The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems, by S. C. Mercer.

Glenraven’s Night Riders, five hundred strong,
Had finished their riot of outrage and wrong,
They had burned Latham’s warehouse, robbed Italy’s King
(What defense in the courts will the criminals bring?
Who will dare to defend base ingratitude’s sting?);
They have scourged a Kentuckian’s back like a slave,
’Twas the brute deed of cowards, not the just or the brave,
[A]McCool on his shoulders plied an overseer’s lashes
By the light of two warehouses sinking in ashes.
They have dragged helpless maidens from innocent bed,
They have shot through the bedrooms of widows—with lead
These black-handed anarchists of murder and arson
Fired four volleys at a silver haired Methodist parson,
And yelled in derision as their shots rang on air,
“Denounce us again, Sir Priest—if you dare!
Neither for you, nor your Church, nor your God do we care!
They have done all that arson and force could achieve,
And quaking like cowards the outlaws take leave,
Unlike valiant soldiers after manly affray
But like thieves from a hen-roost sneak quickly away.

Out spoke Major Bassett: “The dogs had their day,
And shooting’s a game at which two parties can play,
They surprised us; the cowards have all skulked away.
We’ll follow!” cried Bassett, and off with his mount
Pursued—ten brave men and true were his count.
There was clatter of hoofs down the old Cadiz road,
’Twas a clean pair of heels the Glenravenites showed.
Alas, for the pluck of these minions of night,
Black of mask and of heart, but their livers are white.

“Ride fast!” shrieked the Night Riders’ chief, looking back,
“A thousand giants from Hopkinsville press on our track!
The Mayor has mustered all Company D,
In humanity’s name can such outrages be?
Now is your time to do Latham up brown
And fire him and his followers out of the town!
Damn his turnpikes, on which thirty thousand he spent!
Damn the churches he aided—Hotel, Monument—
(How grandly it towers o’er Confederate graves—
Shall the sons of such heroes be Night Riders’ slaves?)
Damn all such aristocrats, they shall know by the powers,
That after they’ve made it their money is ours!”
Hoboes, loafers and robbers, ride for your lives,
On your crimes the Raven of Glen Raven thrives,
And its horrible croak strikes fear to the land
When it calls to the raid the Night Riders’ band.
But who would have thought that the dogs would shoot back
Real Krag-Jorgensen bullets? Alas and alack!
His words were cut short by a volley of lead—
There were loud shrieks of pain, in all quarters they fled;
The shots of the bandits flew wide of their mark,
As they galloped in terror away in the dark.
Nor halted the maskers in their blood-sprinkled path
To look back on three comrades writhing in death.

Then Bassett assembled his God-fearing squad
And bowing their heads devoutly thanked God
That when Christian men band to battle for Right
One Christian can put a thousand outlaws to flight.
Honest men will always walk off with the cake,
And that is where Moses made no mistake;
And to the Last Judgment all honest men
Will bow to the Decalogue traced by his pen;
For God Himself writes in Mount Sinai’s brief
By Moses His penman, Humanity’s chief,
The Night Rider is coward, assassin, and thief.
Hold fast to Moses! A squad of eleven
Who join hands with Truth, are posted for Heaven,
And the outlaws who ’gainst truth and honor rebel
Must go to their place with the outlaws in Hell.

So we’ll all shout huzza for Bassett and band,
Till they banish the Night Riders out of the land.
Forever shall God’s honest ministers preach
Paul’s heaven-taught doctrine of order and law,
As bold as John Baptist they shall stand in the breach
To battle for Truth and keep villains in awe.

THE TEN BROTHERS.

’Tis the last afternoon of the old County Fair
The amphitheatre’s thronged for a spectacle rare.
Ten sons of one mother contend for the prize
And a whirlwind of cheering ascends to the skies
’Tis surely a pity that horses and sheep,
Mules, poultry and swine the blue ribbon should keep,
O’er a highly bred strain of true women and men—
If degenerate men rule the State, pray what then?

