How saddening the change is! The season’s the same,
And yet it is Christmas in nothing but name:
No merry expression we utter today—
How can we, with hearts that refuse to be gay?
We look back a twelfthmonth on many a brow
That graced the home hearthstone—and where are they now?
We think of the darling ones clustering there,
But we see, through our tears, an untenanted chair.
None the less, the South was still firm in her resolve to battle to the end. No sacrifice could be demanded so great that it would not be willingly offered on the altar of Liberty—
Thank God! there is joy in the sorrow for all—