[Illustration: S. C. MERCER]
POEMS
BY
S. C. MERCER
[Illustration: text decoration]
Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito
--_Virgil_
[Illustration: text decoration]
LOUISVILLE
JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY
INCORPORATED
1908
Copyright, 1908,
BY
S. C. MERCER
FOREWORD.
The poems here collected are in the main reprints of pieces that
originally appeared in various newspapers and periodicals, beginning
with the Louisville Journal in the late ’50s. This newspaper was at that
time edited by the brilliant George D. Prentice, my personal friend, who
a few years after I had left college offered me the assistant editorship
of his paper. The imperative duty which at that time I owed to others
forced me to decline this offer, although for many years I wrote
editorials and verses for this then powerful and widely read journal.
Many of the poems here collected have appeared in the columns of the
Louisville daily papers and have been copied in other journals, North
and South, and in poetic collections. Others were first printed in the
Nashville Press and Times, of which I was editor during my two terms as
Public Printer of Tennessee, during the administrations of Military
Governor Andrew Johnson and of Governor Brownlow in the days of
Reconstruction.
It will be noticed that the partisan poems breathe the spirit of the
times in which they were written--the stormy ’60s--but I have not
thought it wise to change their tone, they being now only the record of
a long-since departed day. There has been some controversy as to the
authorship of the poem “The Angel of the Hospital,” owing to a
manuscript copy of this poem being found on the body of a young
Confederate officer killed in one of the battles in Georgia, and from
which the poem was reprinted in many of the Southern newspapers. I had
previously, however, printed it in the Louisville Journal, and as
newspapers were scarce in the South at that time, the unfortunate youth
must have copied the verses before passing the newspaper on to his
comrades.
THE AUTHOR.
Hopkinsville, June 30, 1908.
INDEX
PAGE
The Two Kentuckians 1
The Hunter’s Last Ride 6
The Old Rock Spring 10
A Lyric for Lilian 11
The Strawberry Bowl 12
Hymn 18
John Morgan and His Men 19
The Whippoorwill 24
The New South 25
A Fever Dream 26
Major Bassett’s Chase 29
The Ten Brothers 31
Echo River 33
The Angel of the Hospital 36
The Two Singers 39
Battle of Mill Spring 41
The Greek Slave 42
Ode to Impudence 44
My Birthday 48
Battle of Nashville 49
Blonde and Brunette 53
Gray and Blue 54
Bishop Dudley’s Dirge 55
The Dress Circle 56
In Memoriam 60
The Sorrows of Hinda and Kleinfelter 61
Dr. John A. Broaddus 65
To Leonora 67
At His Post 69
Reconciliation 71
Ophelia 74
Death of the Seasons 76
New Year Ode, 1861 78
Monody 83
Washington’s Birthday Ode 86
To April 87
Ode on the Death of Leo XIII 88
Chiabrera’s Epitaph 90
Elegy 91
To the Law and Order League 92
“With Thy Shield, or Upon It” 94
Confirmation at St. Andrew’s 96
The Christmas Flower 98
To the Soldiers of General Dumont’s Command 99
The Two Gordons 100
The Westfield Home 105
The Harp in the Air; or a Night with Gerardi in Seelbach’s
Roof-garden 107
Dedication Hymn 109
Lying in State at Princeton 110
In the Morning 113
POEMS
+--------------+
| POEMS BY |
| S. C. MERCER |
+--------------+
[Illustration: THE TWO KENTUCKIANS.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN--Fourteenth President of the United States; born in
Hardin County, Ky., February 12, 1809; assassinated in Ford’s Theater,
April 16, 1865.
JEFFERSON DAVIS--First and last President of the Southern Confederacy;
born in Christian County, Ky., June 3, 1808; died in New Orleans,
December 6, 1889.]
The sky of the Southland with grief is o’ercast;
Bitter tears down the cheeks of the brave trickle fast;
The moss-streamered oaks of Beauvoir bow their head--
Their Master is fallen, their Chieftain is dead.
Wake, soldier, who liest outstretched on thy bier:
Does the warwhoop of Black Hawk not startle thy ear?
Seest thou not the long Mexican lancers’ array
At dark Buena Vista rush fierce to the fray?
Hapless Mexican Cavalry! great was your scath
As you fearlessly charged down that Angel of Death.
The manes of the chargers like meteors streamed,
Like rainbows far-flashing the gay pennons gleamed;
Like lightning from Heaven Davis brandished his sword
And fierce was the volley his riflemen poured;
They reel in their saddles, they topple and fall,
The flag of the cavalcade turns to a pall,
Its ghostly Commander is the skeleton Death--
The fair rose of Mexico shrinks in his breath.
They halt--they retreat--in wild tumult they run,
The eagle soars victor--Buena Vista is won.
Hearken, O spangled Cavaliers, to that dread warning cry
Which like the trump of Judgment is sounding from the sky--
“Remember cruel Alamo’s foul massacre and die!”
Lo her avengers, Taylor, Davis, Hardin, McKee, and Clay!
Abundant sacrifice went up in smoke of battle gray,
So were thy Manes appeased, brave Crockett, on that day,
Thy phantom sped from Alamo to cheer that bloody fray.
Our troops on that field by their valor and scars
Added stars to our flag’s constellation of stars,
And Buena Vista’s immaculate name
Like a beacon-fire burns in the temple of fame.
Weep, daughters of Mexico, for lover and spouse,
Hang crepe on the door of each desolate house,
Long, long shall the maidens of Anahuac mourn
For their fallen defenders who shall never return.
Once, in Senate encounter, in battle’s fierce brunt,
Thy plume, like Navarre’s, streamed full high in the front.
Thou wast once, like Scotch Bruce, of inflexible will,
Unyielding, though conquered, and resolute still.
In field or in council, with sword, tongue or pen,
The molder of ideas, the leader of men.
Clay--Webster--Oh, Chief, are thy pulses unstirred
When the mighty debate in the Senate is heard?
Hark, Sumter’s loud tocsin! Saw the world e’er the like?
