled
The war of that red sea uncontrolled,
Making the blood of the listener cold,
As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
But there's a road from Winchester town,
A good, broad highway leading down,
And there, through the flush of the morning light,
A steed, as black as the steeds of night,
Was seen to pass as with eagle flight;
As if he knew the terrible need,
He stretched away with his utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell, but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.
Still sprung from those swift hoofs thundering South
The dust, like the smoke from the cannon's mouth,
Or the trail of a comet sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster;
The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
|