Who shall blame the social order
Which gave us men as great as these?
Who condemn the soil of t' forest
Which bring forth gigantic trees?
Who presume to doubt that Providence
Shapes out our destinies?
Fore-ordained, and long maturing,
Came the famous men of old:
In the dark mines deep were driven
Down the shafts to reach the gold,
And the story is far longer
Than the histories have told.
From Bacon down to Washington
The generations passed,
Great events and moving causes
Were in serried order massed:
Berkeley well was first confronted,
Better George the King at last!
From the time of that stern ruler
To our own familiar days
Long the pathway we have trodden,
Hard, and devious were its ways
Till at last there came the second
Mightier Revolution's blaze:
Till at last there broke the tempest
Like a cyclone on the sea,
When the lightnings blazed and dazzled
And the thunders were set free--
And riding on that whirlwind came
Majestic, Robert Lee!
Who--again I ask the question--
Who may challenge in debate,
With any show of truthfulness,
Our former social state
Which brought forth more than heroes
In their lives supremely great?
Not Peter, the wild Crusader,
When bent upon his knee,
Not Arthur and his belted knights,
In the Poet's Song, could be
More earnest than those Southern men
Who followed Robert Lee.
They thought that they were right and this
Was hammered into those
Who held that crest all drenched in blood
Where the "Bloody Angle" rose.
As for all else? It passes by
As the idle wind that blows.