On ten iron-gray horses they enter the ring,
Ten brothers as graceful as swallows on wing.
The crowd shouts and claps, for county and town
Loved their silver-haired mother, Rebecca Brown.
Let others for cattle and horses seek the prize
The boys she had nursed were more dear in her eyes,
Her sons were her jewels like Cornelia of old,
More precious than Solomon’s rubies and gold,
Each son a true citizen honored of men,
Master workmen are all with plow, anvil or pen.
In pairs and platoons they join and divide,
Ever changing the figure in column they ride,
Firm in the stirrup, with regular motion,
Like flights of wild geese or the billows of ocean,
O Mother! far better than rank, fashion, or wealth
Is the toast all spectators now drink to your health.

“Here’s a health to good mothers, the Angels of home,
Write their names in the Temple of Fame—on the dome!”
Smiling through tears gazed the mother that day,
Her eyes followed each son on his fleet iron-gray,
Thrifty, frugal, and upright was each dutiful one,
In the whole decade not a prodigal son
Precious memories ran back o’er the long vista of years,
Faith’s brilliant rainbow arched her fountain of tears,
Love and hope all commingled with doubts and with fears.

O hour mysterious of omnipotent prayer!
When the fireflies’ carnival flashes in air,
When the Evening Star shines and the meteors glide
She counselled them thus as they knelt by her side:—
“Let no plausible white lie, for gain, soil your lips;
Let the dear sun of Truth be undimmed by eclipse.
God’s commandments be yours, for their number is Ten,
Obey them and be honored of God and of Men,
For ’tis better by far to be honest than rich,
And the King who is false finds his grave in a ditch;
His manhood’s secure in the armour of Truth
Who remembers his Creator in the days of his youth.”

Swift round the ring rode the Ten Brothers Brown,
Till the bugle sounds “Halt!” for award of the crown.
By what rule of the Fair shall the Judges decree?
Horsemen, horses, or mother—to which of the three?
There was strewing of flowers, kerchiefs waving galore
Acclamations round the vast amphitheatre roar
As waves boom aloud ’gainst the rocks on the shore,
As around the grand stand the brothers rode up
The Judges with one voice cried, “Take, O Mother, this cup,
Far better and higher than wealth, rank or beauty,
Your sons are your jewels—take the high prize of Duty,
For Motherhood’s Excellence is guarded secure
While Truth reigns on high and the heavens endure!”

ECHO RIVER.

Through the unpeopled realms of night
We have reached the Echo River;
And our swinging torches’ light
Over its sunless waters quiver—
Shooting their rays athwart the gloom
Of yonder stern, colossal tomb;
Emblazoning the funeral pall
Of night, that drapes the high-arched hall,
So dense, we almost hear it wave
Over the Titan’s rocky grave—
Once the dread Cyclops of the Cave.

What bold Ulysses, standing by,
Gazed on his dying agony,
When, blind and frenzied, he laid down
His scepter and imperial crown,
And yielded up his struggling breath
In this stern catacomb of death;
And felt the icy shiver
That chilled the fever’s fiery parch,
When took his soul its Stygian march
Adown the dark and stony arch
Of gloomy Echo River?

Lone as the tarn, whose sobbing flood
Sighs in some demon-haunted wood,
Its cheerless waters ever run
Without one welcome from the sun;
Without a smile from one lone star
That trembles in the sky afar;
But wend their solitary way,
Secluded from the light of day.

Kind Genii of the mystic wave,
Who guard the portals of the cave,
Gently along this sable tide
Now let our little shallop glide;
And by these weird and shadowy shores
Direct the dusky boatman’s oars,
Until yon night-enshrouded strand
Receives our wandering pilgrim band

High towering, like the rocky walls
Of the leviathan’s ocean halls,
Rises the overshadowing cliff
Above our frail but daring skiff,
Which skims along this lower deep,
Where angry tempests never sweep
Nor polar star affords its ray
To steer us on our trackless way.
And as we slowly sail along,
The plashing oar, the voice of song,
Caught by the Naiads of the waves
And echoed by the vocal caves,
Enchant the pleased yet startled ear
With strains that ring as loud and clear
As the wild mountain music—born
From the lone Alpine shepherd’s horn,
In peals so loud that they affright
The lammergeyer on dizzy height;
And the bold eagle’s trumpet shriek,
Loud-bugled from his thunder beak
And echoed round from peak to peak,
In hollow cadence dies away
Along the mountain river,
When the first stars of evening gray
On the blue waters quiver.

