So all earth's teachers have been overborne
By the coarse crowd, and fainting; droop or die;
They bear the cross, their bleeding brows the thorn,
And ever hear the clamor--"Crucify!"
Oh, for a man with godlike heart and brain!
A god in stature, with a god's great will.
And fitted to the time, that not in vain
Be all the blood we're spilt and yet must spill.
Oh, brothers! friends! shake off the Circean spell!
Rouse to the dangers of impending fate!
Grasp your keen swords, and all may yet be well--
More gain, more pelf, and it will be, too late!
Charleston Mercury [1864].
[1] The country-seat of R. Barnwell Rhett.
[2] The homestead of Jas. H. Hammond.
[3] The homestead of W. Gilmore Simms (destroyed by Sherman's army.)
Our Departed Comrades.
By J. Marion Shirer.
I am sitting alone by a fire
That glimmers on Sugar Loaf's height,
But before I to rest shall retire
And put out the fast fading light--
While the lanterns of heaven are ling'ring
In silence all o'er the deep sea,
And loved ones at home are yet mingling
Their voices in converse of me--
While yet the lone seabird is flying
So swiftly far o'er the rough wave,
And many fond mothers are sighing
For the noble, the true, and the brave;
Let me muse o'er the many departed
Who slumber on mountain and vale;
With the sadness which shrouds the lone-hearted,
Let me tell of my comrades a tale.
Far away in the green, lonely mountains,
Where the eagle makes bloody his beak,
In the mist, and by Gettysburg's fountains,
Our fallen companions now sleep!
Near Charleston, where Sumter still rises
In grandeur above the still wave,
And always at evening discloses
The fact that her inmates yet live--
On islands, and fronting Savannah,
Where dark oaks overshadow the ground,
Round Macon and smoking Atlanta,
How many dead heroes are found!
And out on the dark swelling ocean,
Where vessels go, riding the waves,
How many, for love and devotion,
Now slumber in warriors' graves!
No memorials have yet been erected
To mark where these warriors lie.
All alone, save by angels protected,
They sleep 'neath the sea and the sky!
But think not that they are forgotten
By those who the carnage survive:
When their headboards will all have grown rotten,
And the night-winds have levelled their graves,
Then hundreds of sisters and mothers,
Whose freedom they perished to save,
And fathers, and empty-sleeved brothers,
Who surmounted the battle's red wave;
Will crowd from their homes in the Southward,
In search of the loved and the blest,
And, rejoicing, will soon return homeward
And lay our dear martyrs to rest.