| | “And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thy hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.”—Zechariah, xiii. 6. |
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| IF thou art balk’d, O Freedom, |
| The victory is not to thy manlier foes; |
| From the house of friends comes the death stab. |
| |
| Virginia, mother of greatness, |
| Blush not for being also mother of slaves; |
| You might have borne deeper slaves— |
| Doughfaces, crawlers, lice of humanity— |
| Terrific screamers of freedom, |
| Who roar and bawl, and get hot i’ the face, |
| But were they not incapable of august crime, |
| Would quench the hopes of ages for a drink— |
| Muck-worms, creeping flat to the ground, |
| A dollar dearer to them than Christ’s blessing; |
| All loves, all hopes, less than the thought of gain, |
| In life walking in that as in a shroud; |
| Men whom the throes of heroes, |
| Great deeds at which the gods might stand appal’d, |
| The shriek of the drown’d, the appeal of women, |
| The exulting laugh of untied empires, |
| Would touch them never in the heart, |
| But only in the pocket. |
| |
| Hot-headed Carolina, |
| Well may you curl your lip; |
| With all your bondsmen, bless the destiny |
| Which brings you no such breed as this. |
| |
| Arise, young North! |
| Our elder blood flows in the veins of cowards: |
| The gray-hair’d sneak, the blanch’d poltroon, |
| The feign’d or real shiverer at tongues |
| That nursing babes need hardly cry the less for— |
| Are they to be our tokens always? |