For Freedom and Union and Southland they strike.
Grant, Meade, Lee and Thomas like Titans engage,
And the Lost Cause departs like a ghost from the stage.
’Tis past, like a dream of the dawning in air,
For thee, the world’s pageant of Vanity Fair.
All faded--those phantoms and dreams of the past,
And crepe ties the flag as it falls to the mast.
The dirge wails its sorrow to dead ears in vain;
The pallbearers’ flag is the flag of the train,
The traveler’s baggage lies all in one chest,
Whose check is a coffin plate lettered “At Rest.”
And Metairie’s vault opes its dark, narrow berth
For the cold, pallid earth which returns to the earth.
As I rode o’er the mountain I saw not how high
Its pine-covered summit ascended the sky.
’Twas a mere undulation that rose from the plain--
But, as journeying on, I beheld it again,
The veil of Omnipotence spread like a shroud
On its brow, that looked down on the loftiest cloud.
So our lives were too near to those lives which expired
When the battle of freedom our continent fired.
To measure their valor and virtue aright--
Our vision is dim when too close to the light.
Thou, Lincoln, sad martyr, just, generous, brave;
A hero of heroes Omnipotence gave
To mortals in molding thy gaunt, rugged face;
Like Cromwell, no smooth dilettante in grace;
But counting all power, glory, life itself, naught,
Till the duty assigned thee by Heaven was wrought.
O voice of humanity whose exquisite tone
Like the moan of the sea breathed a sadness its own--
As the sea mourns the infinite dead ’neath its waves,
So mourned his great soul for war’s infinite graves--
How oft did the widow and orphan rejoice
In the counsel and sympathy toned in that voice;
Where sorrow abounded did his love more abound,
Like the hand of a woman who nurses a wound,
Like the lullaby sung to a babe at the breast
Till singer and sufferer sink to sweet rest;
It cheered the bruised hearts of the children of toil
Like the summer-night-dew which refreshes the soil;
Like the Lamb of Redemption he went to the cross
And our infinite gain was secured by his loss.
No vision of conquest could lead him astray
No sectional bias waved false lights in his way.
Stem duty, as he saw it, confronted his eyes;
And the future passed judgment at its solemn assize:
“The Union which Washington won by his sword
“I have sworn to preserve, ’tis my vow to the Lord.
“Should the temple he built by my treachery burn,
“My name would all ages indignantly spurn,
“My honor be scorned, my oath be forsworn,
“And my name from the roster of Patriots be torn.
“This Union so fair asunder to rend,
“No patriot has sworn--I’ve an oath to defend,
“‘The Last Sigh of the Moor’ is a voice not in vain,
“For the mother who bore him scorned Boabdil of Spain.”
The ages have brought forth no kinder than he
His soul, like the broad, irresistible sea,
Was a blending of majesty, sweetness and grace,
Himself he forgot in his love for his race.
The truths which he uttered all time will applaud,
For his lips caught their flame from the altar of God.
Who can love in this life, and yet truly be wise?
Who can hate, and still see with unprejudiced eyes?
Our passions envelop our visions with mist;
Their whirlwinds transport us wherever they list.
To tenderly love and judge all hearts aright
Belongs to One only--the Father of Light,
Who sits on the throne with white radiance burning--
In whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning.
Fallen, fallen, is the storm-shattered oak of the South;
Fallen, fallen, is the strong, stately pine of the North;
One combatant loses, another one wins--
God have mercy on both and forgive them their sins.
And if a man conquer, or if he should lose,
’Tis naught if the Great Judge His mercy refuse.
And now, all unheeding earth’s praises or blame,
Thy two sons, Kentucky, repose in their fame.
The victor struck down while the jubilant cheer
Of honor and victory rang in his ear;
The vanquished, who suffered in silence his lot,
When the empire and glory he dreamed of were not.
New Orleans and Springfield have taken to rest
Two children, Kentucky, who nursed at thy breast.
Oh, Hardin and Christian, the homes of the great,
Forgetfulness veils, through the satire of fate,
While fame blazons far to the ends of the earth
The log huts which gave to your progeny birth.
The leaders of millions lie helpless and lone
As the soldiers who perished unnoticed, unknown.
Take them tenderly, dear Mother Earth, to thy breast,
To sleep in their “windowless palace of rest.”
I hear, as I stand, pressed with grief, by your graves,
A murmur, soft, strong, as of waves upon waves;
And memory’s harp, with its mystical strings,
Recalls, with the sweeping of infinite wings,
How precious that flag by our fathers unfurled--
White flower of charity, light of the world,
Float ever, proud banner of freedom sublime,
Till the judgment’s last trump sounds the ending of time.
The Christmas Eve bells were all ringing aloud,
When I dreamed that I saw on God’s bow in the cloud--
Its red like the rose dawn of Easter’s bright day;
Its blue like the love that abideth for aye;
Its gold the reflection of Paradise street;
Its white the effulgence of God’s mercy seat--
An Angel, calm, radiant, of presence august,
The great, golden balance of mercy adjust;
And millions of martyrs on battlefields slain,
Like the voice of the ocean, repeated the strain:
“O, States of the Union, all warfare shall cease;
Christ lifts o’er the nation the banner of peace,
As the prism-banded bow of the sky stanched the flood
Its earth-child, the flag, ends the deluge of blood.
War’s death-dealing cloud has forever rolled by,
And Peace, with her olive branch, smiles from the sky
Forever is silenced dissension’s wild roar;
The demon of hate rends the Union no more.”
And, lo! the bells answered from valley and hill:
“Peace, peace upon earth, to all men of good-will!”
THE HUNTER’S LAST RIDE.
[We rode for hours, the day following, in the track of the fire which
had swept the vast prairies as far as the eye could reach with utter
desolation, finding on several occasions the charred remains of animals
which had perished in the flames, and in one instance those of an
unfortunate hunter and his horse.--Brissot’s Western Travels, Vol. II.]
