The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers Volume Ii Part 12

BY MARTIN FARQUHAR TUP----R.

I hold it good--as who shall hold it bad?

To lave Columbia in the boiling tears I shed for Freedom when my soul is sad, And having shed proceed to shed again: For _human sadness sad to all appears_, And tears men sometimes shed are shed by men.

The normal nation lives until it dies, As men may die when they have ceased to live; But when abnormal, by a foe's surprise, It may not reach its first-appointed goal; For _what we have not is not ours to give_, And if we miss it all we miss the whole.

Columbia, young, a giant baby born, Aimed at a manhood ere the child had been, And slipping downward in a strut forlorn, Learns, to its sorrow, what 'tis good to know, That _babes who walk too soon, too soon begin To walk_ in this dark vale of life below.

When first the State of Charleston did secede, And Morrill's tariff was declared repealed, The soul of Freedom everywhere did bleed For that which, having seen, it sadly saw; So true it is, _death-wounds are never healed_, And law defied is not unquestioned law.

The mother-poet, England, sadly viewed The strife unnatural across the wave, And with maternal tenderness renewed Her sweet a.s.surances of neutral love; _A mother's love may not its offspring save; But mother's love is still a mother's love._

Learn thou, Columbia, in thine agony, That England loves thee, with a love as deep As my "Proverbial Philosophy"

Has won for me from her approving breast; _The love that never slumbers cannot sleep_, And all for highest good is for the best.

Thy Freedom fattens on the work of slaves, Her Grace of Sutherland informeth me; And all thy South Amboy is full of graves, Where tortured bondmen s.n.a.t.c.h a dread repose; Learn, then, the _race enslaved is never free_, And in thy woes incurred, behold thy woes.

Thy pride is humbled, humbled is thy pride, And now misfortunes come upon thee, thick With dark reproaches for the right defied, And cloud thy banner in a dim eclipse; _Sic transit gloria gloria transic sic_, The mouth that speaketh useth its own lips.

Thus speeds the world, and thus our planet speeds; What is, must be; and what can't be, is not; Our acts unwise are not our wisest deeds, And what we do is what ourselves have done; _Mistakes remembered are not faults forgot_, And we must wait for day to see the sun.

I looked up at Smith-Brown, my boy, and says I:

"What does he mean by the 'State of Charleston,' my fat friend?"

"Why," says he, "that's a poetic license, or American geography diluted by the Atlantic. And here we have something by the gifted hauthor of 'Locksley Hall,' which it is somewhat in that vein:

AMERICA.

BY ALFRED TEN----N.

Westward, westward flies the eagle, westward with the setting sun, To an eyrie growing golden in a morning just begun; Where the world is new in promise of a virgin nation's love.

And the grand results of ages germs of n.o.bler ages prove;

Where a prophecy of greatness runs through all the soul of youth, And the miracle of Freedom blesses in a living truth; Where the centuries unnumbered narrow to a single night, And their trophies are but planets wheeling round a central light.

Where the headlands breast the Ocean sweeping round creation's East, And the prairies roll in blossoms to the Ocean of the West; Where the voices of the seas are blended o'er a nation's birth, In the harmony of Nature's hymn to Liberty on earth.

Land of Promise! Revelation of a loyalty that springs From a grander depth of purple than the heritage of kings-- From the inner purple cherished at the thrones of lives sublime, Cast in glorious consecration 'neath the plough of Father Time--

Home of Freedom, hope of millions born and slain and yet to be, Shall the spirit of the bondless, caught from heaven, fail in thee?

Shall the watching world behold thee falling from thy starry height?

Like a meteor, in thine ending leaving only darker night?

Oh! my kinsmen, Oh! my brothers--fellow-heirs of Saxon hearts, Lo the Eagle quits his eyrie swifter than a swallow darts, And the lurid flame of battle burns within his angry eye, Glowing like a living ember cast in vengeance from the sky.

At thy hearth a foe has risen, fiercer yet to burn and kill, That he was thy chosen brother--friend no more, but brother still; For the bitter tide of hatred deeper runs and fiercer grows, As the pleading voice of Nature addeth self-reproach to blows.

Strike! and in the ghastly horrors of a fratricidal war, Learn the folly of your wanderings from the guiding Northern Star; What were all your gains and glories, to creation's fatal loss When ye crucified your Freedom on the cruel Southern Cross?

Oh! my brothers narrow-sighted--Oh! my brothers slow to hear What the phantoms of the fallen ever whisper in the ear; G.o.d is just, and from the ruins of the temple rent in twain Rises up the invocation of a warning breathed in vain.

