THE SONG.

“O we knew so well, dear Father,

When we answered to your call,

And the Southern Moloch stricken

Shook and tottered to his fall —

“O we knew so well you loved us,

And our hearts beat back to yours

With the rapturous adoration

That through all the years endures!

“Mothers, sisters bade us hasten

Sweethearts, wives with babe at breast;

For the Union, faith and freedom,

For our hero of the West!

“And we wrung forth victory blood-stained

From the desperate hands of Crime,

And our Cause blazed out Man's beacon

Through the endless future time!

“And forgiven, forever we bade it

Cease, that envy, hatred, strife,

As he willed, our murdered Father

That had sealed his love with life!

“Bend and listen, look and tell us!

Are these joyless toilers We?

Slaves more wretched, patient, piteous

Than the slaves we fought to free!

“Are these weak, worn girls and women

Those whose mothers yet can tell

How they kissed and clasped men god-like

With fierce faces fronting hell?

“Bend and listen, look and tell us!

Is this silent waste, possessed

By bloat thieves and their task-masters,

Thy free, thy fair, thy fearless West?

“Are these Eastern mobs of wage-slaves,

Are these cringing debauchees,

Sons of those who slung their rifles —

Shook the old Flag to the breeze?”