Equip your Lincoln cavalry, And scum of every grade. Pretended love for negroes Incites you to the strife; You'd make fit black companions, Our freedom is our panoply: Come on, you base black-guards, We'll snuff you like wax-candles, Led by our Beauregards. P. G. T. B. is not alone, Men like him with him fight; God's providence is o'er us, He will protect the right. THE STARS AND BARS. BY A. J. REQUIER. FLING wide the dauntless banner Baptized in flame with Sumter's name, A patriot and a hero's fame, From Moultrie to the seas! That it may cleave the morning sun, And, streaming, sweep the night, THE STARS AND BARS. 303 The emblem of a battle won With Yankee ships in sight. Come, hucksters, from your markets; That we may dig your graves; The very flag you carry Caught its reflected grace, In fierce alarms, from Southern arms, Ho! braggarts of New-England's shore, We wreathed around the roses It wears before the world, And made it bright with storied light, Where it has been unfurled; And think ye now the dastard hands Its staff, shall wave it o'er our lands, No! by the truth of Heaven It never shall be done; Before that day the kites shall wheel Then, spread the flaming banner O'er mountain, lake, and plain; For, could its triumph now be stayed A sceptred Union would be made THE IRISH BATTALION.* WHEN Old Virginia took the field, To be at once her sword and shield, - Although her sons were Volunteers, And brave as ever bore a brand, That they might prove but weak of hand. * It is worthy of remark, that while Rebel organs made great and constant boast of that poor inheritance, Cavalier and Jacobite blood, and reviled the Union armies on account of the number of Irishmen in their ranks, the proportion of which was in reality very small, there was yet occasion for such verses as these, and the Song of the Irish Brigade," which follows. It seems, after all 66 rather a sorry confession that " Old Virginia" took three hundred Irishmen to form her First Battalion. THE IRISH BATTALION. She therefore wisely cast about For men of mettle and of mould, With nerve of steel and muscle stout, Like those that lived in days of old. She wanted men of pluck and might, Of fiery heart and horny hand, To wield a pick as well as fight, Or build a breast work out of sand. Or should she march to meet the foe When told, to put her roads in order. Or should the Volunteers retreat, With baggage that might make them tarry, 'T would blunt the edge of their defeat To bear a hand and help them carry. The surgeons having failed to save, Sure men who work with so much ease, Would volunteer to dig a grave! For these, and reasons quite as sound, In other words, to change the figure, She meant to work, and not to trifle. And standing thus, yet wanting then 305 She took three hundred Irishmen And when the storm of battle sweeps, BOMBARDMENT OF VICKSBURG. DEDICATED WITH RESPECT AND ADMIRATION TO MAJORGENERAL EARL VAN DORN. FOR sixty days and upwards A storm of shell and shot But still we faltered not! "If the noble city perish," Our grand young leader said, "Let the only walls the foe shall scale For sixty days and upwards The eye of heaven waxed dim; As if the fiends of air Strove to engulf the voice of faith There was wailing in the houses, There was trembling on the marts, While the tempest raged and thundered, 'Mid the silent thrill of hearts: |