To knit life's broken threads again,
And keep her mem'ry pure from stain,

This is to live for Dixie !

Beloved land! Beloved song!
Your thrilling power shall last as long,
Enshrined within each Southern soul,
As Time's eternal ages roll:
Made holier by the test of years,
Baptized with our country's tears,—

God and the right for Dixie !

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.)

Southrons, conquered, subjugated,
Mourn your country devastated!

Mourn for hapless, hopeless Dixie!
Homes once happy, desolated,
Church and altar desecrated;

Mourn for fallen, ruined Dixie!

CHORUS:

Lament the fall of Dixie !

Alas! Alas!
On Dixie's land we'll sadly stand,
And live or die for Dixie,

Endure! Endure !
All ills endure for Dixie !

Endure! Endure!
All ills endure for Dixie!

Mourn your dead whose bones lie bleaching,
Courage to the living teaching;

Wail, but still be proud for Dixie !

Mourn your Southland, crushed and trampled,
Bearing sorrows unexampled;

Wail, but still be proud for Dixie ! [CHORUS]

Conquered, we are not degraded,
Southern laurels have not faded;

Mourn, but not in shame, for Dixie!
Deck your heroes' graves with garlands,
Till the echo comes from far lands,

"Honor to the dead of Dixie !" [CHORUS.]

All is not yet lost unto us-
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]

[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,

Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom." 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,
The prayer we lisped at mother's knee

When fell the evening dew.
The moth to dust and powder

Has turned the coat of gray,
But Dixie lives on every lip,

The Southern Marseillaise.

"Away down South in Dixie !"

Calls up a vision bright
Of moonlight where the Suwanee flows,

And cotton fields by night;
And rows of tall palmettos

Against the starlit sky;
And, Oh! to live in Dixie land,

In Dixie land to die!

Beneath the starry ensign

That high above our heads
Its splendor to the morning breeze

In fadeless beauty spreads:
The banner from whose glories

The South no more shall sever,
I take my stand in Dixie land,

For Dixie's word forever.

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.
Her scenes shall fade from my memory never;
For Dixie's land hurrah forever ;

Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.

CHORUS:

I wish I was in Dixie;

Away, away;
In Dixie's land I'll take my stand,
And live and die in Dixie.

Away, away,
Away down South in Dixie.

Her lot may be hard, her skies may darken;
To Dixie's voice we'll ever hearken;

Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
The coward may shirk, the wretch go whining,
But we'll be true till the sun stops shining,
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.

[CHORUS]

By foes begirt and friends forsaken,
The faith of her sons is still unshaken;

Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
For Dixie's land and Dixie's nation,
We'll stand and fight the whole creation;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.

[CHORUS]

The Dixie girls wear homespun cotton,
But their winning smiles I've not forgotten;

Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
They've won my heart and naught surpasses
My love for the bright-eyed Dixie lasses;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.

[CHORUS]

Then up with the flag that leads to glory;
A thousand years 'twill live in story;

Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
The Southron's pride, the foeman's wonder,
The flag that the Dixie boys march under;

Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.