One autumn eve, when clouds unfurled
Swept down the west in bannered splendor,
And dying sunset bathed the world
In dolphin rainbows, mild and tender,
As if the sun in heaven afar
Lingered to greet the Evening Star,
Mingling his glance of clearer light
With the first radiance of the night,
And in the twilight, tarrying late,
Unwilling passed the western gate;
A hunter, wearied with the chase,
With his spent steed was slowly turning
Unto his far-off resting place,
Where his lone campfire light was burning--
For many a mile his steed had gone
O’er the wide prairie since the dawn.
The choice bits from the saddle hung,
The deer’s fat haunch, the buffalo’s tongue,
A simple but a sweet repast
To cheer his long and painful fast.
Slow paced the strong but weary steed
Of spacious chest and lightning speed,
A coal black of the Norman breed
Who ne’er had failed in time of need;
A creature full of strength and grace,
The noblest of his noble race
In toil, in battle, or the chase,
To hunt the bear on mountain side,
To chase the deer o’er prairie wide,
Or dash upon the ambuscade
Of wily Indian foe arrayed,
Or plunge through winter’s deepest snow,
Or breast the torrent’s swiftest flow.
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS
Fairview, Christian County, Kentucky]
To huntsman who has borne the toil,
Welcome the rest, and sweet the spoil;
So mused McGregor in his mind,
Leading his steed, when far behind,
Upon his startled ears there came
A rushing sound of distant flame--
A long, hoarse murmuring, sullen sound,
As when an earthquake shakes the ground.
Or the volcano’s voice of wrath
Warns all to leave the lava’s path.
A moment scarce he turned his head,
Too well he knew that sound of dread,
A moment--and McGregor saw
A sight to chill his soul with awe;
Behind him, hastening onward came
A long, red serpent line of flame,
Which, hissing, shot its tongues of light
Upward into the gathering night,
While midway ’twixt the earth and sky
Like a death-angel hovering by,
The smoke pall rolled in volumes dread,
The awful banner of the dead.
Quickly the burden was untied--
“Now, Saladin!” the huntsman cried,
“Now, Saladin, my gallant steed,
Attest thyself of noble breed,
For never yet thy matchless speed
Has served us in so sore a need,
And never in the fiercest chase
Hast thou e’er made so dread a race
As this wild fight for life or death
From yon fire-demon’s scorching breath.”
With nostrils spread and pointed ear,
And eye of fierceness, not of fear,
A moment brief, Saladin halted,
While to his seat his rider vaulted,
A moment snuffed the hot flame’s breath,
The stifling atmosphere of death;
A moment shook his streaming mane,
Then sped like lightning o’er the plain--
Fly! Not for one brief moment stay--
Fly, for thy life--away, away!
Stretch every muscle--sinew--fly!
To pause one moment is to die!
Weary and worn and spent with pain,
The struggling steed bounds o’er the plain
Each iron sinew vainly straining;
The fire upon his path is gaining;
The mad flame brighter and brighter glows,
The fatal circle smaller grows,
And hotter, fiercer, wilder, higher,
Leap the red demons of the fire.
The wild-eyed herd of buffaloes came
Impetuous plunging through the flame;
The antelopes in terror flying,
On fleetest limbs in vain relying;
The grouse fly round on whirring wings,
Then blindly seek their funeral fires;
The rattlesnake in anguish springs,
Pierced with its own fang--writhes--expires.
Long howls the wolf in dismal yell,
Such as might shake the caves of hell,
And many a wild, despairing cry
Of brutes in mortal agony
Falls thickly on McGregor’s ear,
In wailings ominous and drear.
’Tis on him--now at last,
Encircled by the fiery blast,
McGregor stands
With folded hands,
Firm as a martyr when he braves
The rack, the faggot, or the waves.
Exhausted, panting, foaming, gasping,
As though an iron band were clasping
His laboring chest, Saladin sank
With quivering side and streaming flank,
While his pale rider rent the air
With one sad groan of deep despair.
Red rose the fire-cave’s crackling arch,
Red rose the lurid walls around him,
The hungry flames his pulses parch,
And like a boa’s coils have bound him.
The buffalo
In dying throe,
With furious hoof the hunter paws;
The wolf with howl
And shriek and growl
In his red life’s blood bathes his jaws,
And rends his limbs apart,
And the expiring panther gnaws
His palpitating heart,
As if the long revenge they cherish
Were eased if their old foe might perish.
By the red moon’s ghostly light,
Struggling through the murky vail,
Dripping and dank with tears of night,
And chill mist casting shadows pale,
A voice of sorrow seems to wail,
A fitful, sobbing, plaintive tone,
Thrilling the pained air with its moan,
As if some Ariel unsleeping,
A death watch in the sky was keeping,
His harp of tears in pity sweeping:
“Rest, huntsman! from thy final chase,
Rest, Saladin! from thy last, long race,
Horseman and horse they both have gone;
Dying with all their armor on,
And slumbering in their last repose
Together, circled by their foes.”
THE OLD ROCK SPRING.
I know not what of sadness strange,
Comes over my soul to-day,
As I think of Time’s unceasing change,
And the friends he has snatched away;
For Time has turned those locks to gray,
Which were black as a raven’s wing,
Of the boys and girls who used to play,
Around the Old Rock Spring.
II.
Strange voices whisper from its depths,
The tones of a far church bell,
A sweet soprano’s melody
A parting friend’s farewell,
And phantoms flutter o’er its waves,
Pale brides with wreath and ring;
Then vanish like the bubbles that burst
On the face of the Old Rock Spring.
III.
Why die the beautiful and strong?
Why does the great oak fall?
Why fades the rose? These fleeting drops
Of water outlive them all:
Snow, rain or mist--around the world
They sweep on tireless wing,
Then fall like mother nature’s tears,
On the breast of the Old Rock Spring.
IV.
“How soon we are forgotten clean
When we are gone,” quoth Rip,
We perish and the stream of death
Engulfs the proudest ship;
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Hardin County, Kentucky]
Gone!--like a faded, broken plume
Dropped from an eagle’s wing,
Or pebble tossed by a sportive child,
In the depths of the Old Rock Spring.
