'Our women have hung their harps away,
And they scowl on your brutal bands,
While the nimble poignard dares the day
In their dear defiant hands;
They will strip their tresses to string our bows
Ere the Northern sun is set;
There's faith in their unrelenting woes,
There's life in the old land yet.'
Now it is very evident that if the author of the lyric was not describing Indian squaws when he alluded to the 'scowling' females whose 'nimble poignards dare the day,' he certainly ought to have been. But the allusion to 'the bows,' settles the matter. Bows and arrows are not used in the confederate army, though they are by Albert Pike's Indians—enough said.
But if the secessionists will come North, and hemp should give out, we may find a new application, with a slight alteration to the verse in question. For then our women of the North may
'Strip their tresses to string your beaux.'
And serve 'em right, too. That's all. But really, if this be, in the opinion of the first magazine of the South, one of the best of Southern poems, what must the 'common sort' be?'
GONE.
BY H. L. SPENCER.
Gone! the South winds come again,
Sweeping over bill and plain,
Murmuring through the sombre pines,
Singing o'er the budding vines,
Bringing with them birds that sing
All the glories of the spring;
But they bring not back to me
The boy without whose smile earth's smiles
I never see.
His bed the wood-nymphs strow
With all the flowers that blow,
And the sweet tones of their minim harps
His quiet slumbers lull;
For Nature was his joy,
And he was Nature's toy:
Where sleeps the peerless boy,
She scatters with a lavish hand
The bright, the beautiful.
He reigns, though lost to sight!
Through the long day and night
Is his sweet influence shed
Around the paths I tread:
He is not lost—ah! no—he is not dead.
Not dead! his voice I hear
When South winds murmur near;
I feel, when stars arise,
His soft and loving eyes,
And from the forest flower
His face at evening hour
Smiles on me as of old,
And dreamily my neck his tiny arms enfold.
Not lost to joy, but lost to pain,
Which never shall he feel again;
Earth's acrid fruits he shall not taste,
And wrong it were to chide the haste
With which he left this barren field,
That with its flowers so few, so many thorns doth yield.
I can not mourn my king, for his
Still, still the kingdom is,
And the cares which earth-bred kings annoy,
No more disturb my king—my boy.
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