* * * * * * * *

Boom! rings the flashing pistol’s shot!
The sound, by myriad echoes caught,
Roars down the dark aisles of the grot;
Loud as the earthquake demon’s groan,
Peals the terrific thunder-tone—
As if the shrieking blasts of March,
That wrestle with the mountain larch,
Swept down the dark and stony arch
Of glory’s Echo River.

’Tis gone! and now a sad farewell
Unto the listening waves we tell;
Softer than midnight serenade
Sung to the ears of Spanish maid
By the blue Guadalquiver!
Plaintive and sweet as “Dixie”‘s air
Of sadness which is not despair
And ravishes the enchanted ear
Of home-returning volunteer—
By his dear Bluegrass maiden sung,
To mandolin with silver tongue.
And witching is the fond adieu
The voice of beauty sings to you—
O, music-murmuring river!
For one, whose eyes and flowing locks
Are darker than the raven’s wing
Of midnight, brooding o’er yon rocks,
Touches the plaintive sounding string,
And pours a melancholy song
That floats the vocal stream along,
Sad as the convent’s vesper hymn,
Chanted by nuns, at twilight dim,
Or that strange harp, whose magic tone
So wildly sweet, so sad and lone,
To mortal minstrel never known,
On night winds wafts its hollow moan.
The ravished Genii of the waves
Repeat the story through the caves;
And far along the tuneful flood,
A never-ending multitude
Of echoing Ariels take their flight
Far down the dark aisles of the night.

If, when our throbbing hearts are still,
And pulseless lies the icy hand,
Reality should then fulfill
Our dreamings of a brighter land,
Then may the unfettered spirit’s ear,
In some supernal, sinless sphere,
Hear some immortal song like this
Float through the bowers of Paradise,
That bloom serene forever.
While wafted home to rest, we dream.
By Eden’s clear, ambrosial stream,
That clouds o’ershadow never.
We part! But O, who would not grieve
This world of melody to leave?
For round our hearts a witching spell
Lingers and whispers low, “Farewell!”
Like the low moan of ocean shell.
Or midnight chime of distant bell,
The torches, dancing to and fro,
Cast in long lines their golden glow
Over the inky surge’s flow,
Like arrows from Apollo’s bow
Or Dian’s starry quiver!
And like an anthem from the skies,
The voice of heavenly music dies
Far down the Echo River!

THE ANGEL OF THE HOSPITAL.

’Twas night in Richmond’s hospital. The day
As though its eyes were dimmed by bloody rain
From the red cloud of war, had quenched its light,
And in its stead some pale sepulchral lamps
Shed their dim rays across the halls of pain,
And flaunted mystic shadows on the walls.
Ah! woe is me! No ringing cry of “Charge!”
Stirs the hot, sulphurous air. The parting groan,
The shuddering moan of bitter agony
From white lips quivering as they strive in vain
To smother mortal pain, appall the ear,
And make the warm blood curdle in the heart.

Nor flag, nor plume, nor bayonet, nor lance,
Nor burnished gun, nor bugle-call, nor drum,
Display the pomp of battle; but instead,
The surgeon hard at work with lips compressed;
The tourniquet, the scalpel, and the lance,
The bandage and the splint are scattered round,
Dumb symbols telling more than tongue can speak
The awful presence of the fiend of war.
Lo, there! What gentle form with cautious step
Passes from cot to cot as noiselessly
As the faint shadows flickering on the wall?

She comes to one, a soldier from his youth,
Grown gray in arms, pierced through with mortal wounds;
Beside his cot she kneels and tells of Him
Who wrought redemption on the bitter cross.
The veteran hears with smile of gratitude,
And, like a frozen fount when it is touched
By the sun’s rays, he melts in gushing tears,
And, fixing his last look on her and Heaven,
Passes away in penitential prayer.

She comes to one in sinewy manhood’s prime,
Now prostrate like a lightning-shattered pine.
Death fears he not. His busy thoughts have gone
To his far cottage in the Southern wilds,
Where his young bride and prattling little ones,
Poor helpless lambs! chased by the wolves of war,
Wait for the absent one, and sadly say,
“How long he stays! Where can he be to-night?”
The angel softly whispers in his ear,
“A husband to the widow God will be,
And guard her orphans. Let His will be done.”
The dying man her consolation hears,
And gives the dearest treasure of his soul
In resignation to the will of Heaven.

