I have seen from the smoking village,
Our mothers and daughters fly,
I've seen where the little children,
Sank down in the furrows to die.

On the banks of the battle-stained river,
I stood as the moonlight shone,
And it glared on the face of my brother,
As the sad wave swept him on.

Where my home was glad, are ashes,
And horror and shame had been there,

For I found on the fallen linten,

This tress of my wife's torn hair.

They are turning the slave upon us,

And with more than the fiend's worst art, Have uncovered the fires of the savage,

That slept in his untaught heart.

The ties to our hearts that bound him,
They have rent with curses away,
And madden him in their madness,
To be almost as brutal as they.

With halter and torch and Bible,

And hymns to the sound of the drum,

They preach the gospel of murder,

And pray for lust's kingdom to come.

To saddle! my brothers! to saddle!
Look up to the rising sun,

And ask of the God who shines there,

Whether deeds like these shall be done.

Whither the vandal cometh,

Press home to his heart with your steel;
And where'er at his bosom ye cannot,
Like the serpent, go strike at his heel.

Through thicket and wood go hunt him,
Creep up to his camp-fire side,
And let ten of his corpses blacken,
Where one of our brothers hath died.

In his fainting, foot-sore marches,
In his flight from the stricken fray,
In the snare of the lonely ambush,
The debts that we owe him, pay.

In God's hands alone is vengeance,
But he strikes with the hands of men;
And his blight would wither our manhood,
If we smote not the smiter again.

By the graves where our fathers slumber,
By the shrines where our mothers prayed,
By our homes and hopes of freedom,
Let every man swear by his blade,

That he will not sheathe nor stay it,
Till from point to hilt it glow
With the flush of Almighty justice,
In the blood of the cruel foe."

They swore; and the answering sunlight
Leapt from their lifted swords,

And the hate in their hearts made echo,
To the wrath of their burning words.

CHATTANOOGA REBEL.

4

Coercion.

A POEM FOR THEN AND NOW.

BY JOHN R. THOMPSON, VIRGINIA.

WHO talks of coercion? who dares to deny
A resolute people the right to be free?
Let him blot out forever one star from the sky,
Or curb with his fetter one wave of the sea!

Who prates of Coercion? can love be restored

To bosoms where only resentment may dwell? Can peace upon earth be proclaimed by the sword, Or good will among men be established by shell?

Shame! shame!-that the statesman and trickster forsooth,

Should have for a crisis no other resource Beneath the fair day-spring of light and of truth, Than the old brutum fulmen of tyranny,-force!

From the holes where fraud, falsehood, and hate slink

away;

From the crypt in which error lies buried in chains! This foul apparition stalks forth to the day,

And would ravage the land which his presence pro

fanes.

Could you conquer us, Men of the North-could you

bring

Desolation and death on our homes as a flood

Can you hope the pure lily, Affection, will spring
From ashes all reeking and sodden with blood?

Could you bind us as villeins and serfs-know ye not
What fierce, sullen hatred lurks under the scar?
How loyal to Hapsburg is Venice, I wot,

How dearly the Pole loves his father, the Czar!

But 'twere well to remember this land of the sun
Is a Nutrix leonum, and suckles a race
Strong armed, lion-hearted, and banded as one
Who brook not oppression and know not disgrace.

And well may the schemers in office beware
The swift retribution that waits upon crime,
When the lion, RESISTANCE, shall leap from his lair,
With a fury that renders his vengeance sublime.

Once, Men of the North, we were brothers, and still, Though brothers no more, we would gladly be friends; Nor join in a conflict accursed, that must fill

With ruin the country on which it descends.

But, if smitten with blindness, and mad with the rage
The gods gave to all whom they wished to destroy,
You would act a new Iliad, to darken the age
With horrors beyond what is told us of Troy-

If, deaf as the adder itself to the cries,

When Wisdom, Humanity, Justice implore, You would have our proud eagle to feed on the eyes Of those who have taught him so grandly to soar

If there be to your malice no limit imposed,
And you purpose hereafter to rule with the rod,

The men upon whom you already have closed
Our goodly domain and the temples of God:

To the breeze then your banner dishonored unfold,
And, at once, let the tocsin be sounded afar;
We greet you, as greeted the Swiss, Charles the Bold--
With a farewell to peace, and a welcome to war!

For the courage that clings to our soil, ever bright,
Shall catch inspiration from turf and from tide;
Our sons unappalled shall go forth to the fight,

With the smile of the fair and pure kiss of the bride;

And the bugle its echoes shall send through the past,
In the trenches of Yorktown, to waken the slain;
While the sod of King's Mountain shall heave at the
blast,

And give up its heroes to glory again.

The Southern Cross.

BY ST. GEORGE TUCKER, VIRGINIA.

Он, say, can you see through the gloom and the storm, More bright for the darkness, that pure constellation? Like the symbol of love and redemption its form, As it points to the haven of hope for the nation. How radiant each star, as the beacon afar, Giving promise of peace or assurance of war! "Tis the Cross of the South, which shall ever remain, To light us to freedom and glory again!