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We wait beneath the furnace blast
The pangs of transformation;
Not painlessly doth God recast
And mold anew the nation.
Hot burns the fire
Where wrongs expire;
Nor spares the hand
That from the land
Uproots the ancient evil. The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared Its bloody rain is dropping; The poison plant the fathers spared All else is overtopping. East, West, South, North, It curses the earth; All justice dies, And fraud and lies Live only in its shadow. Then let the selfish lip be dumb And hushed the breath of sighing; Before the joy of peace must come The pains of purifying. God give us grace Each in his place To bear his lot, And, murmuring not, Endure and wait and labor! WHITTIER |
ANDERSONVILLE
A STORY OF REBEL MILITARY PRISONS
CHAPTER I.
A STRANGE LAND—THE HEART OF THE APPALACHIANS—THE GATEWAY OF AN EMPIRE —A SEQUESTERED VALE, AND A PRIMITIVE, ARCADIAN, NON-PROGRESSIVE PEOPLE.
A low, square, plainly-hewn stone, set near the summit of the eastern approach to the formidable natural fortress of Cumberland Gap, indicates the boundaries of—the three great States of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. It is such a place as, remembering the old Greek and Roman myths and superstitions, one would recognize as fitting to mark the confines of the territories of great masses of strong, aggressive, and frequently conflicting peoples. There the god Terminus should have had one of his chief temples, where his shrine would be shadowed by barriers rising above the clouds, and his sacred solitude guarded from the rude invasion of armed hosts by range on range of battlemented rocks, crowning almost inaccessible mountains, interposed across every approach from the usual haunts of men.