Classic Poem

My beautiful Ralph and Rosalie,
 There is tumult in your leafy town;
A tumult, swinging like waves of the sea,
 For the swift winds of Rumor thereon have blown,
 And the spray of its startled wrath is thrown
Back to the threatening thunder-wrack,
Looming to southward, heavy and black.

The very bells o'er this turbulent ocean
Have caught the tempest's billowy motion,
Like storm-bells rocking to and fro,
Rung by the passionate waves below;
Even those in their Sabbath towers,
Only meant for prayer-time hours;
Or bridal scenes; or measured calls,
To slow and solemn funerals;
With unrestra ned and fiery clangor,
Ring out their fierce indignant anger,
As might some priest, who long had given
The guiding words that lead to Heaven,
Proclaim, with his denouncing tongue,
The fiercest sentence ever flung,
 At the iconoclastic band;
Should he behold the fiendish frown,
And see the demon-lighted eye,
And hear the desecrating cry
 Of one, who strove, with lifted hand,
To strike his dearest image down.

Speak out, wild bells, with swifter swing!
 Ye patriot hearts of iron mould,
 Ye men, whom danger never awed;
Whose courage hath the old time ring.
This is no hour to stand and hark!
 The black, unnatural deed is done;
The traitor, springing from the dark,
 Would tear the stars from yonder fold,
And mar the flag your fathers won!
 The braggart, courting new disgrace,
 Has flung his glove into the face—
The sainted face of Washington.
Let every tongue in anger swing
 The anathematizing word abroad,
Even though revenge should fiercely wing
The fiery arrows of your wrath,
To stay the traitor in his path;
 The angel Freedom, sitting near to God,
Whose tearful eyes her anxious soul betray,
Will look into His face and plead the sin away.

The town is full of fifes and drums,
From every home a patriot comes;
You can hear them shouting on every hill,
Like spring-time brooks, with resistless will,
Swelling the sea on Freedom's coast,
To o'erthrow and drown the insolent host.

The yeoman, who knows to hew and delve,
Driving the axe or the spade to its helve,
 Now bears the gun that his father bore
By the side of Scott in the “War of Twelve;”
 Or the glorious sword his grandsire wore;
The flash of whose good steel still predicts
Defeat to the foe, as in “seventy-six.”
All ranks of life, the desk, and plow,
Send out their teeming legions now.

Those patriots old, when their wars were done,
And they hung on the wall the sword and gun
Ne'er dreamed what future treasonous breath,
 Breathed from the hot plains of the South,
 Out of the stolen cannon's mouth,
Threat'ning Freedom with sudden death,
Should call those sacred weapons forth,
From the cottage wall,
Or ancestral hall,
 To fields that fester beneath the sun,
In defence of liberty and the North,—
 The North and Liberty being one.

On every homestead, on every church,
Our eagle banner is seen to perch,
Where it shines like Heaven's approving mark
A covenant over our Union ark.

My beautiful Ralph and Rosalie,
There's a glorious sight for you to see;
 And could I picture the vision of gold,
The wondrous pile, so high and broad,
A-flush with the eternal light of God,
 And full of His harmonies manifold—
Your faces, illumined, would glow and shine
 Like those of the souls who have just had birth,
 Out of the shadowy vale of earth,
When first they see the celestial shrine.

I behold an organ, tall and vast,
The labor of all the ages past,
Nor yet complete, but the golden ore
Is being wrought for one note more.
Its six and thirty great golden pipes
Are draped about with stars and stripes,
And on its tallest pinnacle height,
Our guardian eagle sits throned in light.
Its fluted form o'ertops the cloud;
 It covers the land between the seas;
  While an angel, greater than prophet e'er saw,
 Flashes his hands along the keys,
 Holding the world with his symphonies,
A wonderful music, deep and loud,
  Filling the nations with marveling awe.

But, see, the angel recoils apace,
With wonder and wrath on his startled face,
 For a fiend, with a fierce and murderous mien,
 Has stolen suddenly in unseen,
 And with a mingled rage and glee,
 Is dashing his madness from key to key,
Making horrible discord down the bass;
And as, from the jargon a maniac mutters,
 May be gathered some clue to his fell disease,
 Thus, from the jar of those tortured keys,
I catch the meaning he wildly utters:—
“Down, down with the pile the patriots built,
That stands a rebuke to our Southern guilt.
 Down, down, though humanity quakes at the jar;
Shuddering to see our sword red to the hilt,
 While a race, half our own , drags our Juggernaut car!”

But the angel, for whom the great organ was made,
With a glorious anger, that cannot be stayed,
Strikes the clear silver notes of the octaves above,
That leap to the mountains, and pierce to the grove,
And thrill through the cities, and startle the farms,
Till the North is all lit with the flashing of arms.
And still, as he plays, the other recoils,
Relinquishing keys that his touching but spoils,
Till on his last octaves, with rage and affright,
 He franticly strikes a wild maniac blow,
Then flies, with a shriek, to his own native night,
 The realm of the king of all traitors below.

Anew the great Union organ awakes,
And the grand anthem swings from the gulf to the lakes,
Announcing the stigma that darkened our land
Is swept at the waving of Liberty's hand.
Still, still may that music go widely abroad,
Proclaiming our realm is the chosen of God.

The world is all joy, my Rosalie,
And yet one pleasure remains for me:—
In this cathedral land of ours,
Whose aisles are strewn with Union flowers,
 The glorious red, and white, and blue,
  While that wonderful organ, from lofty towers,
 Is pouring its jubilant notes anew,
 Come, kneel at the altar, and over you
And your soldier, with his empty sleeve,
And his crutch, which makes you proud, not grieve,
  The sounds shall fall in hymeneal showers,
Blessing the joining of heart and hand,
In a land united at God's command.