You can Never Win them back. You can never win them back Never! never ! Though they perish on the track Of your endeavor : Though their corses strew the earth, That smiled to give them birth; And blood pollutes each hearth Ay, forever! They have risen to a man, Stern and fearless; Of your boasting and your ban They are careless; Every hand has grasped its knife, Every gun is primed for strife, Every palm contains a life High and peerless ! You have no such blood as theirs For the shedding! In the veins of cavaliers Was its heading : You have no such noble men Nothing dreading! They may fall before the fire Of your legions, Paid with gold for murderous hire Bought allegiance ! But for every drop you shed They will make a mound of dead, That the vultures may be fed In our regions ! But the battle to the strong Is not given. While the Judge of right and wrong Sits in heavenWhile the God of David still Guides the pebble, with His will There are giants yet to kill— Wrongs unshriven ! Beauregard's Jppeal. (z) YEA! though the need is bitter, Take down those sacred bells ! And passionate farewells ! But ere ye fall dismantled, Ring out, deep Bells ! once more: And pour on the waves of the passing wind The symphonies of yore: Let the latest born be welcomed By pealings glad and long ; Let the latest dead in the churchyard bed, Be laid with solemn song ; And the bells above them throbbing, Should sound in mournful tone, They prophesied their own. Who says 'tis a desecration To strip the Temple Towers, With death-compelling powers ? A truce to cant and folly! With Faith itself at stake, Or pause for the Bigot's sake? Then, crush the struggling sorrow! Feed high your furnace fires, That shall mould into deep-mouthed guns of bronze, The Bells from a hundred spires. Méthinks no common vengeance No transient war eclipse- From their adamantine lips." A cause like ours is holy, And useth holy things; May shine the Angel's wings. Where'er our duty leads us, The Grace of God is there, The Eucharist of prayer. The Cameo Bracelet. Eva sits on the ottoman there, Sits by a Psyche carved in stone, With just such a face and just such an air As Esther upon her throne. She's sifting lint for the brave who bled, And I watch her fingers float and flow Over the linen, as thread by thread, It flakes to her lap like snow. A bracelet clinks on her delicate wrist, Wrought as Cellini's were at Rome, Out of the tears of the amethyst And the wan Vesuvian foam. And full on the bauble-crest alway A cameo image keen and fineGlares thy impetuous knife, Corday, And the lava locks are thine ! I thought of the war-wolves on our trailTheir gaunt fangs sluiced with gouts of blood |