V.
Some in silence and some in strife,
Friends, passed to the dim Unknown,
In manhood’s prime or the morn of life,
And I am left alone;
In vain do I essay a song,
On a harp with broken string,
While the hot tears trickle down my cheeks,
And fall in the Old Rock Spring.
A LYRIC FOR LILIAN.
I BRING THEE A GARLAND.
I bring thee a garland, O, violet-eyed maid
Its exquisite bloom in thy dark locks, I braid.
Love nourished each flower with a sigh and a tear,
And the sigh and the tear
Shall make them more dear,
And bring them new charms with each vanishing year.
I fill thee a goblet--’tis the heart’s purest wine,
Fresh foamed from the wine-press of St. Valentine,
The Rathskeller holds it which sits in the skies,
Whose roseate gleaming
Is bright in its beaming,
As the love-stars which shine in the heav’n of thine eyes.
I bring thee a song, and though humble the strain,
Love glows in each word of the burning refrain.
And oh, that its notes were as wild and as sweet
As the plashing of fountains
Or horns on the mountains,
Or songs which thy dear lips in warblings repeat.
THE STRAWBERRY BOWL
[A private and confidential Epistle to Sam Gaines, Editor of the
Hopkinsville New Era. Written for the Kentucky Press Association.]
God might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but
certainly he never did.--_Izaak Walton._
YE SALUTATION.
Bring forth the bowl within whose round
No heart-consuming draught is found,
But berries glittering with the dew
Which south winds o’er the gardens strew,
Sweet souvenirs of Paradise,
With cheeks of flame and breath of spice,
Shedding for one bright hour their glow
O’er life’s long Alpine waste of snow.
Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
“O that I owned a strawberry bed?”
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As he beheld, in cream inurned,
Great sugared berries, coral red?
If such there be, go, mark him well;
Of berries never let him smell,
Where gathers the church festival
Or rings the merry marriage-bell;
Mark him--as thou wouldst mark a steer
Or swine--by cropping off his ear.
A WALK IN THE GARDEN.
Wake, winds of May, yon emerald waves,
Crested with flowers, like sea-foam white,
Where sparkle in their trefoil caves
Long coral reefs of berries bright;
Shaped like a gentle maiden’s heart,
And bleeding as from Cupid’s dart,
The garden’s earliest offering,
Crown-jewels on the brow of Spring;
The berry Izaak Walton loved,
And Downer’s perfect taste approved;
Dispensing odors beatific,
Kentucky, Cumberland, Prolific,
Sharpless, and Monarch of the West,
And rare Charles Downing, last and best
Thy leaves, sweet trefoil! symbols three
Of Faith and Hope and Love shall be;
Fair type of Christian hope to all,
The vine sleeps low ’neath snowy pall;
The resurrection blooms in May,
With flowers and fruits in bright array,
And soaring larks in countless throng
Singing their joyful Easter Song,
And choir of mocking-birds on high
Gray-plumed sopranos of the sky
YE REVEL ON OLYMPUS.
Heap high the bowl! Ages ago
Before the birth of Faust or Hoe,
Before New Eras, Posts, and Suns
Gave specials, paragraphs and puns,
When only Mercury bore the news
Around the skies, in winged shoes,
Such genial revels held the gods,
Juno and Jove, and other frauds;
In heaven’s blue crystal urn each night
The stars, like berries, twinkled bright
And the Great Dipper skimmed the cream
Where poured the Milky Way its stream;
Deserted is the Olympic hill;
Heaven, stars, girls, strawberries, bless us still
YE INVOCATION.
Lord, we adore thy matchless bounty
And grace which, after giving birth
To sun and moon and stars and earth.
Gave us a land of rarest worth
And cast our lot in Christian County!
’Mid meek-eyed Jerseys, guileless mules,
Hopkinsville peaches, Public Schools,
Tobacco farms and gilt-edged bonds,
Wheat-fields and sheep and fishing-ponds,
Coveys of quail and double barrels,
Opossums, pheasants, doves and squirrels,
Damsels whose pamphanescent eyes,
If stars were quenched would light the skies;
And for to-night, to make us merry,
Provided Izaak Walton’s berry,
Ten inches round in lawful measure,
The garden’s glory, pride and treasure--
Nor Brenner’s brush nor Prentice’s pen
Could tell their worth--and so, Amen!
YE PICNIC.
Fill high the bowl! In blissful vision
We wander over fields Elysian,
Through ever-lengthening colonnades,
Of whispering elms and beechen shades;
Grave manhood’s cares are cast away,
And all are boys again, to-day
By one sure sign we know each other--
“The strawberry mark!--Our long lost brother!”
While all discourse on sylvan pipe
Of golden cream and berries ripe,
Or sound on Memory’s silver horn,
“I too was in Arcadia born!”
Sooth, ’tis a goodly sight to see
The revellers’ mutual ministry:
Stanton shall drive the Jersey cow,
Sam Gaines shall cause her milk to flow,
Logan shall hold her by the tail,
And Kelly bear the foaming pail;
Woodson shall crush the crystal ice,
Johnston hand spoons, all polished nice,
The Courier-Journal pass the berries,
With brisk champagne and golden sherries
And he shall serve his country best
Who stores most berries ’neath his vest.
By shady glen and waterfall
Our early loves will we recall,
Maids whom no time can ere eclipse,
With strawberry cheeks and sugared lips,
Phantoms which haunt boyhood’s dream,
Life’s fragrant, pure crême de la crême--
Delicious cream, which soured too soon,
And left us with an empty spoon!
YE PIONEER’S WILD STRAWBERRIES.
_Master of the Feast_:
“Father, thy locks are thin and gray,
Hast thou no legend for us pray?
Sing of the wild strawberry’s flame
When first Kentucky hunters came.”
_Old Pioneer_:
“’Tis nigh on ninety years, I guess,
By the road called the ‘Wilderness’--
Its story’s told by Captain Speed,
A little book you all should read--
We pioneered to Old Kaintuck,
Woods swarmed with turkey, bear and buck,
And by the ‘Rock Spring’ pitched our tents,
Them times wild strawberries was immense;
We didn’t pick, we scooped ’em up
By bushels, with a bowl or cup;
And when our teams came home at night,
The critters’ legs--they wuz a sight;
Seemed like they’d swum in bloody seas,
The red juice splashed above their knees.
We rode one May-day ’cross the prairie,
Me and my wife and little Mary;
Come to a holler in the ground,
Where lots of strawberries grew around,
And herds of trampling buffalo
Made the red juice in rivers flow
And fill a pool some five foot deep--
Excuse me, pardners; I must weep--
Thanks! My throat is a leetle dry--
God knows I can not tell a lie (Applause)
Our horses slipped and tumbled in,
We swum in juice up to the chin;
A half an hour we rose and sank
At last we scrambled to the bank;
Me and my wife soon came around--“
(Omnes.) “But little Mary?”
“She was drowned!” (Groans)
“Yes drowned! My stricken heart, be calm!
Hers is the crown, the harp, the palm--
Thanks, yes if you insist, a dram.
Blood flowed them days like strawberry juice
When Girty let his hell-hounds loose.
One day some Injin squaws allfired--“
_Master_:
“There, old man, rest. You must be tired.
Share in our feast, Homeric sire;
Thanks to the Muse for such a lyre!”
YE SILENT TOAST.
Fill high to-night the strawberry bowl
For friendship’s feast and flow of soul,
Quickly, ere Psyche’s brilliant flight
Shall vanish in the coming night.
Soon shall the parting word be spoken,
Soon friendship’s golden bowl be broken;
Clasp hands and salutation send
To each true-hearted, absent friend;
Nor in our circle be forgot
The masters who before us wrought,
Titans of memorable days:
Penn, with his sheathless falchion’s blaze,
Harney, the dauntless, true, and strong,
And Prentice of the golden song,
Triad whose still ascending track
Flings its long rays of splendor back.
YE SMALL BOY’S DOWNFALL.--A SAM.
What spectres from the strawberry bowl
Flit through the galleries of the soul,
With shrill voice crying, “Grieve his heart;
Come like shadows; so depart!”
Strawberry cake, preserves, and jam!
I see thy mild eyes moisten, Sam
Perchance at memory of the closet
Where once was stored the rare deposit,
High ranged upon the topmost shelf,
A skillful mother’s richest pelf.
I see thee steal, at dead of night,
With cat-like footsteps, soft and light;
I see thee open slow the door,
Peep in, and cautiously explore;
I see short Sam the boxes pile,
Humming Longfellow’s psalm the while:
“The heights to which the great have stept,
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept
Were toiling upward in the night.”
I hear a sudden scream--a crash--
I see a candle’s fitful flash--
Tableau--A boy with downfallen breeches,
Loud sobs and screams and stinging switches.
GOOD-NIGHT.
Heap high the bowl and pour the cream!
How bright the rosy berries gleam--
Red fruit and Jersey cream upon it,
The colors of my lady’s bonnet.
In hues like these the western sun
Descends to rest when day is done;
And round his flaming couch are rolled
Bright curtained clouds of red and gold.
Not greedily the fruit devour;
Prolong the raptures of the hour;
Stain not with juice your linen fair,
And of the “strawberry nose” beware.
Think of the lovely--the sublime--
Niagara--California’s clime;
The Mammoth Cave--Alaska’s shore,
Where glaciers plunge and billows roar;
Balance each berry in your spoon,
Sink back in a delicious swoon,
And murmur in a Romeo’s sigh:
“I have seen Naples--let me die!”
O, vital sparks of heavenly flame!
Whate’er your lineage, land or name,
Pink buds which Mother Nature clips
From infant cherubs’ finger tips,
Or earth-born babies’ little toes,
Tinted like sea-shell or the rose,
Or notes from songs of home and love,
Which floating to the skies above
Are crystallized in heaven’s pure air
And turn to crimson berries there--
Ambrosial fruit of heavenly birth,
By Ariel’s fingers dropped on earth--
Come o’er me and possess my soul,
Sweet spirit of the Strawberry Bowl!
For all the world’s a strawberry bowl,
Life the red fruit which fills the brim,
The daily papers spoon the whole,
And women are the sugar and cream.
Melrose Garden, May, 1880.
HYMN.
[Sung at the Dedication of the Jefferson Davis Memorial Church,
Fairview, Kentucky, November 21, 1886.]
Inscription on a marble tablet in the wall of the church:
Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was born June 3, 1808, on the site
of this church. He made a gift of the lot March 10, 1886, to the
Bethel Baptist Church, as a thank-offering to the Lord.
Jesus, to thy great name we raise
A house of penitence and praise,
A beacon for the wanderers’ bark,
To guide it home through storm and dark.
Here shall ambition’s fever cease,
Sin’s wretched slaves find sweet release,
And washed in Jordan’s cleansing wave
Rise from the Christian’s mystic grave.
Hence bid our earth-born cares depart,
Heal every aching, bleeding heart,
Dispel the clouds of doubt and dread
And feed us with thy living Bread.
Father, Redeemer, Guide and Friend,
Go with us to our Journey’s end,
Until we hail in Paradise
The nobler Bethel of the skies.
[Illustration: GENERAL JOHN H. MORGAN, C. S. A.]
JOHN MORGAN AND HIS MEN.
DEDICATED TO MRS. BASIL DUKE.
Wild disorder, uproar, panic,
Civil war with deeds Satanic
Break Kentucky’s dream--Neutrality--
Everywhere war’s stern reality
Drum and fife and bugle-playing--
Terrors breeding; fears allaying--
For various hopes and fears are rife
In the wild rage of civil strife;
When son and sire in contest stand,
Each loyal to his native land,
Obeying many-voiced command;
One loyal to the stripes and stars--
One faithful to the stars and bars!
