“Nay! But the larger Hope, and the limitless future of Manhood!”
These were the words that ye uttered, O hot black lips of the cannon,
Catching them up from the lips of the orators fallen on silence,
Voices of lion-like men, in senates no longer resounding;
Now the debate was yours: and above it, the Arbiter waited!
V
Slowly the men of the South, outstretched in the underwoods’ flicker,
Jesting and resting an hour,—the close-coupled, war-welded comrades,
Hollow-cheeked veteran boys, unsubduable gaunt gray elders,
Garbed in gray or in butternut-brown, the old rustical earth-hue,—