“Union men!” O thrice-fooled fools!
As well might ye hope to bind
The desert sands with a silken thread,
When tossed by the whistling wind,
Or to blend the shattered waves that lash
The feet of the cleaving rock,
When the tempest walks the face of the deep,
And the water-spirits mock,
As the severed chain to reunite
In a peaceful link again;
On our burning homesteads ye may write,
“We found no Union men.”
Aye, hoist your old dishonored flag,
And pipe your worn-out tune;
The hills of the South have caught the strain,
And will answer it full soon;
Not with the sycophantic tone,
And the cringing knee bent low—
The deep-mouthed cannon shall bear the tale,
Where the sword deals blow for blow;
Our braying trumpets in your ears,
Shall defiant shout again,
“Back, wolves and foxes, to your lairs,
Here are no Union men!”
Union, with tastes dissimilar?
Such Union is the worst
And direst form of bondage that
Nations or men have cursed!
Union with traitors? Hear ye not
That cry for vengeance, deep,
Where hand to hand, and foot to foot,
Our glittering columns sweep?
Our iron-tongued artillery
Shouts through the bristling glen,
To the war-drum echoing reveillé,
“Here are no Union men!”
Oh, deep have sunken the burning seeds
That the wingèd winds have borne,
That for all your future years must yield
The thistle and prison-thorn;
Our soil was genial—ye might have sown
A harvest rich. ’Tis too late!
To our children’s children we leave for you
But a heritage of Hate!
Ye have opened the wild flood-gates of war,
And we may not the torrent pen;
But ye seek in vain on our storm-beat shore
For the myth called ”Union Men.“ |