The lurid glow falls strong across
Dark faces broad with smiles:
Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss
That fire yon blazing piles.
With oar-strokes timing to their song,
They weave in simple lays
The pathos of remembered wrong,
The hope of better days,—
The triumph-note that Miriam sung,
The joy of uncaged birds:
Softening with Afric's mellow tongue
Their broken Saxon words.
John Greenleaf Whittier.
The campaign along the North Carolina coast was vigorously pressed, and fort after fort was captured, until the Northern troops were so firmly in possession that their control of that portion of the coast was never afterwards seriously threatened.
Loaded with gallant soldiers,
A boat shot in to the land,
And lay at the right of Rodman's Point,
With her keel upon the sand.
Lightly, gayly, they came to shore,
And never a man afraid;
When sudden the enemy opened fire,
From his deadly ambuscade.
Each man fell flat on the bottom
Of the boat; and the captain said:
"If we lie here, we all are captured,
And the first who moves is dead!"
Then out spoke a negro sailor,
No slavish soul had he:
"Somebody's got to die, boys,
And it might as well be me!"