"Where my home was glad, are ashes,
And horror and shame had been there--
For I found, on the fallen lintel,
This tress of my wife's torn hair.
"They are turning the slave upon us,
And, with more than the fiend's worst art,
Have uncovered the fires of the savage
That slept in his untaught heart.
"The ties to our hearths that bound him,
They have rent, with curses, away,
And maddened him, with their madness,
To be almost as brutal as they.
"With halter and torch and Bible,
And hymns to the sound of the drum,
They preach the gospel of Murder,
And pray for Lust's kingdom to come.
"To saddle! to saddle! my brothers!
Look up to the rising sun,
And ask of the God who shines there,
Whether deeds like these shall be done!
"Wherever the vandal cometh,
Press home to his heart with your steel,
And when at his bosom you cannot,
Like the serpent, go strike at his heel!
"Through thicket and wood go hunt him,
Creep up to his camp fireside,
And let ten of his corpses blacken
Where one of our brothers hath died.
"In his fainting, foot-sore marches,
In his flight from the stricken fray,
In the snare of the lonely ambush,
The debts that we owe him pay,
"In God's hand, alone, is judgment;
But He strikes with the hands of men,
And His blight would wither our manhood
If we smote not the smiter again.
"By the graves where our fathers slumber,
By the shrines where our mothers prayed,
By our homes and hopes and freedom.
Let every man swear on his blade.--