And the long line comes gleaming on:
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet,
Each soldier's eye shall brighly turn
To where their meteor glories burn;
And, as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance!
And when the cannon-mouthings loud,
Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall,
Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall!--
There shall thy victor glances glow,
And cowering foes shall fall beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death!
Flag of the seas! on ocean's wave,
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave,
When death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the swelling sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back
Before the broadside's reeling rack,
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendors fly
In triumph o'er his closing eye.
Flag of the free heart's only home,
By angel hands to valor given !
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome
And all thy hues were born in heaven;
Forever float that standard sheet !
Where breathes the foe that stands before us?
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
And freedom's banner streaming o'er us!
After another song and chorus by the Quartette, Mr. HENRY MORFORD was introduced by the Grand Sachem, and read the following poem, written by him for the occasion, with his accustomed ease and clearness. During the reading, Mr. Morford was frequently interrupted by applause, and at its close was enthusiastically cheered:
DEMOCRACY AND THE NATION.
Douglas Taylor, Old Tammany's printer in chief,
Says "We must have a poem, but must have it brief,
Say something-pitch in-serve the right-flog the wrong-"Be earnest be impudent-but-don't be long !"
That's what Douglas says; adding with pleasantest smile,
That "the rhyming is rather a bore all the while."
Our friend Douglas is right-but before I obey
Let me tell him a story that comes in the way.
Old Dan Webster, one time in the height of his fame,
As a lawyer was pushing some boundary claim
Between two who lacked temper to settle their lines,
Away down in the North Carolinian pines.
He got left by a steamboat, or wagon, or stage
Overnight, in the midst of the pines-and a rage.
He put up in a shanty of clapboards and logs,
Where the people divided their beds with the hogs,
Where twelve tow-headed children, each minus a shirt,
Ran round and seemed happy midst bed-bugs and dirt;
And their 'parients' two corn-crackers, gangling and long,
From a bottle took something that seemed to be strong.
Well, Black Dan got his sleep, in the best way he might,
And was glad to rouse up at the first peep of light,
Taking breakfast of hoe-cakes and pork, and in haste
To get off from that dirty and desolate waste.
When breakfast was over, and ready the cart
On which for 'some place' he was making his start,
He pulled out his pocket-book (quite in his way
You remember) and asked them how much was to pay.
The male corn-cracker, standing meanwhile at the door,
With his wife had been whispering ten minutes or more,
And when Webster presented a Wilmington note
Wiped his nose on the cuff of his butternut coat,
And replied in a manner most festive and gay,
That old Dan ne'er forgot till his last dying day :`
"See here, stranger!--old woman and I, about that
"Just now have been having a bit of a chat.
"You're the big Mr. Webster, they tell me, and so
"We don't like to let you pay money, you know.
Supper, lodging and breakfast--now what do you say "To our trading it out in the bandiest way y?
"Can't you give the old woman and me, for that ere
"About six shillings worth of a speech, and quit square?"
Old Dan used to tell off the story with zest,
And made it foundation for many a jest,
But he always declared that what bothered him worst
And best furnished excuse when he inwardly cursed-
Was not making a speech to those slab-sided drones
Two in number, and made up of gristles and bones,-
But being cut down to so little a space :
“Why, confound it !” said Dan, with his quizzical face—
"My chances just then were most dreadfully small!—
"I couldn't get started for shillings, at all !”
I am not a Dan Webster, as Douglas well knows,
Nor are you corn-crackers-yet, under the rose,
We are all just alike,—if there's much in the head,
Or only a little-we want room to spread.
And so having proved why I cannot be brief,
Let me be so, as furnishing quickest relief.
Were they jocular words, then, with which we begun,
And sounds this like dealing with frolic and fun?
If they were, let the time furnish ready excuse,
For looking down noses is never of use.
Darker days than those looming above us, no man
Has seen or has thought of since freedom began;
And the last time St. Tammany's Sons meet the call
To gather for council within the old hall,
May long be remembered as darker by far
Than any yet dimming the national star.
Let us hope that the memory further will go
And show joy coming next when the pulses are low,
Keeping up the old maxim of ages agone:—
"The darkest hour's that which just heralds the dawn."
Let us hope that if Tammany gathers to-day
With crape on its banners of warlike array,-
It may meet in the forthcoming year, Sixty-four,
With its pride and its hope bright as ever it wore,
Every man going on with unfaltering tread
To place the right man at the National head.
Let us hope that two years hence, when comes Sixty-five,
Freedom's hope in our land once more fully alive,
Treason dead, foul secession a memory of shame
That no man dares allow to attach to his name,-
The Sons of St. Tammany once more may meet,
With the right man firm fixed in the President's seat,
And rejoice in the dangers their vigor has braved-
In the foes they have met and the land they have saved.
THEY have saved-did I say? Yes, I need not recall
What may sound like a boast in the hearing of all.
And this furnishes point to the lesson of truth
That to-day by the council-fire proves to be sooth.
If the nation goes down, and its bright records close
'Neath the constant assaults of unscrupulous foes,
Let the lesson be set for the future to read-
That Old Tammany took part nor lot in the deed,-
That democracy, national, honest and true,
Such as in the Great Wigwam so thriftily grew,
Never weakened the nation or poisoned the State,
Or gave treason its aid towards the national fate.
If the nation is saved-and who doubts of the end
When we know Freedom's God must be freedom's best friend?
If the nation is saved, it must be by such arts
As Old Tammany taught to ten millions of hearts;—
Not the arts of chicanery-sectional spite,—
Theft or falsehood, usurping truth, reason and right,—
Not the arts which erush white men as slaves, to the dust,
And in squalid black skins put a confident trust;
Not the arts which so err on the opposite side
And to State-Rights would sacrifice national pride ;—
None of these are the arts by democracy taught
And free given to the winds of unchained human thought.
Other arts are democracy's-love of the land
Spreading East, West, North, South, and on every hand;
Holding all as a brotherhood equal in right,
Trampling down every wrong done by arrogant might;
Repairing injustice wherever displayed
And relighting each star that might flicker and fade;
Bending low to the flag, if in triumph or loss,
With a reverence next to that paid to the cross;
Thinking every square foot of American ground
The most sacred and holy in earth's circling bound,-
And "American citizen", far or at home,
A name privileged quite, like the boast of old Rome.
Such arts towards the country-such arts towards the land,
As within our own households draw love's closest band,
Arts of love, truth, good feeling-these have welded the chain ; These must save us, if ever we flourish again.
'Tis a dark day—a sad one :—so patriots feel
On this day that such glory was wont to reveal
When the flap of the banner, from shore unto shore,
By the cannon was answered with thundering roar,
And the sage in the hall and the boy in the street
On one level of pride were contented to meet,
And the proud words that greeted each gathering bost
Were known as no hollow and arrogant boast,
But a truth that each year gave a glorious increase,
Of a great nation happy in power and peace.
What has changed us? What dark demon frightens the air
And makes national pride droop its wing to despair?
Nothing less-nothing more-than fanatical schemes
That have mocked at all bound and run wild on extremes.
The safe middle ground has been scorned as a rule,
Made the jeer of the schemer and scoff of the fool;
And the man who refused to accept as his creed
Some ultra belief that black discord would breed,
And to act for one-sided, blind, sectional weal,-
Has been trodden and crushed 'neath the popular heel,—
Called a "doughface", a mean, narrow-spirited elf,
With no love for the race and no faith in himself.
"Be something!" they cried-it was no matter what,
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