War Poetry of the South

by Unknown

There shall be deeper hues upon her plains
Than all her sunlight rains,
And every gladdening influence around
Can summon from the ground.

Oh! standing on this desecrated mould,
Methinks that I behold,
Lifting her bloody daisies up to God,
Spring, kneeling on the sod,

And calling with the voice of all her rills
Upon the ancient hills,
To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves
Who turn her meads to graves.

Chickmauga--"The Stream of Death."

Richmond Senitnel.

Chickamuga! Chickamauga!
O'er thy dark and turbid wave
Rolls the death-cry of the daring,
Rings the war-shout of the brave;
Round thy shore the red fires flashing,
Startling shot and screaming shell--
Chickamauga, stream of battle,
Who thy fearful tale shall tell?

Olden memories of horror,
Sown by scourge of deadly plague,
Long hath clothed thy circling forests
With a terror vast and vague;
Now to gather further vigor
From the phantoms grim with gore,
Hurried, by war's wilder carnage,
To their graves on thy lone shore.

Long, with hearts subdued and saddened,
As th' oppressor's hosts moved on,
Fell the arms of freedom backward,
Till our hopes had almost flown;
Till outspoke stern valor's fiat--
"Here th' invading wave shall stay;
Here shall cease the foe's proud progress;
Here be crushed his grand array!"

Then their eager hearts all throbbing,
Backward flashed each battle-flag
Of the veteran corps of Longstreet,
And the sturdy troops of Bragg;
Fierce upon the foemen turning,
All their pent-up wrath breaks out
In the furious battle-clangor,
And the frenzied battle-shout.

Roll thy dark waves, Chickamauga,
Trembles all thy ghastly shore,
With the rude shock of the onset,
And the tumult's horrid roar;
As the Southern battle-giants
Hurl their bolts of death along,
Breckenridge, the iron-hearted,
Cheatham, chivalric and strong: