The mass of the white population of the South are ignorant and deluded;
they need leaders, and will have them.
We have allowed them to be led by slaveholders, and are reaping our
reward. Remove Slavery, and their present leaders are crushed out
forever.
Give them new leaders from among the earnest and industrious portion of
our army, and we increase our resources and render taxation no burden,
and we restore the Union in fact and not simply in name.
Leave Slavery in existence, and we decrease our resources, throw the
whole tax upon the North, reinforce the Secession element with the
refuse of our army, and bequeath to our children the shadow of a Union,
a mockery and a derision to all honest men.
THE POET TO HIS READERS.
Nay, blame me not; I might have spared
Your patience many a trivial verse,
Yet these my earlier welcome shared,
So let the better shield the worse.
And some might say,--"Those ruder songs
Had freshness which the new have lost:
To spring the opening leaf belongs,
The chestnut-burrs await the frost."
When those I wrote, my locks were brown;
When these I write--ah, well-a-day!
The autumn thistle's silvery down
Is not the purple bloom of May!
Go, little book, whose pages hold
Those garnered years in loving trust;
How long before your blue and gold
Shall fade and whiten in the dust?
O sexton of the alcoved tomb,
Where souls in leathern cerements lie,
Tell me each living poet's doom!
How long before his book shall die?
It matters little, soon or late,
A day, a month, a year, an age,--
I read oblivion in its date,
And Finis on its title-page.
Pages:
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343