"John Bright was right, yes, let 'em fight, these fools across the water,
'Tis no affair at all of ours, their carnival of slaughter;
The Christian world, indeed, may say we ought not to allow it, sirs,
But still 'tis music in our ears, this roar of Yankee howitzers.
"A word or two of sympathy, that costs us not a penny,
We give the gallant Southerners, the few against the many;
We say their noble fortitude of final triumph presages,
And praise, in Blackwood's Magazine, Jeff. Davis and his messages.
"Of course we claim the shining fame of glorious Stonewall Jackson,
Who typifies the English race, a sterling Anglo-Saxon;
To bravest song his deeds belong, to Clio and Melpomene"--
(And why not for a British stream demand the Chickahominy?)
"But for the cause in which he fell we cannot lift a finger,
'Tis idle on the question any longer here to linger;
'Tis true the South has freely bled, her sorrows are Homeric, oh!
Her case is like to his of old who journeyed unto Jericho.
"The thieves have stripped and bruised, although as yet they have not
bound her,
We'd like to see her slay 'em all to right and left around her;
We shouldn't cry in parliament if Lee should cross the Raritan,
But England never yet was known to play the Good Samaritan.
"And so we pass the other side, and leave them to their glory,
To give new proofs of manliness, new scenes for song and story;
These honeyed words of compliment may possibly bamboozle 'em,
But ere we intervene, you know, we'll see 'em in--Jerusalem.
"Yes, let 'em fight, till both are brought to hopeless desolation,
Till wolves troop round the cottage door in one and t'other nation,
Till, worn and broken down, the South shall prove no more refractory,
And rust eats up the silent looms of every Yankee factory.
"Till bursts no more the cotton boll o'er fields of Carolina,
And fills with snowy flosses the dusky hands of Dinah;
Till war has dealt its final blow, and Mr. Seward's knavery
Has put an end in all the land to freedom and to slavery.
"The grim Bastile, the rack, the wheel, without remorse or pity,
May flourish with the guillotine in every Yankee city;
No matter should old Abe revive the brazen bull of Phalaris,
'Tis no concern at all of ours"--(sensation in the galleries.)
"So shall our 'merry England' thrive on trans-Atlantic troubles,
While India, on her distant plains, her crop of cotton doubles;
And just so long as North or South shall show the least vitality,
We cannot swerve, we must preserve our rigorous neutrality."