Why are we forever speaking
Of the warriors of old?
Men are fighting all around us,
Full as noble, full as bold.
Ever working, ever striving,
Mind and muscle, heart and soul,
With the reins of judgment keeping
Passions under full control.
Noble hearts are beating boldly
As they ever did on earth;
Swordless heroes are around us,
Striving ever from their birth.

Tearing down the old abuses,
Building up the purer laws,
Scattering the dust of ages,
Searching out the hidden flaws.
Acknowledging no “right divine”
In kings and princes from the rest;
In their creed he is the noblest
Who has worked and striven best.
Decorations do not tempt them—
Diamond stars they laugh to scorn—
Each will wear a “Cross of Honor”
On the Resurrection morn.
Warriors they in fields of wisdom—
Like the noble Hebrew youth,
Striking down Goliath’s error
With the God-blessed stone of truth.
Marshaled ’neath the Right’s broad banner,
Forward rush these volunteers,
Beating olden wrong away
From the fast advancing years.

Contemporaries do not see them,
But the coming times will say
(Speaking of the slandered present),
“There were heroes in that day.”
Why are we then idly lying
On the roses of our life,
While the noble-hearted struggle
In the world redeeming strife.
Let us rise and join the legion,
Ever foremost in the fray—
Battling in the name of Progress
For the nobler, purer day.

“WHAT THE VILLAGE BELL SAID.”

BY JOHN M’LEMORE, OF S. C.

Full many a year in the village church,
Above the world have I made my home;
And happier there, than if I had hung
High up in air in a golden dome;
For I have tolled
When the slow hearse rolled
Its burden sad to my door;
And each echo that woke,
With the solemn stroke,
Was a sigh from the heart of the poor.
I know the great bell of the city spire
Is a far prouder one than such as I;
And its deafening stroke, compared with mine,
Is thunder compared with a sigh;
But the shattering note
Of his brazen throat,
As it swells on the Sabbath air,
Far oftener rings
For other things
Than a call to the house of prayer.
Brave boy, I tolled when your father died,
And you wept when my tones pealed loud;
And more gently I rung when the lily-white dame
Your mother dear lay in her shroud:
And I rang in sweet tone
The angels might own,
When your sister you gave to your friend;
Oh! I rang with delight,
On that sweet summer night,
When they vowed they would love to the end!

But a base foe comes from the regions of crime,
With a heart all hot with the flames of hell;
And the tones of the bell you have loved so long
No more on the air shall swell:
For the people’s chief,
With his proud belief
That his country’s cause is God’s own,
Would change the song,
The hills have rung
To the thunder’s harsher tone.
Then take me down from the village church,
Where in peace so long I have hung;
But I charge you, by all the loved and lost,
Remember the songs I have sung.
Remember the mound
Of holy ground
Where your father and mother lie
And swear by the love
For the dead above
To beat your foul foe, or die.
Then take me; but when (I charge you this)
You have come to the bloody field,
That the bell of God, to a cannon grown,
You will ne’er to the foeman yield.
By the love of the past,
Be that hour your last,
When the foe has reached this trust;
And make him a bed
Of patriot dead,
And let him sleep in this holy dust.[6]

“WE COME! WE COME!”

BY MILLIE MAYFIELD.[7]

We come! we come for Death or Life,
For the Grave or Victory!
We come to the broad Red Sea of strife,
Where the black flag waveth free!
We come as Men, to do or die,
Nor feel that the lot is hard,
When our Hero calls—and our battle-cry
Is “On, to Beauregard!”

Up, craven, up! ’tis no time for ease,
When the crimson war-tide rolls
To our very doors—up, up, for these
Are times to try men’s souls!
The purple gore calls from the sod
Of our martyred brothers’ graves,
And raises a red right hand to God
To guard our avenging braves.
And unto the last bright drop that thrills
The depths of the Southern heart,
We must battle for our sunny hills,
For the freedom of our Mart—
For all that Honor claims, or Right—
For Country, Love, and Home!
Shout to the trampling steeds of Might
Our cry—“We come! we come!”
And let our path through their serried ranks
Be the fierce tornado’s track,
That bursts from the torrid’s fervid banks
And scatters destruction black!
For the hot life leaping in the veins
Of our young Confederacy,
Must break for aye the galling chains
Of dark-browed Treachery.

On! on! ’tis our gallant chieftain calls
(He must not call in vain),
For aid to guard his homestead walls—
Our Hero of the Plain!
We come! we come, to do or die,
Nor feel that the lot is hard:
“God and our Rights!” be our battle cry,
And, “On, to Beauregard!”