A fair, pale boy of fifteen summers turns
His wasted form upon the couch of death;
Ah! how unlike the downy nest prepared
By mother’s love, when slept the tender child.
He heard the fife and drum and rushed to arms
Amid the rude companionship of war.
The raging fever burns his brain; he moans
And raves in agony; his laboring breath
Is quick and hot as that of stricken fawn
Stretched by the Indian’s arrow on the plain.
“Mother! dear mother!” oft his faltering tongue
Shrieks to the cold bare walls, which echo back
His wailing in the mockery of despair.
The angel comes, and fondly bending o’er
The boy she cools his throbbing brow and prays
That the Good Shepherd would take home the lamb,
Far wandering from the dear maternal fold,
To the green valleys of eternal rest.

(Nurse lifts her hands in horror, and faints away. Others hasten to her relief. The dead boy is carried out.)

Mary: O, my long-lost dear brother! What an awful moment was that when, by the dim lamp-light, I recognized in the wan, wasted face of the dying boy, the child with whom I had sported so often in the meadows and by the brook, gathering berries or wild flowers, and shouting in the fullness of mirth till the woods rang with the echoes. With me he grew up. We studied our tasks together till our aims and sympathies seemed to be one. The horrid war-bugle sounded; the dismal drum beat; the beardless boy then rushed from my arms to throw himself into the tumult of battle. Suddenly, while waiting on the wounded in the house of torture, I came upon the lost one, mangled and bleeding. He gasps and dies in my arms without recognition! Mother of Sorrows, whose loving heart was pierced with woe as with a sword under the cross of thy Son, give thy divine sympathy to this heart so bereaved, crushed, and desolate!

Materna:
An iron scepter and a brazen crown
The war-god bears; stern, cold, and merciless,
He smites his worshippers with bloody hand.

Foreman:
So walks the angel on from scene to scene:
Sweet vision of my dreams! thy light shall shine
Through this dark world, all cloudless, calm, serene.
Pure as the sacred evening star of love,
The brightest planet in the host above!

Private. Your labors are highly appreciated out of Tennessee. Go on as you have done unfaltering in the work you have commenced. The Union Club of Nashville is doing much good. Their proceedings are looked to with much interest. I hope their policy will be sound and their purposes decided.

I have got things straightened out, I hope for the better. I will be in Nashville soon.

THE TWO SINGERS.

Two singers sat on New Year’s eve
By the blaze of a flickering fire.
“The old year is burning out,” said one
“Like the embers of our own life’s fire;
As the fire’s blaze are our passing days,
As the year shall our lives be o’er;
Let us sing a rhyme to the passing year
Ere we shall rhyme no more.”

The elder rhymer, heavy of heart,
Cried “Life is a thankless task.
Its loves and its hate, its Church and State,
Are only a hollow mask.
Honor, and love, and rank and fame,
Are chaff and idle words,
And the schemes of men and the hopes of youth
Are the chatter of silly birds.

“Thus runs my rhyme:—The Ferryman Time
With his ever-waning glass,
Has laid on his bier another year
And sung his Midnight Mass.
From the oak wood dim rose a funeral hymn
As earth bewailed the dead,
And the seas made moan through every zone
As the souls to Judgment fled.

“The Ferryman stands on the sable sands
Of the desolate Stygian stream;
Not a starry eye from the stormy sky
Shoots down one cheerful beam,
But a hopeless wail filled the winter gale
As the phantom guests rushed in,
And fear and despair, and doubt were there,
Hopes baffled, and woe and sin.

“Ambition told how his palace fell
Whose turrets braved the clouds,
His royal guests changed their courtly robes
For pale and ghostly shrouds.
His banquet hall is tenantless,
Unstrung is the minstrel’s viol—
Not a sound to greet but the pendulum’s beat
Of the lone monotonous dial.

“Genius proclaimed how folly’s scorn
Robbed his nights and days of rest,
And the only food of his eagle brood
Was the life-blood of his breast.
Bright were the gleams that lit his dreams,
But ah! when he awoke
His light was dead, his vision fled,
And hope and heart were broke.

“Pale as the light of an Eastern night
Straying through orange bowers,
Comes the love-crazed maid, Ophelia sad,
White-robed and crowned with flowers
The essence she of purity,
Born for love’s pure caress,
But madness quenched her soul’s desire
In utter wretchedness.

“So,” cried the bard, “the whole wide earth
Is a den of baffled souls.
’Mid all its pleasures, joys, and hopes,
The dreary death-bell tolls.”

“Hold,” cried his comrade—“See the whole
And judge not by a part.
The end shall crown the work, and heal
The disappointed heart.
See where the boatman waits to cross
Death’s strange, mysterious stream
The endless Life to Come outlasts
This mortal, transient dream.

“Unworthy of a wise man’s lips
Are the murmurs of despair;
The heavens have never lost one star
And God Himself reigns there,
A faithful God created man—
He ne’er forsakes a friend;
Wait, comrade, on God’s goodness still—
Be patient to the end.

“Through mists of doubt there shines a light
Upon Death’s farther shore—
Where the Lethean draught of peace is quaffed
And the struggle of earth is o’er.
Our feet shall stand on the shining strand
Of Life’s eternal river,
Where the buds of Hope in fullness ope
And Love endures forever.”

BATTLE OF MILL SPRING.

THE GREEK SLAVE.

Soft as the silver songs which breathed
Over the Lesbian Sappho’s shell,
When the white-handed Paphians wreathed
Garlands for her who sang so well,
Is the low murmur of the waves
Which swell along Zacynthus’ caves
And in melodious echoes fall
Within the mermaids’ ocean hall.
There many a grove salutes the sea
With song-birds’ ceaseless harmony
Innumerable blossoms fling
Rich odors on the dewy wing
Of every breeze which wanders free
Over the blue Ægean Sea;
In golden splendor of the day
Reflected from the burnished bay,
Or spangled with the countless lights
Which gem those skies on cloudless nights,
And land and sea and sky above
Breathe only peace and joy and love.

A maiden in her grape-vine bower
Sat sorrowful at twilight’s hour,
And as her fingers sweep the strings
Of her guitar she softly sings,
“O, for the Greeks of olden time
Worthy our blest and sunny clime;
Men who would rather die than brook
That Turkish chain or Persian yoke
Should strangle like a serpent’s coil
One neck on freedom’s native soil.
Never, O never, ye Spartan dead,
Till you arise from your gory bed,
Will the Sultan cease to bear away
The flower of Greece for his harem’s prey.
The sun is up; his rising ray
Shoots brightly o’er the swelling bay,
And richly mottled shells which strew
The beach with many a dazzling hue.
With tapered masts in sunshine gleaming
And pennons in the breezes streaming
And snowy sails yon shallop glides
Gracefully over the heaving tides.
And see a captive maiden stands
Upon its deck with fettered hands.
Her song is changed to a wail of pain
For plundered home and parents slain.
Harsh is the clanging of the chains
Which bind her lithe and shapely limbs
Keen are their deep and cankering pains
But not for this her dark eye swims
In agonizing tears, whose flow
Betokens bitter shame and woe.
Sorer are tears for freedom fled
Than those affection gives the dead.
The sorest pangs that fate can send
Like arrows to the captive’s heart
Are not from outward griefs; these end,
Theirs is a transitory smart;
But musing on her island home,
The home of purity and bliss,
And then the thought of days to come—
The hopeless harem, it is this
Which fills her soul with deeper anguish
Than makes the dying martyr languish.

But Power’s hand shall carve the tale
Of sorrow in that Grecian vale.
His cunning chisel shall relate
The sorrow of a fallen State,
And the incomparable Slave,
Repeat o’er many a distant wave
The legend of the hapless maid
To Turkish lust and shame betrayed.

ODE TO IMPUDENCE

Goddess of Impudence,
Whose tinsel-crowned pretense
And shameless eye and cheek of polished brass
Rule Young America
With all-triumphant sway,
The forward school-boy and precocious lass,
Whose unweaned mouths smell of their nurses’ milk
And others of that ilk—
Inspire my pen,
Queen of the groundlings and the Upper Ten,
For to thy empire both belong
And both deserve a song.