All thy pillars reel around thee from the fury of the blow, And the fires upon thine altars fade and flicker to and fro; Call the vigor of thy manhood into arms from head to foot, Strike! and in thy strife with error let the blow be at the root.

So thy war shall wear the glory of a purpose to refine From the dross of early folly all the honor that is thine; So thine arms shall gather friends.h.i.+p to the standard of a cause Blending in its grand approval British hearts and British laws.

Form thy heroes into armies from the mart and from the field, And their ranks shall stretch around thee in a bristling, living s.h.i.+eld; Take the loyal beggar's offer; for the war whose cause is just Breathes the soul of n.o.blest daring into forms of meanest dust.

Let thy daughters wreathe their chaplets for the foreheads of the brave, Let thy daughters trace their lineage from the patriot's honored grave; Woman's love is built the strongest when it rests on woman's pride, Better be a soldier's widow than a meek civilian's bride.

Onward let thine Eagles lead thee, where the livid Southern sun Courts the incense for the heavens of a righteous battle won; And the bright Potomac, winding through the fields unto the sea Shall no longer mark the libel--what is bond and what is free.

Rising from the fierce ordeal washed in blood and purified, See the future stretch before thee, limitless on every side; And in all the deep'ning envy of the nations wed to sloth, Mark the record of thy progress, see the mirror of thy growth.

Rising from thy purifying, like a giant from his rest, Thou shalt find thy praise an echo from the East unto the West; Thou shalt find thy love a message from the South unto the North, Each its past mistake of duty finding out and casting forth.

And thy States in new communion, by the blood they all have shed, Shall be wedded to each other in the pardon of the dead; Each, a scale of steel to cover vital part from foreign wrong, All, a coat of armor guarding that to which they All belong.

Thou shalt measure seas with navies, span the earth with iron rails, Catch the dawn upon thy banner and the sunset on thy sails; Northern halls of ice shall echo to thy sailor's merry note, And the standard of thy soldier on the Southern isle shall float.

Turning to thy mother, England, thou shalt find her making boast Of the Great Republic westward, born of strength that she has lost; And thy Saxon blood shall join ye, never to be torn apart, Moving onward to the future, hand in hand and heart to heart.

At the conclusion of this last reading, my boy, we separated. When we are "heart to heart" with England, my boy, the heart that is underneath may possibly have ceased to beat.

Yours, to beat, or not to beat, ORPHEUS C. KERR.

LETTER LXI.

PORTRAYING A SOCIAL EFFECT OF THE POSTAGE-STAMP CURRENCY, DESCRIBING THE GREAT WAR MEETING IN ACCOMAC, RECORDING THE LATEST EXPLOIT OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE, AND INTRODUCING A DRAFTING ITEM.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C., August 9th, 1862.

If tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep, should ever take it into her head to invade our distracted country, she would meet with less resistance in Was.h.i.+ngton than it is possible for the able-bodied mind to comprehend. Notwithstanding the fact that President Lincoln is an honest man, my boy, the genius of Slumber has opened a large wholesale establishment here, and the tendency to repose is so general that the authorities are just able to wink at secession sympathizers. It takes so long to get the news of the war from New York, that our citizens grow languid in the intervals. On Monday, indeed, an enterprising chap from Nantucket opened a Museum on the outskirts of the town, by way of varying the monotony, and quite a numerous crowd a.s.sembled to witness the performance. This Museum comprises a real two s.h.i.+lling piece, inclosed in a strong gla.s.s case, to preserve it from the violence of the mob, and even respectable old married men go to see it, for the sake of past a.s.sociations. On the occasion of my visit to this unique establishment I arrived shortly before the exhibition began, and found a brilliant array of beauty and fas.h.i.+on for an audience. It was quite interesting, my boy, to hear the conversation going on. There was a fine young chap just in front of me who has recently been appointed to the staff of the Commander-in-Chief in consequence of his great experience in the coal business, and says he to another Lubin's Extracts chap:

"Fwedwick, who is that wavis.h.i.+ng creatchah ovah they-ar, with the Peach-Orchard eyes and Lehigh hair?"

"Aw, dimmy," says Lubin's Extracts, "that's the great heiress. She's worth eighty thousand postage-stamps."

"The wed kind?" says the young staff-chap, eagerly--"is it the sticky wed kind, Fwed?"

"No," says Lubin's Extracts, scornfully; "it's the green ten cent kind."

"Intwojoose me," says the staff-chap, excitedly--"intwojoose me, Fwed; I must know her--upon my soul I must."