  [Carriers’ Address for the Louisville Journal.] Oh, infant year, whose newborn limbs are swathed And cradled in convulsion—Oh, dread Heaven, Unsealing o’er this land of many woes The Apocalyptic vials—Oh, my torn And bleeding country, by thy sons deflowered And stricken of thy God—how shall I sing A festal anthem on a broken lyre— To ears made dull by sorrow? From her dreams, With music lulled, all-queenly, and perfumed With odors from the Summer’s lips distilled, The startled nation woke—awoke to hear Rebellion’s war-cries in her citadel, By dark and frenzied sentinels invoked— Singing her dirge, like the volcanic bass Of Ætna’s organ chiming with the sea When groans the Titan in immortal pangs— The trepidation of conflicting hosts, Mixed with the wild alarm of clamorous bells The strife—the shout—the wailing of despair. Time, by whose hands the mouldering dust of death Is shovelled in the vaults of coffined realms, What Nemesis insatiate still inspires The suicide of Empires? In her breast, Greece nursed the serpent faction, with her blood, That stung her to the heart. Rebellion’s steel Pierced the fair bosom of imperial Rome By foreign foes unconquered; and the land Of God’s own people drank the fatal cup Which dark dissension pressed upon her lips. As midnight’s bell proclaims with double tongue One year departed and another born, Swift throng around me with imperial mien And godlike brow, and eyes of sad reproach, As angels look in sorrow, the great dead Who walked Mount Vernon’s shades and Marshfield’s plains, And Monticello’s height, and Ashland’s groves Still vocal with unearthly eloquence, Statesmen and Chiefs who loved their native land And led her up to fame. With solemn air And thrilling voice they point to freedom’s flag War-rent and laced with sacrificial blood, By noble martyrs shed; and thus they speak— “O sons once named Americans, but now The world-mocked orphans of a nameless land, Why rush ye to destruction? Happier far Than ye the tawny tribes your fathers drove From the primeval forest—the red chiefs Who bravely perished on their hunting-grounds, Or passing o’er the mountains of the West, Went down in gloom, like nature’s final sun, To rise no more forever. Better thus Than live the foul dishonor of your sires, Whose progeny like Lucifer of old Rebelled against the power that made them Gods, And perished in their treason. Come, ye winds, Swift-winged couriers of the tropic sky, Heralds of death and ruin—come, ye fires That in volcanic caverns ever burn, And crush pale cities in your molten jaws— Come, burning plagues, and ye tempestuous waves, Who strangle navies in your watery arms— Earthquakes and lightning-strokes, all earthly ills Which Heaven inflicts, and trembling men abhor— Fell bolts in God’s red armory of wrath, With all your terrors in one stroke combined, Come; and in mercy blast the land with ruin Rather than we should see Columbia’s plains Drenched in a crimson sea of fratricide, Lust, rapine, malice, treachery, revenge, The tall and crowning Teneriffe of crime.” I hear a passing bell—the muffled drum Rolls its sepulchral echoes on the night Which spreads across the sky the starless pall Of desolation. And upon my ear Falls the wild burden of a dismal song Like that of mocking fiends in revelry. The Disunion Banner. Fiends who in the lurid gloom Of Hell do ply the fatal loom, Weave a banner of despair For Columbia’s tainted air, Like the boding raven’s wing All the land o’ershadowing. In the murky woof embroider Darkness, death, and Hell’s disorder. On the fatal standard show Every form of guilt and woe— Murder drinking deep of blood, Rolling round him like a flood, All the fetid gall that drips From the land’s infected lips, In the murky woof embroider Darkness, death, and Hell’s disorder. Weave ye in the magic loom Piles of slain without a tomb, Cities lit with midnight fires, Crashing walls and toppling spires, Famine’s sunken, ghastly cheek, Outraged woman’s helpless shriek, Hoary age and infancy Plunged in one wide misery; In the murky woof embroider Darkness, death, and Hell’s disorder. Let the banner’s fold be bound With a fiery serpent round; Eden’s destroyer shall recall The new temptation, sin, and fall. We have