What protean power
Is thy mysterious dower?
Thy wonder-working wand
Transmutes all things to gold like Midas’ hand—
All save the metal of thy followers’ face,
And that is brass, we know in every place;
Thy favors, where thou dost dispense,
Make up for lack of decency and sense;
Thy harlot tread
Crushes the modest violet in its bed;
Truth, wit, and merit are proclaimed a bore,
And kicked sans ceremonie from the door;
And power, wealth, and fame
Are given unto them who know no shame.

Thy trophies first are seen
In youths and maidens tender, young, and green,
Who stalk the streets about
Before their doting mothers know they’re out;
See how these infant swells
Gallant their baby belles,
Who know much more
Than their mammas found out at twenty-four;
They feel the early flame at seven;
At nine
They languish, sigh, and pine;
Till, dying to be wedded at thirteen,
A moonlight runaway concludes the scene.

The mincing maid,
Let loose from school,
Hooped, bustled, high-heeled, stayed,
Pert as a jay and stubborn as a mule,
Proves to the world that she has learned to faint
To dip, to lily-white, and paint,
And lift her skirts so high
That the unwilling eye
May see the neatness of her garter’s tie
Oh, Impudence; thou hast removed
The childish innocence we loved;
No more we see
The native blush of modesty;
Saucy and malapert,
The girl a coquette and the boy a flirt;
Forward and bold,
They honor not the old—
Not even the sire,
Who sits unhonored by his cheerless fire—
Too fondly dreaming of the sweet repose
Under the grape-vine shadows of Melrose.
Nor her who bore the brood,
The hissing vipers of ingratitude;
But dark and ominous fate
Sits like a raven o’er the gate
Whence modesty has fled,
And Impudence lifts up her brazen head,
For Folly’s breath pollutes the air,
And Wisdom will not linger there,
And all within
Bows to the iron rule of ignorance and sin.

See where the bold imposter plies his trade,
And cheats of every kind are made;
Quack creeds, quack medicines, quack politics,
In wild confusion mix;
And lo; the scribbler who writes down
The wisest and the noblest men,
With his envenomed pen,
To please the long-eared rabble of the town,
The darkly hinted calumny,
The vulgar jeer,
The cynic sneer,
The bold unblushing lie,
He scatters round in heedless wrath,
Like firebrands upon a madman’s path,
So when the infernal crew had hunted down
The statesman who deserved a crown,
And shot the empoisoned dart
Deep in his quivering heart,
While, like a stag chased home, at bay he stood,
Facing the clamorous pack athirst for blood;
With awful grandeur beaming in his eye,
Promethean in its agony,
The hireling scribbler all unshamed
By the sad gaze of him he had defamed,
Exulted in his hellish work,
As the assassin when he plies his dirk,
And styled himself apostle sent to teach
Mankind the glories of free thought and speech.

The Sage upon Judea’s Mount
Unsealed the everlasting fount
Of Peace and Truth and Love,
And the Evangel Dove
Came from the skies and nestled to his breast,
And bright-eyed Hope,
From Heaven’s starry slope,
Under his gentle reign,
Beheld the Golden Age return again,
And Earth was blest.
But lo; lean wolves have seized the fold,
And brass supplants the Age of Gold.
Luxurious, profligate, and vile,
With lips of guile,
And Judas’ kiss and smile,
The modern Pharisee,
With broad phylactery,
Converts the temple of his God
Into a mart of crime and fraud.
Inspired by thee, oh, Impudence;
He holds the words of truth and speaks a lie,
Cloaks blackest sins with fair pretense
Of Apostolic piety,
And shears the starving sheep and flays the lambs,
’Mid groans and prayers and penitential psalms.

Oh, Impudence; thy triumph is complete;
Mankind lie prostrate at thy feet,
And every class,
Like bees in swarm,
Are spell-bound by the charm
Of “tinkling cymbals and of sounding brass,”
Genius and modest worth
Starve in the cradle of their birth.
They win the meed of fame
Whose deeds deserve the pillory of shame;
Upon the topmost waves of honor ride,
As scum and froth float on the swollen tide.
So coxcombs in the garden blow,
While fragrant myrtles nestle low;
So hollyhocks uplift their head
In scentless robes of flaunting red,
And gaudy peonies
Attract the passers’ eyes,
Yet from their leaves no fragrant dews
Their cheering influence diffuse
Like that ambrosia and sweet violets shed,
Or fragrant mignonette in its unnoticed bed.