“Unworthy of a wise man’s lips
Are the murmurs of despair;
The heavens have never lost one star
And God Himself reigns there,
A faithful God created man—
He ne’er forsakes a friend;
Wait, comrade, on God’s goodness still—
Be patient to the end.
“Through mists of doubt there shines a light
Upon Death’s farther shore—
Where the Lethean draught of peace is quaffed
And the struggle of earth is o’er.
Our feet shall stand on the shining strand
Of Life’s eternal river,
Where the buds of Hope in fullness ope
And Love endures forever.”
BATTLE OF MILL SPRING.
By the banks of the Cumberland echoes the roar
Of the sentinel’s warning—the foe’s on the shore.
Our war-drums are beaten, our bugles are blown,
And our legions advance to their musical tone.
By the banks of the Cumberland, slippery and red
With the death-dew of battle, and strewn with the dead,
Kentucky has routed her arrogant foe,
And victory’s star gilds the night of our woe.
By those banks, that once bloomed like an Eden of joy
The fiend of Disunion stalked forth to destroy,
Our rich teeming harvests he swept in his wrath,
And the blaze of our dwellings illumined his path.
Like an eagle-plumed arrow our Nemesis comes.
Shout, soldiers! sound, bugles! and clamor, oh drums!
Let the land ring aloud in the wildness of joy,
And the bonfires blaze brightly—but not destroy.
For the God of the Union has prospered the right,
And the ranks of Disunion have melted in flight.
Blow, bugles! roll, river! and tell to the sea
That our swords shall not rest ’till Kentucky is free.