Bu Paul H. Hayne.
I am sitting lone and weary
On the hearth of my darkened room,
And the low wind's miserere
Makes sadder the midnight gloom;
There's a terror that's nameless nigh me--
There's a phantom spell in the air,
And methinks that the dead glide by me,
And the breath of the grave's in my hair!
'Tis a vision of ghastly faces,
All pallid, and worn with pain,
Where the splendor of manhood's graces
Give place to a gory stain;
In a wild and weird procession
They sweep by my startled eyes,
And stern with their fate's fruition,
Seem melting in blood-red skies.
Have they come from the shores supernal,
Have they passed from the spirit's goal,
'Neath the veil of the life eternal,
To dawn on my shrinking soul?
Have they turned from the choiring angels,
Aghast at the woe and dearth
That war, with his dark evangels,
Hath wrought in the loved of earth?
Vain dream! 'mid the far-off mountains
They lie, where the dew-mists weep,
And the murmur of mournful fountains
Breaks over their painful sleep;
On the breast of the lonely meadows,
Safe, safe from the despot's will,
They rest in the star-lit shadows,
And their brows are white and still!
Alas! for the martyred heroes
Cut down at their golden prime,
In a strife with the brutal Neroes,
Who blacken the path of Time!
For them is the voice of wailing,
And the sweet blush-rose departs
From the cheeks of the maidens, paling
O'er the wreck of their broken hearts!
And alas! for the vanished glory
Of a thousand household spells!
And alas! for the tearful story
Of the spirit's fond farewells!
By the flood, on the field, in the forest,
Our bravest have yielded breath,
But the shafts that have smitten sorest,
Were launched by a viewless death!
Oh, Thou, that hast charms of healing,
Descend on a widowed land,
And bind o'er the wounds of feeling
The balms of Thy mystic hand!
Till the hearts that lament and languish,
Renewed by the touch divine,
From the depths of a mortal anguish
May rise to the calm of Thine!
Cleburne.
By M. A. Jennings, of Alabama.
"Another star now shines on high."
Another ray of light hath fled, another Southern brave
Hath fallen in his country's cause and found a laurelled grave--
Hath fallen, but his deathless name shall live when stars shall set,
For, noble Cleburne, thou art one this world will ne'er forget.
'Tis true thy warm heart beats no more, that on thy noble head
Azrael placed his icy hand, and thou art with the dead;
The glancing of thine eyes are dim; no more will they be bright
Until they ope in Paradise, with clearer, heavenlier light.
No battle news disturbs thy rest upon the sun-bright shore,
No clarion voice awakens thee on earth to wrestle more,
No tramping steed, no wary foe bids thee awake, arise,
For thou art in the angel world, beyond the starry skies.
Brave Cleburne, dream in thy low bed, with pulseless, deadened heart;
Calm, calm and sweet, 0 warrior rest! thou well hast borne thy part,
And now a glory wreath for thee the angels singing twine,
A glory wreath, not of the earth, but made by hands divine.
A long farewell--we give thee up, with all thy bright renown;
A chieftain here on earth is lost, in heaven an angel found.
Above thy grave a wail is heard--a nation mourns her dead;
A nobler for the South ne'er died, a braver never bled.
A last farewell--how can we speak the bitter word farewell!
The anguish of our bleeding hearts vain words may never tell.
Sleep on, sleep on, to God we give our chieftain in his might;
And weeping, feel he lives on high, where comes no sorrow's night.
Selma Despatch, 1864.
The Texan Marseillaise.
By James Haines, of Texas.
Sons of the South, arouse to battle!
Gird on your armor for the fight!
The Northern Thugs with dread "War's rattle,"
Pour on each vale, and glen, and height;
Meet them as Ocean meets in madness
The frail bark on the rocky shore,
When crested billows foam and roar,
And the wrecked crew go down in sadness.
Arm! Arm! ye Southern braves!
Scatter yon Vandal hordes!
Despots and bandits, fitting food
For vultures and your swords.
Shall dastard tyrants march their legions
To crush the land of Jackson--Lee?
Shall freedom fly to other regions,
And sons of Yorktown bend the knee?
Or shall their "footprints' base pollution"
Of Southern soil, in blood be purged,
And every flying slave be scourged
Back to his snows in wild confusion?
Arm! Arm! &c.
Vile despots, with their minions knavish,
Would drag us back to their embrace;
Will freemen brook a chain so slavish?
Will brave men take so low a place?
O, Heaven! for words--the loathing, scorning
We feel for such a Union's bands:
To paint with more than mortal hands,
And sound our loudest notes of warning.
Arm! Arm! &c.
What! union with a race ignoring
The charter of our nation's birth!
Union with bastard slaves adoring
The fiend that chains them, to the earth!
No! we reply in tones of thunder--
No! our staunch hills fling back the sound--
No! our hoarse cannon echo round--
No! evermore remain asunder!
