In the name of God! Amen!
Stand for our Southern rights!
Arm, ye Southern men,
The God of Battle fights!
Fling the invaders far,
Hurl back their work of woe,
The voice is the voice of a brother,
But the hands are the hands of a foe.
They come with a trampling army,
Invading our native sod—
Stand, Southrons! fight and conquer!
In the name of the Mighty God!
They’re singing our song of triumph[20]
Which was made to make us free,
While they’re breaking away the heartstrings
Of our nation’s harmony.
Sadly it floateth from us,
Sighing o’er land and wave,
Till mute on the lips of the poet,
It sleeps in his Southern grave.
Spirit and song departed!
Minstrel and minstrelsy!
We mourn thee, heavy-hearted,
But we will, we shall be free!
They are waving our flag above us,
With a despot’s tyrant will;
With our blood they have stained its colors,
And call it holy still.
With tearful eyes, but steady hand,
We’ll tear its stripes apart,
And fling them like broken fetters,
That may not bind the heart;
But we’ll save our stars of glory,
In the might of the sacred sign
Of Him who has fixed forever
Our Southern Cross to shine.
Stand, Southrons! stand and conquer!
Solemn and strong and sure!
The strife shall not be longer
Than God shall bid endure.
By the life which only yesterday
Came with the infant’s breath,
By the feet which ere the morn may
Tread to the soldier’s death!
By the blood which cries to Heaven!
Crimson upon our sod!
Stand, Southrons! stand and conquer!
In the name of the Mighty God!
Paris, 1862.

PATRIOTISM.

The holy fire that nerved the Greek
To make his stand at Marathon,
Until the last red foeman’s shriek
Proclaimed that Freedom’s fight was won,
Still lives unquenched—unquenchable!
Through every age its fires will burn—
Lives in the hermit’s lonely cell,
And springs from every storied urn!
The hearthstone embers hold the spark
Where fell Oppression’s foot hath trod;
Through Superstition’s shadow dark
It flashes to the living God!
From Moscow’s ashes spring the Russ;
In Warsaw Poland lives again;
Schamyl, on frosty Caucasus,
Strikes Liberty’s electric chain!
Tell’s freedom-beacon lights the Swiss;
Vainly the invader ever strives;
He finds “Sic Semper Tyrannis”
In San Jacinto’s bowie-knives!
Than these—than all—a holier fire
Now burns thy soul, Virginia’s son!
Strike then for wife, babe, gray-haired sire;
Strike for the grave of Washington!
The Northern rabble aims for greed;
The hireling parson goads the train—
In that foul crop from bigot seed,
Old “Praise God Barebones” howls again!
We welcome them to “Southern lands”—
We welcome them to “Southern slaves”—
We welcome them “with bloody hands
To hospitable Southern graves!”

SONG FOR THE MARYLAND LINE.

BY J. D. M’CABE, JR.

By old Potomac’s rushing tide
Our bayonets are gleaming;
And o’er the bounding waters wide
We gaze while tears are streaming.
The distant hills of Maryland
Rise sadly up before us,
And tyrant bands have chained our land—
Our mother, proud, that bore us.
Our proud old mother’s queenly head
Is bowed in subjugation;
With her children’s blood her soil is red,
And fiends in exultation
Taunt her with shame as they bind her chains,
While her heart is torn with anguish;
Old mother, on famed Manassas’s plains
Our vengeance did not languish!
We thought of your wrongs as on we rushed,
’Mid shot and shell appalling;
We heard your voice as it upward gushed
From the Maryland life-blood falling.
No pity we knew! Did they mercy show
When they bound the mother that bore us?
But we scattered death ’mid the dastard foe,
Till they, shrieking, fled before us!
We mourn for our brothers brave, that fell
On that field, so stern and gory;
But their spirits rose with our triumph-yell
To the heavenly realms of glory.
And their bodies rest on the hard-won field—
By their love so true and tender;
We’ll keep the prize they would not yield,
We’ll die, but we’ll not surrender.
And, mother, we wait but the signal-blast,
To rush to redeem thy glory;
We may fall, but our conquering dust shall rest
On thy soil, so famed in story.
The tyrant’s flag shall no longer shine,
Thy liberty to smother,
When the word is passed to the Maryland Line,
To strike for their loved old mother.