Oh, infant year, whose newborn limbs are swathed
And cradled in convulsion—Oh, dread Heaven,
Unsealing o’er this land of many woes
The Apocalyptic vials—Oh, my torn
And bleeding country, by thy sons deflowered
And stricken of thy God—how shall I sing
A festal anthem on a broken lyre—
To ears made dull by sorrow?
From her dreams,
With music lulled, all-queenly, and perfumed
With odors from the Summer’s lips distilled,
The startled nation woke—awoke to hear
Rebellion’s war-cries in her citadel,
By dark and frenzied sentinels invoked—
Singing her dirge, like the volcanic bass
Of Ætna’s organ chiming with the sea
When groans the Titan in immortal pangs—
The trepidation of conflicting hosts,
Mixed with the wild alarm of clamorous bells
The strife—the shout—the wailing of despair.
Time, by whose hands the mouldering dust of death
Is shovelled in the vaults of coffined realms,
What Nemesis insatiate still inspires
The suicide of Empires? In her breast,
Greece nursed the serpent faction, with her blood,
That stung her to the heart. Rebellion’s steel
Pierced the fair bosom of imperial Rome
By foreign foes unconquered; and the land
Of God’s own people drank the fatal cup
Which dark dissension pressed upon her lips.
As midnight’s bell proclaims with double tongue
One year departed and another born,
Swift throng around me with imperial mien
And godlike brow, and eyes of sad reproach,
As angels look in sorrow, the great dead
Who walked Mount Vernon’s shades and Marshfield’s plains,
And Monticello’s height, and Ashland’s groves
Still vocal with unearthly eloquence,
Statesmen and Chiefs who loved their native land
And led her up to fame. With solemn air
And thrilling voice they point to freedom’s flag
War-rent and laced with sacrificial blood,
By noble martyrs shed; and thus they speak—
“O sons once named Americans, but now
The world-mocked orphans of a nameless land,
Why rush ye to destruction? Happier far
Than ye the tawny tribes your fathers drove
From the primeval forest—the red chiefs
Who bravely perished on their hunting-grounds,
Or passing o’er the mountains of the West,
Went down in gloom, like nature’s final sun,
To rise no more forever. Better thus
Than live the foul dishonor of your sires,
Whose progeny like Lucifer of old
Rebelled against the power that made them Gods,
And perished in their treason. Come, ye winds,
Swift-winged couriers of the tropic sky,
Heralds of death and ruin—come, ye fires
That in volcanic caverns ever burn,
And crush pale cities in your molten jaws—
Come, burning plagues, and ye tempestuous waves,
Who strangle navies in your watery arms—
Earthquakes and lightning-strokes, all earthly ills
Which Heaven inflicts, and trembling men abhor—
Fell bolts in God’s red armory of wrath,
With all your terrors in one stroke combined,
Come; and in mercy blast the land with ruin
Rather than we should see Columbia’s plains
Drenched in a crimson sea of fratricide,
Lust, rapine, malice, treachery, revenge,
The tall and crowning Teneriffe of crime.”
I hear a passing bell—the muffled drum
Rolls its sepulchral echoes on the night
Which spreads across the sky the starless pall
Of desolation. And upon my ear
Falls the wild burden of a dismal song
Like that of mocking fiends in revelry.
The Disunion Banner.