  [Carriers’ Address, written for the Nashville, Tenn., Press and Times, December 25, 1865.] The days have dropped, like withered leaves, From the dead cypress of the year, And Time, who neither joys nor grieves, Nor spares, nor pities, nor reprieves, Has bound the months, twelve ripened sheaves, Round his completed sphere. Dread Reaper of the centuries, The red strokes of whose sickle blade Clashed oft and harshly on the breeze, While in long swathes our dead were laid, And measured out with every blow That dark Olympiad of woe; Here, where thy dreadful bugles rang, With cannon’s roar and saber’s clang, And answering hell in chorus sang, Bidding the harvesters of Death Cut wider still their slippery path. Withhold thy fatal hand, And let thy crescent sickle shine The harvest moon of peace divine, And to full orb expand; For blood enough of kindred slain Has poured in streams of purple rain And soaked the thirsty sand To quench each living coal of hate, Assuage the fury of the State And reconcile the land. O, North! O, South! whose children claim From heroic sires a common fame More lustrous than the melted gem Of Cleopatra’s diadem, Drunk up one night for Antony In bacchanalian revelry, Whose incommunicable splendor None but a slave would cast away, None but a craven would surrender? Tells not each winged wind some story Of Revolutionary glory, Worthy of that immortal theme Which once inspired The Scian’s dream By blue Ægean’s tide; How Hayne, to his dear country given, Stepped from the scaffold up to heaven, Laureled and deified; How Lawrence dared the ocean strife— Breathing with pale and quivering lip His death cry, “Don’t give up the ship!”— Then perished in his pride, And Warren, in the morn of life, In front of battle died. O, Christ, whose Orient Star of Love, Illumed the primal Christmas morning, What cloud has spread its veil above, That we no more behold it burning? Shall we, despite the prayers and tears, Poured out for near two thousand years, In never-ending intercession For fallen humanity’s transgression, Shall we pluck from the temple’s shelves And trample under foot the Bible, Apostates base pronounce ourselves And Christianity a libel? Of what avail, if thus we err, Our gifts of frankincense and myrrh, Prayers, mummery, and holy water, To cleanse the air from smell of slaughter, And psalms, and organ chants sonorous, With all our damning guilt before us? Has sharp remorse no power to move The stronger agony of love In breasts whose suffering finds at last The madness of the conflict past, In battle’s fearful expiation, Beside the slain at last shall feel The glow of reconciliation, Over the tombs which now conceal The flower and glory of the nation? Come where the slain, all pale and cold, Sleep ’neath the all-concealing mold, While evening’s melancholy breeze With sad voice in the forest lingers, Thrumming the spray of whispering trees Like chords beneath a harper’s fingers, In fitful, sobbing, plaintive tone, Thrilling the pained air with its moan, And wailing down the leafless aisles with low and dying groan. Let pity, warm as Love’s caress, Strew violets in tenderness Above our kinsmen dead; And myrtles clustering o’er their tomb, Enfold in robes of purple bloom Their consecrated bed; And let the fresh-winged morning air Now waft to heaven the nation’s prayer To spare the avenging rod, And weld the golden chain of love Between all human hearts above And all beneath the sod. No more; no more; for overhead The Christmas star renews its brightness; Its beams revivify the dead In garments of celestial whiteness; By our sad fate, the phantoms say, By all the griefs that wring the living, Cast each embittered thought away, And join the people by forgiving. Armies of slaughtered men have fed The Moloch fires of expiation, Whose blood, like Abel’s madly shed, Joins in the fervent invocation. Plead ye for peace? Expect it where Justice is equal as the air And vote and count are just and fair, Nor seek the fruitful olive tree, On the volcano’s breast of snow, While the flame-waved Vesuvian sea Consumes the sapless earth below. Redeemed from violence and fraud, All hail the resurrected nation; The Rights of Man shall be its broad, Deep and immovable foundation, And the Philanthropy of God The corner-stone of Restoration. |
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