"What a nice White House it would be, if it were not for the blacks."
Nevertheless, the poem with which Punch greeted the news of the fall of Fort Sumter was not calculated to arouse kindly sentiments in the North.
INK, BLOOD AND TEARS
(THE TAKING OF FORT SUMTER.)
A Forty hours' bombardment! Great guns throwing
Their iron hail: shells their mad mines exploding:
Furnaces lighted: shot at red-heat glowing:
Shore-battr'ies and fort-armament, firing, loading—
War's visible hell let loose for forty hours,
And all her devils free to use their powers—
And yet not one man hit, her flag when Sumter lowers.
"Oh, here's a theme!" quoth Punch, of brag abhorrent,
"'Twixt promise and performance rare proportion!
This show-cloth, of live lions, giving warrant,
Masking some mangy, stunted, stuffed abortion:
These gorgeous covers hiding empty dishes,
These whale-like antics among little fishes—
Here is the very stuff to meet my dearest wishes.
What ringing of each change on brag and bluster!
These figures huge of speech, summed in a zero:
This war-march, ushering in Bombastes' muster:
This entry of Tom Thumb, armed like a hero.
Of all great cries e'er raised o'er little wool,
Of all big bubbles by fools' breath filled full,
Sure here's the greatest yet, and emptiest, for John Bull!
John always thought Jonathan, his young brother,
A little of a bully; said he swaggered:
But in all change of chaff with one another,
Nor John nor Jonathan was e'er called 'laggard.'
But now, if John mayn't Jonathan style 'coward,'
He may hint Stripes and Stars were better lowered
From that tall height to which, till now, their flag-staff towered."
Punch nibbed his pen, all jubilant, for galling—
When suddenly a weight weighed down the feather,
And a red liquid, drop by drop, slow falling,
Came from the nib; and the drops rolled together,
And steamed and smoked and sung—"Not ink, but blood;
Drops now, but soon to swell into a flood,
Perchance e'er Summer's leaf has burst Spring's guarding bud.
Blood by a brother's hand drawn from a brother—
And they by whom 'tis ta'en, by whom 'tis given,
Are both the children of an English mother;
Once with that mother, in her wrath, they've striven:
Was't not enough, that parricidal jar,
But they must now meet in fraternal war?
If such strife draw no blood shall England scoff therefore?