Bright Banner of the Union!
By beauty’s fingers wrought,
Around the world thy lesson
Of glory has been taught.
It tells of deathless battle-fields,
To fame and freedom dear,
And speaks of peace and happiness
To man’s enraptured ear.
Bright altar of the Union!
Around thy spotless shrine,
We swear disunion ne’er shall touch
Thy offering divine!
For our dead would sleep dishonored
And the living have no hope,
If in rebellion’s starless night
Our land were doomed to grope.
Charge, soldiers of the Union,
In truth’s eternal might,
Ye strike not for the lust of power,
But liberty and right.
The present and the Future plead—
The past full well ye know—
Strike home as your forefathers struck
And Heaven will guide the blow!
THE TWO GORDONS.
Dedicated to Mrs. Anna M. D. Gordon, Medical Missionary at Mungeli, India.
“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task has done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”
—General Gordon’s epitaph, from “Imogen’s Dirge,” in Cymbeline.
General George Gordon, Khartoum, Egypt, January 26, 1885.
Reverend E. M. Gordon, Hopkinsville, Ky., June 2, 1908.
In the mystic land of Egypt,
In the streets of old Khartoum,
O’er the grave of martyred Gordon
Does the rose of England bloom;
By Mahdi, the false prophet,
Borne down in hopeless strife,
The Christian hero Gordon
Laid down his priceless life.
Thou Circean Cleopatra,
Of legendary Nile,
Luring to death the Roman Prince
By thy pernicious smile
A wine-inflamed and sensuous girl,
Frenzied by passion’s giddy whirl,
Thou once dissolved and drank a pearl
Inflamed by bacchanal applause,
Unworthy of a sovereign’s cause.
Hadst thou the pearl which Gordon found—
The pearl of boundless price—
The healing drink had cleansed thy soul
Like Magdalen’s sacrifice.
Egypt redeemed had hailed the morn
To a new life forever born,