  By EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. [Certain politicians proposed, as a means of ending the war, that a new confederacy or union should be formed, from which the New England States should be excluded because of their implacable hostility to slavery and their consequent obnoxiousness to the South. There were many spirited replies to this proposal, the best of which is this poem.—Editor.] “Who deserves greatness Deserves your hate ... Yon common cry of curs, whose breath I loathe As reek o’ the rotten fens.” Coriolanus. “Hark! hark! the dogs do bark.” Nursery Rhyme. S Sons of New England in the fray, Do you hear the clamor behind your back? Do you hear the yelping of Blanche and Tray? Sweetheart, and all the mongrel pack? Girded well with her ocean crags, Little our mother heeds their noise; Do you hear them say that the patriot fire Burns on her altars too pure and bright, To the darkened heavens leaping higher, Though drenched with the blood of every fight? That in the light of its searching flame Treason and tyrants stand revealed, And the yielding craven is put to shame On Capitol floor or foughten field? Do you hear the hissing voice which saith That she—who bore through all the land The lyre of Freedom, the torch of Faith, And young Invention’s mystic wand— Should gather her skirts and dwell apart, With not one of her sisters to share her fate,— A Hagar, wandering sick at heart? A pariah bearing the nation’s hate? Sons, who have peopled the gorgeous West, And planted the Pilgrim arm anew, Where by a richer soil caressed, It grows as ever its parent grew,— Say, do you hear—while the very bells Of your churches ring with her ancient voice, And the song of your children sweetly tells How true was the land of your fathers’ choice— Do you hear the traitors who bid you speak The word that shall sever the sacred tie? And ye who dwell by the golden peak, Has the subtle whisper glided by? Has it crossed the immemorial plains To coasts where the gray Pacific roars, And the Pilgrim blood in the people’s veins Is pure as the wealth of their mountain ores? Spirits of sons who side by side In a hundred battles fought and fell, Whom now no East and West divide, In the isles where the shades of heroes dwell,— Say, has it reached your glorious rest, And ruffled the calm which crowns you there? The shame that recreants have confest The plot that floats in the troubled air? Sons of New England, here and there, Wherever men are still holding by The honor our fathers left so fair,— Say, do you hear the cowards’ cry? Crouching amongst her grand old crags, Lightly our mother heeds their noise, With her fond eyes fixed on distant flags; But you—do you hear it, Yankee boys? January 19, 1863. In Louisiana
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