If she will laugh, through thee, her chartered wit,
Use thou no ink wherewith to pen thy scoff:
We'll find a liquor for thy pen more fit—
We blood drops—see how smartly thou'lt round off
Point, pun and paragraph in this new way:
Till men shall read and laugh, and, laughing, say,
'Well thrust! Punch is in vein: 'tis his red-letter day.'"
The weight sat on my quill: I could not write;
The red drops lustered to my pen—in vain;
I had my theme—"Brothers that meet in fight,
Yet shed no blood!"—my jesting mood turned pain.
I thought of all that civil love endears,
That civil strife breaks up and rends and sears,
And lo! the blood-drops in my pen were changed to tears!
And for the hoarse tongues that those bloody gouts
Had found, or seemed to find, upon my ears
Came up a gentle song in linkèd bouts,
Of long-drawn sweetness—pity breathed through tears.
And thus they sang—"'Twas not by chance,
Still less by fraud or fear,
That Sumter's battle came and closed,
Nor cost the world a tear."
It was the Southern victory of Bull Run and the Northern policy of blockade that finally and definitely changed the attitude of England and of Punch. The victory gave hopes that the Confederates might be successful in overturning a hated and dreaded republic; the blockade aroused fears that the pocket of the British manufacturer might be damaged. All pretence of love for the negro was swallowed up by these more potent and more personal emotions.
On November 2, 1861, in a cartoon and an accompanying poem Punch sought to put its commercial anxiety on an altruistic plane. Here is the poem:
KING COTTON BOUND; OR, THE NEW PROMETHEUS.
Far across Atlantic waters
Groans in chains a Giant King;
Like to him, whom Ocean's daughters
Wail around in mournful ring,
In the grand old Grecian strains
Of Prometheus in his chains!
Needs but Fancy's pencil pliant
Both to paint till both agree;
For King Cotton is a giant,
As Prometheus claimed to be.
Each gave blessings unto men,
Each dishonour reaped again.