Watchman, scan the Southern sky:
Is there not one star in sight?
Search with anxious, careful eye—
Watchman, tell us of the night.
WATCHMAN.
Praise the Lord! there yet is hope!
Cease your groans and dry your tears:
Lo! the sable cloud doth ope
And the clear gray sky appears.
Wider grows the field of light
As the rent clouds backward fly,
And a starry circle bright
Silvers all the Southern sky.
"The Vision of Blood" written in 1864 is too long, and even if not, too lurid in its imagery to justify reproduction now. Instead let us take this glimpse into those days of death and disaster to the South:
TIDINGS FROM THE BATTLE FIELD.
"Fresh tidings from the battle field!"
A widowed mother stands,
And lifts the glasses from her eyes
With trembling withered hands.
"Fresh tidings from the battle field!"
"Your only son is slain;
He fell with victory on his lips,
And a bullet in his brain."
The stricken mother staggers back,
And falls upon the floor:
And the wailing shriek of a broken heart
Comes from the cottage door.
"Fresh tidings from the battle field!"
The wife her needle plies,
While in the cradle at her feet
Her sleeping infant lies.
"Fresh tidings from the battle field!"
"Your husband is no more,
But he died as soldiers love to die,
His wounds were all before."
Her work was dropped—"O God" she moans,
And lifts her aching eyes;
The orphaned babe in the cradle wakes,
And joins its mother's cries.
"Fresh tidings from the battle field!"
A maid with pensive eye
Sits musing near the sacred spot
Where she heard his last good-bye.
"Fresh tidings from the battle-field!"
"Your lover's cold in death;
But he breathed the name of her he loved
With his expiring breath."
With hands pressed to her snowy brow,
She strives her grief to hide;
She shrinks from friendly sympathy—
A widow ere a bride.
"Fresh tidings from the battle field!"
O, what a weight of woe
Is borne upon their blood-stained wings
As onward still they go!
War! eldest child of Death and Hell!
When shall thy horrors cease?
When shall the Gospel usher in
The reign of love and peace?
Speed, speed, the blissful time, O Lord!—
The blessed, happy years—
When plough-shares shall be made of swords,
And pruning hooks of spears!
The lines on Sheridan and Butler express something more than the poet's righteous indignation at deeds by them in which he can somehow see neither virtue nor valor. As indicative of the feelings of the South in the hour of final defeat and subjugation read "Daughters of Southland" and "My Motherland." One stanza of the first must suffice:
Daughters of Southland, weep no more;
Their glory's priceless gem
Nor peace, nor war can ever mar;
There is no change for them.
Rejoice! for tho the conqueror's hate
Still beats upon our head,
Despite our chains there yet remains
The memory of our dead.
How tender and ardent is the patriotism in these lines:
My motherland! My motherland
Though dust is on thy brow,
And sack-cloth wraps thy beauteous form,
I love thee better now
Than when, arrayed in robes of power,
Thou send'st thy legions forth
To battle with the hosts that poured.
From out the mighty North.