There curls the smoke of burning train!
There leaguered stockades fight in vain--
War glows on hill and glen.
Fat cattle to the camp are led,
The farmer mourns his thoroughbred.
They quickly came, as quickly fled;
Swift as an Indian arrow sped--
The Southron’s joy, the Federal’s dread--
John Morgan and his men?
Loved and obeyed by his command,
With woman’s heart and lion’s hand--
The Sydney of the Southern land
John Harper’s thoroughbreds forsake
The turf of Woodford’s old cane-brake;
And walnut, oak and hackberry grove,
To track the bridle paths that rove
High o’er the caves of Edmonson--
The treeless fields without a sun!
And bear the bold Rough Riders on
Where trains are seized and treasures won.
Dark Echo River’s weeping wave
Shall mourn beneath the warrior’s grave,
The dauntless partisan who rode
Right on through storm and snow and flood.
The foe exclaims, “He’s here!” “He’s there!”
Vanished like spectres in the air,
Trackless, save for the empty stall,
Or smoke wreath rising like a pall
Over the commissary’s store,
Where hungry comrades loud deplore
The thunderbolt of Morgan’s raid--
Chief of th’ Invisible Brigade,
Vanished, like morning rainbow, spun
By golden distaff of the sun.
There is bustle and commotion to-night with “Ellen N,”
Fair Ellen, maid of iron stays, beloved of many men,
From a thousand fertile valleys, from many a teeming glen,
She bears great stores on laboring trains to Thomas and his men
The blue-coats down at Nashville have come to do or die,
To battle for the old flag beneath the Southern sky,
And to Ellen’s welcome ministry--they look most wistfully,
She bears souvenirs and messages in her capacious trains,
The maidens of the great Northwest send greetings to their swains,
She has hard-tack, and tobacco, and bacon in her store,
She has cod-fish and dried beef and gingerbread galore,
From Keystone, Empire State, from Indiana’s plains
Ellen speeds them all along in her wide flowing trains,
Bibles and tracts and song-books, and sweet messages from home,
And prayer-books from every church from Geneva to Rome,
From many a Western Valley, from many a quiet glen,
Comes goodly cheer from the kindly hands of buxom Ellen N.
There is trouble on your road to-night, O dauntless Ellen N!
There is panic, there is hurry--’tis John Morgan and his men,
There are bridges burned--the track’s ripped up--some one has
cut the wire
And commissary stores go up by thousands in the fire,
A sudden charge at midnight, the long train is in ashes,
The magazine explodes with deafening roar and crashes,
Millions go up like tinder in all-consuming flame,
And Morgan and his men ride off, as quickly as they came.
Nashville and Chattanooga rue,
Divided rations cut in two.
The horseman scathless burned and fled
Their foes went supperless to bed.
They might as well have fought the air
They charged--but Morgan was not there.
His baffled foe, always too slow
To harass or inflict a blow,
Muttered, “For sure the man’s a wizard,
One might as well strike at a blizzard,”
He’s here--he’s gone again--he’s there!
Like exhalation of the air
Waving its strange, uncanny light
O’er grave or dismal swamp at night.
One trait his hottest foe confessed,
“A hero’s heart beats in his breast,
He never strikes a foe when down,
Nor woman ever saw him frown.”
The mean poltroon of later days
Who dons a mask in devious ways,
Black mask and heart, in liver white,
Fleet as a hare in coward flight
And worthy of the hangman’s loop
Ne’er found his like in Morgan’s troop.
They lashed no helpless foeman’s back,
No woman felt his brute attack.
He burned no roof o’er matron’s head,
While sleeping with her babes in bed,
Nor scourged with thorns till shoulders bled.
No town was burned in bandit flame
Till the poltroon Night-riders came,
With bloody threats in unsigned letters
And switches to alarm their betters;
An anarchist of basest soul,
The gallows-tree his fitting goal
Without a hope of reformation
He forces this dilemma on the nation,
Expatriation or Extermination.
Bred in a home of luxury,
The very flower of courtesy,
The pet of good life’s merry whirl,
Kindly and handsome as a girl,
The dread of many a Federal band,
The darling of the Southern land,
Rode Morgan like a Centaur’s self,
But not for vulgar greed or pelf,
Chivalrous men of force and pride,
Sought brave adventures at his side,
How shrewd he struck, how hard his blow
The bravest Federal well might know,
Even while their needed stores were brough
Destruction came as quick as thought.
Victim of Woman’s treachery,
He perished not as the brave should die,
Decoyed to death, unarmed he died.
No friend nor weapon by his side,
Without resistance or a blow,
His death-doom came from heartless foe,
And strong men of heroic heart
Who stooped not to the assassin’s art
Dropped at the news an honest tear
When Morgan after bright career
Unscathed by ball or battle-spear,
Rested at last upon his bier,
And unattended and unshriven
The warrior’s soul went up to Heaven.
No base Night-riders he bequeathed,
When peace her joyful olives wreathed.
Nor placed a mean banditti stamp
Upon the soldiers of his camp.
When truce was called by Grant and Lee
’Neath Appomattox apple tree,
And ’mid the late conflicting bands
Rejoicing Blue and Gray shook hands,
And maidens by no fear oppressed
Clasped warrior lovers to their breast,
When Richmond’s hills echoed no more,
The black-lipped cannon’s horrid roar,
A scene was witnessed there sublime,
A wonder in the halls of Time,
Each soldier to his work returned,
In whom the love of country burned
Some to their former plow and spade,
Some to their shops or honest trade;
Trained by the clinic of the camp
Doctors relit the student’s lamp.
Some to the courts, or in the States’
Grand forum joined the high debates,
Others who learned in the late strife
The vanity of mortal life,
Proclaimed the Gospel’s “Old, old Story”
Their mothers taught long passed to glory,
Leading their audience to Christ
Whose balm for every ill sufficed.
