By “P. E. C.,” in Richmond Examiner.

Tune—“Barclay and Perkins’ Drayman.”

These lines were written Jan. 8, 1861, for a friend, who expected to sing them in the theatre, but thought at the time to be too much in the secession spirit.

I’m a soldier, you see, that oppression has made!
I don’t fight for pay or for booty;
But I wear in my hat a blue cockade,
Placed there by the fingers of Beauty.
The South is my home, where a black man is black,
And a white man there is a white man;
Now I am tired of listening to Northern clack,—
Let us see what they will do in a fight, man.
The Yankees are cute; they have managed, somehow,
Their business and ours to settle;
They make all we want, from a pin to a plough,
Now we’ll show them some Southern mettle.
We have had just enough of their Northern law,
That robbed us so long of our right, man,
And too much of their cursed abolition jaw,—
Now we’ll see what they’ll do in a fight, man!
Their parsons will open their sanctified jaws,
And cant of our slave-growing sin, sir;
They pocket the profits, while preaching the laws,
And manage our cotton to spin, sir.
Their incomes are nice, on our sugar and rice,
Though against it the hypocrites write, sir;
Now our dander is up, and they’ll soon smell a mice,
If we once get them into a fight, sir.
Our cotton bales once made a good barricade,
And can still do the State a good service;
With them and the boys of the blue cockade,
There is power enough to preserve us.
So shoulder your rifles, my boys, for defense,
In the cause of our freedom and right, man;
If there’s no other way for to learn them sense,
We may teach them a lesson in fight, man.
The stars that are growing so fast on our flags,
We treasure as Liberty’s pearls,
And stainless we’ll bear them, though shot into rags;
They were fixed by the hands of our girls,
And fixed stars they shall be in our national sky,
To guide through the future aright, man,
And your Cousin Sam, with their gleam in his eye,
May dare the whole world to fight, man.

THE DYING SOLDIER BOY.

By A. B. Cunningham, of Louisiana.

Air—“Maid of Monterey.”

Upon Manassas’ bloody plain a soldier boy lay dying!
The gentle winds above his form in softest tones were sighing;
The god of day had slowly sank beneath the verge of day,
And the silver moon was gliding above the milky way.
The stars were shining brightly, and the sky was calm and blue,
Oh, what a beautiful scene was this for human eyes to view!
The river roll’d in splendor, and the wavelets danc’d around,
But the banks were strew’d with dead men, and gory was the ground.
But the hero-boy lay dying, and his thoughts were very deep,
For the death-wound in his young side was wafting him to sleep;
The thought of home and kindred away on a distant shore,
All of whom he must relinquish, and never see them more.
And as the night-breeze passed by, in whispers o’er the dead,
Sweet memories of olden days came rushing to his head;
But his mind was weak and deaden’d, so he turned from where he lay,
As the Death-angel flitted by, and call’d his soul away!