The victor wields the sword:
Its blade may broken be
By a thought that sleeps in a deathless word,
To wake in the years to be.
We wait a grand-voiced bard,
Who, when he sings, will send
Immortal songs' "Imperial Guard"
The Lost Cause to defend.
He has not come; he will.
But when he chants, his song
Will stir the world to its depths and thrill
The earth with its tale of wrong.
The fallen cause still waits —
Its bard has not come yet.
His sun through one of to-morrow's gates
Shall shine, but never set.
But when he comes he'll sweep
A harp with tears all stringed,
And the very notes he strikes will weep
As they come from his hand woe-winged.
Ah! grand shall be his strain,
And his songs shall fill all climes,
And the rebels shall rise and march again
Down the lines of his glorious rhymes.
And through his verse shall gleam
The swords that flashed in vain,
And the men who wore the gray shall seem
To be marshaling again.
But hush! between his words
Peer faces sad and pale,
And you hear the sound of broken chords
Beat through the poet's wail.
Through his verse the orphans cry —
The terrible undertone —
And the father's curse and the mother's sigh,
And the desolate young wife's moan.
* * * * *