Watering their flocks at Jordan’s springs,
Whose doves bore healing in their wings
Some of the band of Morgan’s fighters,
Swapped swords for pens of ready writers,
And Captains spruce and bearded Colonels
Ruled Times, Gazettes, and Courier-Journals
Some tossed the blazing torch aside,
And ruled the tracks they once destroyed,
Building steel railways far and near;
And Duke who rode with Morgan’s men,
Turns suitor now to “Ellen N.”
Each man who followed Morgan’s fame
Inspired by his heroic name,
His living monument became.
In Gotham’s mighty mart of trade,
Which all of worth and brain invites
The men of Morgan’s cavalcade
Conspicuous walk as shining lights
As walked the men of Washington
When Revolution’s war was done.
In posts of honor now they labor
As when equipped with gun and sabre,
And men exclaim on every hand
“These rode in Morgan’s great Command.
Nor lapse of years shall e’er dispel
The love with which they fondly dwell
On comrades who in battle fell,
Who braved Stone River’s fiery scath,
Or forward pressed on bloody path
Of Shiloh’s field or Nashville’s wrath.
THE WHIPPOORWILL.
Evening mists hang o’er the rill,
Twilight’s lucent dews are falling;
From the copse on yonder hill
The lone whippoorwill is calling;
Soon as glow the Orient fires
Of the new moon’s shining crescent
With a throat that never tires
Cries the bird with song incessant,
“Whippoorwill!”
Piping from its tuneful bill,
“Whippoorwill!”
Does that quick and plaintive cry
Burst from bosom sorrow-laden,
Like the star-told agony
Of a wretched, love-lorn maiden?
Or contemning, like a sage,
Mirthful strains attuned to folly,
Tames it thus the minstrel’s rage
With a song so melancholy?
“Whippoorwill!”
Music soothes our sorrows still,
“Whippoorwill!”
Hearts bereft of hope and light
By the bolt of sorrow riven,
’Neath the friendly vail of night
Tell their griefs to listening heaven;
Like the lonely whippoorwill,
Flying far from daylight’s din,
To some thick and starless shade
Like that which fills the soul within.
“Whippoorwill!”
Night befriends the mourner still
“Whippoorwill!”
Like a hermit in his cell,
Where a holy vow has bound him,
Long the night bird’s vesper bell
Wakes the cloistered shades around him
Sad as love beside the tomb
Of its earliest, deepest sorrow
Wails the bird till twilight’s gloom
Fades away in dawning morrow--
“Whippoorwill!”
And its cry is never still--
“Whippoorwill!”
THE NEW SOUTH.
DEDICATED TO R. W. KNOTT, EDITOR OF THE LOUISVILLE EVENING POST
Sweet were my dreams along thy streams,
Old South, in bygone days,
Till war’s red cloud, ’mid thunders loud,
Consumed them in its blaze:
Sewanee’s old plantation scenes,
Where wild bees filled the comb;
The banjo and the moonlight dance
Of old Kentucky Home.
The New South wakes! the New South shakes
The dew-drops from her mane,
For idle grief brings no relief,
The past comes not again;
To manly hearts and patient souls
Heaven sanctifies each loss;
Two angels, Toil and Patience, bear
To Heaven the Southern Cross.
New South! New South! unseal thy mouth,
Thy golden age is come--
Invention’s soaring harmony
And labor’s busy hum.
The Old South dies; with beaming eyes
The New South hastens in;
So boyhood’s toys are cast aside
When manhood’s deeds begin.
A FEVER DREAM.
Ægri somnia vanæ
Fingentur species.--_Horace._
Many a league have I traversed to-night,
Many a league in painful flight,
For demons pressed on my bleeding track
And the air with their sounding wings was black
Often, often, they came so near
I felt their hot breath on my ear,
And mad with terror, I bounded on
Till the cock crew out at the glimmering dawn.
Over the rocks, through trackless woods,
O’er bottomless chasms and raging floods,
Through measureless wastes of dreary swamps,
Lit by the fireflies’ fitful lamps,
Where the moccasin coils in scaly spires
’Mong the water-lilies and tangled briars;
Where the spotted toad and the water newt
Lurk in the weeds of the poisonous fen,
And the blue-heron utters its plaintive cry,
And the owl hoots out to the starless sky,
And the foul miasma’s putrid breath
Is filling the air with the taint of death--
Under the Upas tree’s fatal shade
Where death his carnival has made;
Where ghastly corpses taint the day
And the vulture fears to claim his prey;
In the stifling air of the Grotto del Cane
Where the night dews fall like blustering rain--
I fled, nor looked one moment back,
For the ghosts were yelling on my track.
Ah! not the unimprisoned shadows,
Which dwell in the Elysian meadows,
Released from pain, and want, and care,
And doubt and sorrow and despair;
Nor such as timid wanderers meet,
When the moon is struggling under a cloud,
With bony fingers and skeleton feet,
And grinning skulls and ghastly shroud,
But the nameless troop which lawless thought
To the poet’s wildest dream has brought,
The brood which dark remorse might view
When justice comes to claim her due;
Strange somethings of more frightful mien
Than mortal eye has ever seen.
O! sacred sleep, once more descend,
And seal these throbbing, aching eyes,
Thou art the sufferer’s truest friend,
And bringest balm from Paradise,
Distilled from groves which never cast
Their leaves from worm, or winter’s blast.
Hush!--’Twas as if some murmured strain,
Well known in childhood’s happy hours,
Came wafted o’er a desolate plain,
On winds impregnated with flowers,
And then they vanish--like the lambent light
That flashes through a tempest cloud at night
Lo! Dreamland’s terrible array,
Advances still--Away, away!--
Down through the dark Cimmerian glen
Stained with the blood of murdered men,
Far from the beams of the friendly sun
When “deeds without a name” are done,
And the night-hags hold their dance of death
Around the cauldron of Macbeth;
Where the sire fell by the hand of the son--
A stab, a groan, and the crime was done;
Where the duelist sped the ball of death,
And the mother stifled the infant’s breath,
Under yon gloomy cypress’ shade
By the lonely grave of the beautiful maid,
Murdered by him who had betrayed,
Where her spectre glides at dead of night
With clots of gore on her bosom white;
Where on a gibbet the murderer swings
Waving his fleshless arms like wings--
I fled, nor quaked at the hideous sight,
For life and death were in my flight.
