Maryland, my Maryland, and other poems/The Unconquered Banner
THE UNCONQUERED BANNER
“A Lost Cause!” If lost, it was false; if true, it is not lost. If the Cause is lost, the Constitution is lost; the Union, defined by it is lost; the liberty of the States and the people, which they both at first and for half a century guarded, are lost.”—Henry A. Wise.
“Yet, Freedom yet, thy banner, torn though flying,
Streams, like a thunderstorm, against the wind.”
—Byron.
The sad priest-singer, in his dread despair,
When our war-trumpets ceased their charging blare,
Wailed, in melodious numbers, o’er the South,
Her righteous Cause crushed at the cannon-mouth.
He bade us fold our banner and for aye,
Because its night had come and not one ray
Of hope remained to gild its glorious head,
And that it typified the hopeless dead.
The peerless poet of that desperate age
Wrote an immortal lyric, but the rage
Of the aggressive section is no more,
And thus our Southern flag, from shore to shore,
Emerges like an eagle from its sleep
To woo the sun, and, in its heart to keep
The never-dying principle of Right,
Surviving every fierce, unequal fight.
Men die, but principles can know no death—
No last extinguishment of mortal breath.
We fought for what our fathers held in trust;
It did not fall forever in the dust.
Our foemen sought to make us worse than slaves
And envy all who sleep in hero-graves;
They failed at last to do the deed they meant—
They failed in trying God to circumvent.
And well for them they failed, for, in the end,
Their fate and ours must ever interblend,
If we have Cæsar, so must Cæsar be
With them in fullest perpetuity.
If they have empire and the sordid ban
Of Shylock and the money-changing clan;
The South is blameless; for she holds in fee
The stainless swords of Washington and Lee.
There was scant glory in our overthrow—
Not Valor did it, but a brutal blow.
Five hundred thousand Hessians and a horde
Of blacks and Tories broke the Southern Sword.
Shut from the sea, o’erwhelmed upon the land,
We fought the battle to a final stand.
But the Great Cause, outlasting all debates,
Lives in free union of unfettered States.
Now, let our Banner, symbol of the Right,
Kiss every wind in its unconquered might;
Let the glad spirit of the poet-priest
Hover above this grand Reunion feast
To watch our Banner, from the grave of strife
Rise with the glory of a new-born life;
Twined with the ancient flag, o’er land and main,
And wed to deathless liberty again.