Arm! Arm! &c.
Southern Confederacy.
O, Tempora! O, Mores!
By John Dickson Bruns, M. D.
"Great Pan is dead!" so cried an airy tongue
To one who, drifting down Calabria's shore,
Heard the last knell, in starry midnight rung,
Of the old Oracles, dumb for evermore.
A low wail ran along the shuddering deep,
And as, far off, its flaming accents died,
The awe-struck sailors, startled from their sleep,
Gazed, called aloud: no answering voice replied;
Nor ever will--the angry Gods have fled,
Closed are the temples, mute are all the shrines,
The fires are quenched, Dodona's growth is dead,
The Sibyl's leaves are scattered to the winds.
No mystic sentence will they bear again,
Which, sagely spelled, might ward a nation's doom;
But we have left us still some god-like men,
And some great voices pleading from the tomb.
If we would heed them, they might save us yet,
Call up some gleams of manhood in our breasts,
Truth, valor, justice, teach us to forget
In a grand cause our selfish interests.
But we have fallen on evil times indeed,
When public faith is but the common shame,
And private morals held an idiot's creed,
And old-world honesty an empty name.
And lust, and greed, and gain are all our arts!
The simple lessons which our father's taught
Are scorned and jeered at; in our sordid marts
We sell the faith for which they toiled and fought.
Each jostling each in the mad strife for gold,
The weaker trampled by the unrecking throng
Friends, honor, country lost, betrayed, or sold,
And lying blasphemies on every tongue.
Cant for religion, sounding words for truth,
Fraud leads to fortune, gelt for guilt atones,
No care for hoary age or tender youth,
For widows' tears or helpless orphans' groans.
The people rage, and work their own wild will,
They stone the prophets, drag their highest down,
And as they smite, with savage folly still
Smile at their work, those dead eyes wear no frown.
The sage of "Drainfield"[1] tills a barren soil,
And reaps no harvest where he sowed the seed,
He has but exile for long years of toil;
Nor voice in council, though his children bleed.
And never more shall "Redcliffs"[2] oaks rejoice,
Now bowed with grief above their master's bier;
Faction and party stilled that mighty voice,
Which yet could teach us wisdom, could we hear.
And "Woodland's"[3] harp is mute: the gray, old man
Broods by his lonely hearth and weaves no song;
Or, if he sing, the note is sad and wan,
Like the pale face of one who's suffered long.
So all earth's teachers have been overborne
By the coarse crowd, and fainting; droop or die;
They bear the cross, their bleeding brows the thorn,
And ever hear the clamor--"Crucify!"
Oh, for a man with godlike heart and brain!
A god in stature, with a god's great will.
And fitted to the time, that not in vain
Be all the blood we're spilt and yet must spill.
Oh, brothers! friends! shake off the Circean spell!
Rouse to the dangers of impending fate!
Grasp your keen swords, and all may yet be well--
More gain, more pelf, and it will be, too late!
Charleston Mercury [1864].
[1] The country-seat of R. Barnwell Rhett.
[2] The homestead of Jas. H. Hammond.
[3] The homestead of W. Gilmore Simms (destroyed by Sherman's army.)
Our Departed Comrades.
By J. Marion Shirer.
I am sitting alone by a fire
That glimmers on Sugar Loaf's height,
But before I to rest shall retire
And put out the fast fading light--
While the lanterns of heaven are ling'ring
In silence all o'er the deep sea,
And loved ones at home are yet mingling
Their voices in converse of me--
While yet the lone seabird is flying
So swiftly far o'er the rough wave,
And many fond mothers are sighing
For the noble, the true, and the brave;
Let me muse o'er the many departed
Who slumber on mountain and vale;
With the sadness which shrouds the lone-hearted,
Let me tell of my comrades a tale.
Far away in the green, lonely mountains,
Where the eagle makes bloody his beak,
In the mist, and by Gettysburg's fountains,
Our fallen companions now sleep!
Near Charleston, where Sumter still rises
In grandeur above the still wave,
And always at evening discloses
The fact that her inmates yet live--
On islands, and fronting Savannah,
Where dark oaks overshadow the ground,
Round Macon and smoking Atlanta,
How many dead heroes are found!
And out on the dark swelling ocean,
Where vessels go, riding the waves,
How many, for love and devotion,
Now slumber in warriors' graves!
No memorials have yet been erected
To mark where these warriors lie.
All alone, save by angels protected,
They sleep 'neath the sea and the sky!
But think not that they are forgotten
By those who the carnage survive:
When their headboards will all have grown rotten,
And the night-winds have levelled their graves,
Then hundreds of sisters and mothers,
Whose freedom they perished to save,
And fathers, and empty-sleeved brothers,
Who surmounted the battle's red wave;
Will crowd from their homes in the Southward,
In search of the loved and the blest,
And, rejoicing, will soon return homeward
And lay our dear martyrs to rest.