Across the burning desert’s waste
Where the path by skeletons is traced,
And the bones of the caravan welter and bleach
As thick as the shells on the ocean’s beach,
Swift as the winged winds I fly,
And my swollen lips are all cracked and dry,
And I plead in vain to the rainless sky,
While my bloodshot eyes from their sockets burst
In the torrid agony of thirst;
But the demons that follow laugh and yell
As they breathe the native blasts of hell.
The simoon’s blast, Oh joy! is past,
And the ocean beach is reached at last!
A storm is out and the wild winds mock
The ship as she drives on a hidden rock,
And the sea-gull screams its piercing dirge
As the dead drift in on the landward surge.
No pause! but quick as thought I lave
My burning limbs in the boiling wave,
Till I reach a cliff in my watery flight
And breathless scale its dizzy height.
The ocean’s roar comes faint and weak
As I cling to the side of the slippery peak,
Watching the wrath of the fearful night
By the fitful flash of tempest’s light.
Lo! how the eyes of the demons glow
As they cleave the boiling waves below!
Yelling at me, their helpless prey
As bloodhounds yell when the stag’s at bay!
They climb! they mount! the demons all,
And the beetling cliff begins to fall--
And I wake with a groan and a smothered scream
To find it all a fever dream
[Illustration: MAJOR E. B. BASSETT
Third Infantry, K. S. G.]
MAJOR BASSETT’S CHASE.
_Text_--“O that they were wise, that they understood this, that
they would consider their latter end!
How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to
flight?
--Deuteronomy XXXII, 29, 30
Glenraven’s Night Riders, five hundred strong,
Had finished their riot of outrage and wrong,
They had burned Latham’s warehouse, robbed Italy’s King
(What defense in the courts will the criminals bring?
Who will dare to defend base ingratitude’s sting?);
They have scourged a Kentuckian’s back like a slave,
’Twas the brute deed of cowards, not the just or the brave,[A]
McCool on his shoulders plied an overseer’s lashes
By the light of two warehouses sinking in ashes.
They have dragged helpless maidens from innocent bed,
They have shot through the bedrooms of widows--with lead
These black-handed anarchists of murder and arson
Fired four volleys at a silver haired Methodist parson,
And yelled in derision as their shots rang on air,
“Denounce us again, Sir Priest--if you dare!
Neither for you, nor your Church, nor your God do we care!
They have done all that arson and force could achieve,
And quaking like cowards the outlaws take leave,
Unlike valiant soldiers after manly affray
But like thieves from a hen-roost sneak quickly away.
Out spoke Major Bassett: “The dogs had their day,
And shooting’s a game at which two parties can play,
They surprised us; the cowards have all skulked away.
We’ll follow!” cried Bassett, and off with his mount
Pursued--ten brave men and true were his count.
There was clatter of hoofs down the old Cadiz road,
’Twas a clean pair of heels the Glenravenites showed.
Alas, for the pluck of these minions of night,
Black of mask and of heart, but their livers are white.
“Ride fast!” shrieked the Night Riders’ chief, looking back,
“A thousand giants from Hopkinsville press on our track!
The Mayor has mustered all Company D,
In humanity’s name can such outrages be?
Now is your time to do Latham up brown
And fire him and his followers out of the town!
Damn his turnpikes, on which thirty thousand he spent!
Damn the churches he aided--Hotel, Monument--
(How grandly it towers o’er Confederate graves--
Shall the sons of such heroes be Night Riders’ slaves?)
Damn all such aristocrats, they shall know by the powers,
That after they’ve made it their money is ours!”
Hoboes, loafers and robbers, ride for your lives,
On your crimes the Raven of Glen Raven thrives,
And its horrible croak strikes fear to the land
When it calls to the raid the Night Riders’ band.
But who would have thought that the dogs would shoot back
Real Krag-Jorgensen bullets? Alas and alack!
His words were cut short by a volley of lead--
There were loud shrieks of pain, in all quarters they fled;
The shots of the bandits flew wide of their mark,
As they galloped in terror away in the dark.
Nor halted the maskers in their blood-sprinkled path
To look back on three comrades writhing in death.
Then Bassett assembled his God-fearing squad
And bowing their heads devoutly thanked God
That when Christian men band to battle for Right
One Christian can put a thousand outlaws to flight.
Honest men will always walk off with the cake,
And that is where Moses made no mistake;
And to the Last Judgment all honest men
Will bow to the Decalogue traced by his pen;
For God Himself writes in Mount Sinai’s brief
By Moses His penman, Humanity’s chief,
The Night Rider is coward, assassin, and thief.
Hold fast to Moses! A squad of eleven
Who join hands with Truth, are posted for Heaven,
And the outlaws who ’gainst truth and honor rebel
Must go to their place with the outlaws in Hell.
So we’ll all shout huzza for Bassett and band,
Till they banish the Night Riders out of the land.
Forever shall God’s honest ministers preach
Paul’s heaven-taught doctrine of order and law,
As bold as John Baptist they shall stand in the breach
To battle for Truth and keep villains in awe.
THE TEN BROTHERS.
[On the last day of the Christian County Fair, many years since,
the ten sons of Mrs. Rebecca Brown, all excellent horsemen, entered
the amphitheater mounted on iron-gray horses. After a fine exercise
of horsemanship by the brothers the judges presented their aged
mother with a silver cup, amid the loud applause of the vast crowd
of spectators.]
’Tis the last afternoon of the old County Fair
The amphitheatre’s thronged for a spectacle rare.
Ten sons of one mother contend for the prize
And a whirlwind of cheering ascends to the skies
’Tis surely a pity that horses and sheep,
Mules, poultry and swine the blue ribbon should keep,
O’er a highly bred strain of true women and men--
If degenerate men rule the State, pray what then?