changed the stripes of flame To the burning blush of shame, And the streaks of spotless white To the pallor of affright, And the stars which blazoned all To Wormwood in its endless fall. The song of treason ceased—the phantoms fled, And as I mused in the dark bitterness Of grief to this sad prophecy of woe, I heard a sound, as when the ocean moves His moist battalions to the tempest’s march, To storm the fortress of the rocky isles, And hosts innumerable thronged around In panoply of war. From every height And every valley rolled the martial drum, And bugles calling to the gory charge The loyal and the bold, while streamed on high Gay banners glittering with the hues of heaven. “We come, oh, bleeding country,” was their cry, “To beat aside the parricidal steel, And shield the snowy breast that gave us life.” New England’s seamen swelled the rallying cry Along the coasts; the Middle States replied From thronging marts; the echoes leaped along The Mississippi Valley, whose vast floods Throb like the pulses of the Nation’s heart, And pale Virginia, all besprinkled now With War’s red baptism, to Kentucky spoke; Kentucky, tried but faithful unto death, To sad Missouri called; Missouri passed The kindling watchword to the vast Northwest, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Who louder sang than Niagara’s roar To the unconquered heights of Tennessee; Hoarse echoes, like the low sepulchral moan Of subterranean fires, disturbed the Gulf— The bleeding Gulf betrayed and overawed— Then swelling loud as an Archangel’s trump, Or shrill winds piping o’er the stormy flood, It thundered back from far Pacific’s coast. Come to the tombs by mourning millions thronged Beneath the oak of weeping. Glorious dead, Fame’s cemetery holds no hero dust More dearly honored in sublime repose. Pale ashes, with a nation’s tears bedewed, And fanned by sighs as numerous as the winds, The laurels that you nurture shall be green Of Baker and Lyon. Fortune smiled Upon them, casting from her ample lap, Her lavish stores of fame and wealth and ease, And wooed them to repose. Though sweet her song, She sang unheeded. Honor, fortune, life They offered freely on their country’s shrine, In the red heat and fury of the fight, Deeming the dearest jewels of the world Were nought when weighed against the nation’s life. Dirge. He who led our faltering ranks Up the ambuscaded banks— He who poured his heart’s red rain Over Springfield’s stormy plain, Heeding not the volleys deadly Nor the life’s blood running redly, Cold in death shall lead no more Where our country’s eagles soar. Such, oh War, thy fearful pleasure, Priceless blood and costliest treasure, Still the victims whom thou smitest Are the loveliest and the brightest. But the martyrs shall be glorious When our flag returns victorious; Death, who seals such patriot eyes, Opens them in Paradise. As wistfully I gazed upon their graves A vision passed before me. On a mount That glowed with light ineffable appeared The New Year, in imperial garments clad, Erect and tall and God-like in his mien, With strength immortal in his manly limbs And hope and courage beaming from his eyes. And lo, swift breaking from the clouds, he saw Coming in splendor like the morning sun, The reunited Empire of the West, Swelled on the ear the ever-murmuring hu And marts of commerce by a hundred lakes. The teeming fields, with varied harvests, waved, And tinkling bells on distant hills revived Sweet memories of Arcadia’s pastoral days. Fair science led her train by every grove And hill and stream, and pure religion filled Her solemn temples with perpetual hymns And fervent supplication to her God. And from above the shades of years departed Sang with a voice that filled the firmament: “Hail, New Year, hail the noblest child of Time; The Power which brought the fathers o’er the flood Has saved the offspring from the sevenfold fire. A Union healed shall date its life from thee, Redemption’s golden era. From its shield No star shall vanish in forlorn eclipse, Nor exiled Pleiad chant in skies remote Her solitary song, nor sundered be The marriage bond of States, by law confirmed And the eternal oracles of God.” |
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