Shall the spring dawn, and she still clad in smiles And with unscathed brow,

Rest on the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles, As fair and free as now?

We know not; in the temple of the Fates
God has inscribed his doom;

And all untroubled in her faith, she waits
Her triumph or her tomb.

Charleston.*

BY PAUL H. HAYNE.

I.

CALMLY beside her Tropic strand
An Empress, brave and loyal,
I see the watchful city stand
With aspect sternly royal ;—
She knows her mortal Foe draws near,
Strong-armed by subtlest science,
Yet deep, majestical, and clear,
Rings out her grand defiance:-

Oh! glorious is thy noble face,
Lit up by proud emotion,
And unsurpassed thy stately grace,
My warrior Queen of Ocean!

II.

First from thy lips the summons came,
Which roused our South to action,

* Never used by any collector of war poems.

And with the quenchless force of flame Consumed the demon-Faction;

First, like a rush of mighty wind,

That rends great waves asunder,

Thy prescient warning struck the blind,
And woke the deaf with thunder;
They saw as with a Prophet's gaze
The awful doom before them,
And heard with horror and amaze,
The tempest surging o'er them,

III.

Wilt THOU, whose virgin Banner rose,
A morning star of splendor,
Quail when the war-tornado blows,
And yield in base surrender?
Wilt THOU, upon whose loving heart
Our noblest chiefs are sleeping,
Give up the Patriot's place of rest
To worse than Vandal keeping?
No! while a life-pulse throbs for fame,
Thy sons will gather 'round thee,
Welcome, the shot, the steel, the flame,
If Honor's hand hath crowned thee!

IV.

Then, fold about thy beauteous form The imperial robe thou wearest, And front with royal port the storm Thy Foe would dream thou fearest; If strength, and will, and courage fail To cope with brutal numbers,

And thou must bow thee, mute and pale,
Where the last hero slumbers-

Lift the red torch, and light the fire
Amid those corpses gory,

And on thy self-made funeral pyre
Pass from the world to glory!

SONS of the South! from hill and dale,
From mountain-top and lowly vale,
Arouse ye now! 'tis Freedom's wail-

To arms! to arms! she cries.

Strike! for Freedom in the dust;
Strike! to crush proud Mammon's lust;

Strike! remembering God is just!

Thus a freeman dies.

Southrons! who with Beauregard,
Day and night, keep watch and ward—
Southrons! whom the angels guard,

Strike for Liberty!

Smite the motley hireling throng;
Smite! as Heaven smites the wrong;

Smite! they fly before the strong

In God and Liberty!

*Written about the time of the first battle of Manassas.

By your hearthstones, by your dead,
By all the fields where patriots bled,
A freeman's home or gory bed

Let the alternate be.

Weeping wives and mothers here,
Sisters, daughters, dear ones near-
Seas of blood for every tear,

God and Liberty!

Louder swells the battle-cry,

Flaming sword and flashing eye

Light the field where freemen die!

Death or Liberty!

Backward roll your poisonous waves,

Infidel and ruffian slaves!

'Tis Heaven's own wrath your blindness braves,

God and Liberty!

Hymn to the Dawn.

BY A. J. REQUIER.

(Published shortly after the last of the series of Confederate successes, which commenced at Olustee and ended with Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, and from which the public mind then drew the most hopeful auguries, respecting an early termination of the war and the future of the South.)

FROM an ominous rift in the pitiless sky

That has darkened our desolate land,
Springs a luminous rill of auriferous dye
Gushing out of a mystical hand;

Upon valleys of carnage and mountains of fire-
On the heaps of the holily slain---

It descends with the rush of a resonant lyre,
And the gleam of a magical rain.

It unveils from the depths of its fountains of blue,
Such a blaze of bewildering light

As the Legends of Araby never yet drew
From the stars of traditional light :-

Purple acres of grape and savannahs of snow,

Full of streams that enrichingly run

Through the fairest of blooms which the tropics be

stow

On the flowering isles of the Sun.

Noble structures of Commerce and niches of Art,
Stately temples and towers between,

Fretted domes soaring up from the dust of the mart,
Where the wonders of Science are seen;
Fluted pillars and urns to the primitive Past,

And its young representative scions,

And bronzes heroic, colossally vast

As the winged Assyrian Lions.

Oh, I see the long stretch of thy sorrowing years, Clime of cedars! transformed in my sight

From the comfortless drops of thine anguishing tears
Into dews of maternal delight:

Royal anthems resounding on uttermost seas—
Sceptred barges that bridally toss,

With their white-waving pennons unfurled to the breeze

In the blush of a tremulous Cross!

Green turf of my childhood! engirded by strife

With a glory the grandest of old,