To knit life's broken threads again, Beloved land! Beloved song! Your thrilling power shall last as long, A LAMENT FOR DIXIE By ALBERT PIKE [General Albert Pike's "Dixie," reproduced in Volume IX of "The Library of Southern Literature," though not so popular as a song is better known in anthologies of American verse than Emmett's lines. It is not an attempt to supplant the older version but to write an entirely new version and one that would better advance the cause of the South in the early sixties. The following poem was written by General Pike in 1868.] Mourn your dead whose bones lie bleaching, Wail, but still be proud for Dixie! Baseness only can undo us; Mourn you cannot blush-for Dixie! Kneeling at your country's altar, Swear your children not to falter, Till the right shall rule in Dixie. [CHORUS.] If her fate be sealed, we'll share it; We will live or die with Dixie! Shall there to our Night of Sorrow CHORUS: Hope for dawn for Dixie! Endure! Endure! On Dixie's land we'll fearless stand, All ills endure for Dixie! Endure! Endure! All ills endure for Dixie! [CHORUS.] ON CHANGING THE WORDS OF DIXIE By MINNA IRVING [Many attempts have been made to popularize new versions of "Dixie," but the associations of the old song are too strong. Almost the only change commonly made is the insertion of the words by Will S. Hays, the song writer of Kentucky: "Look away down South in the land of cotton, A proposition to write new words for Dixie occasioned a determined protest a few years ago from the Missouri State Encampment. Hearing of this, Miss Minna Irving, of Tennessee, wrote the following lines.] What! change the words of Dixie, The good old song we sang When leaden bullets marked the time, And silver bugles rang? The lines that find an echo In every Southern heart, The strains that melt our very souls Until the tear-drops start? You might as well make over, In something strange and new, Has turned the coat of gray, But Dixie lives on every lip, The Southern Marseillaise. "Away down South in Dixie!" Of moonlight where the Suwanee flows, Against the starlit sky; Beneath the starry ensign That high above our heads THE NEW DIXIE By MARIE LOUISE EVE [No study of the versions of "Dixie" would be complete that did not include "The New Dixie" by Miss Marie Louise Eve. It deserves a wider recognition than it has yet received. Miss Eve was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1848. In 1879 she won a prize of a hundred dollars for her poem, "Conquered at Last," which was written to express the gratitude of the South for the aid so generously extended by the North in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878.] I wish I was in the land of cotton, Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom; Look away, away, away down South in Dixie. Look away, away, away down South in Dixie. Her lot may be hard, her skies may darken; Look away, away, away down South in Dixie. By foes begirt and friends forsaken, Look away, away, away down South in Dixie. We'll stand and fight the whole creation; [CHORUS.] The Dixie girls wear homespun cotton, Then up with the flag that leads to glory; [CHORUS.] Look away, away, away down South in Dixie. |