While starry flags and streaming pennants
The beat of drums and roar of cannons[??]
The shout and cry, and flares burning[??]
That swelling upward from afar,
Tell o’er the land of that rejoicing
Which all seem proud to lend a ??? ???
Until the mingled notes ????
The dialects of Babel’s grammar
And while, with hoarser tones of battle,
The bursting squibs and small ??? ???
Reminding us of days that tried
Our old grandfathers’ Yankee pride;
We meet to struggle for the Right,
With other foes, in nobler fight
Than ere woke rusty musket barrel
T' assert the claims of ‘rebel’ quarrel.
We know, or so at least you tell as,
Those men were no ungallant fellows—
But we come not to "praise" or “bury"
Their fame's in their obituary.
Where all great men who've gone before ye
Have had their little hour of glory.
Far other strife than woke their powers
In martial field this day is ours;
Their noble band, that taught the British
To turn retreating heels and skittish,
Battled with "red-coats." Ours opposes
With equal justice redder noses.
They flung the tax-imbittered TEA
Unspairing [sic] to the boiling sea,
To save from duties. We have come
For Duty's sake to o'erthrow the rum,
Our gallant vessel's spirit-ual Jonah,
Which calls swift ruin down upon her;
Nor is our strife for simple TEA—
But for TEE-TOTAL struggle we.
They fought hot battles to o'erthrow,
In blood, the squadrons of the foe.
Our foes have served us much the better,
And cast themselves into the gutter.
Nor are they fall'n in streams of blood,
But plunged in more congenial mud.
We put not on the weapons carnal,
But bear the arms of Truth eternal;
The sword our fathers used to war with,
We leave behind to cut up straw with;
The rusty gun, that never goes off,
Our grand'ther bears to scare the crows off;
REST OF STANZA UNREADABLE
Our little band may seem small[??], we know,
But young and weak to meet such foe—
The rich, the great, and drunk—the world’s
Wise ones—warred on by boys and girls’
But not to strength of nerve, and might
Of warriors armed, in moral fight,
Upon our earth, protecting Heaven
The triumph of the Truth has given;
For God ahs made the weak of earth
To show His power and wisdom forth,
And from the “mouths of babes perfecteth
Praise,” when the proud his work rejecteth.
Nor are we first who war with wrong
The weak of hand against the strong;
The strippling David was scarce higher
Than to the knee pan of Goliah,
Yet did he fear not to enlist in
Stern combat with the stout Philistine.
And with a pebble which he took
Out of a pure cold water brook,
Brought down th’ uncircumcised old pagan,
As feel before the Ark his Dagon.
And when the fear-struck host of Gideon
Went out to meet the warring Midian,
‘Twas the three hundred who lapped water
Alone that gave them rout and slaughter.
But if, defenders of the bottle,
Ye deem our band too weak to throttle
Intemperance—that ol “red dragon”—
And haul him from his horrid wagon,
Where harnassed in the “Striped Pig”
Treads don our rights in antic jig;
And in your self-complacent scorning,
Ye deign to give our Army warning
To make their camp in Jericho,
And tarry till our beards shall grow!—
We’ll tell you for consolation
That we shall one day be the nation;
And while ye’re keeping us our camps in,
Ye only nurse the beard of Sampson,
Whose strength to deal the deadly knocks
Increased with his increasing locks,
And should we tarry, when we come on,
And once again our Army summon,
We’ll turn and in his great example
Shake round your ears your rummy temple
And from the frowning fabric, built
To fortify and hide your guilt,
The two great pillars we’ll withdraw,
Public Opinion and the Law;
And tumble into shapeless ruin
The work you have so long been doing.
We, who are only BOYS to-day,
When time hath stol’n our youth away—
Heaven sparing us—are yet to stand
The very sinews of the land;
While gnawing gout and “rum-it-is-em”
Your crazy joints shall rack. And squeeze-‘em,
And weak and poor your wits are waxing.
Dame Nature now not over-taxing.
Then as our flag the breeze unfurls,
Taunt not that we’re but “boys and girls:”
Truth, seeking for a firm defender,
Asks not of rank nor age nor gender,
But every true and willing soul
Is written in her muster roll.
Then may not we, as they old of old—
The weak who fought the strong and bold—
Triumphant wage as holy wars
For Truth and Right in Virtue’s cause,
Against the foe whose tattered hand
Goes reeling through our sunny land
And meet them in the strength of Him
Who rules amid the Cherubim;
Before whose awful throne do bow
Seraph and angel even now,
Imploring Love to turn and stay
The wanderer from his evil way?
Will not the bannered host of RUM
Tremble to see our Army come,
With bounding step and flashing eye—
With free-tossed arm and joyous cry,
Full rosy cheeks and floating curls—
The real Cold Water Boys and Girls?
Ah, yes!—and no methinks I hear ‘em
Through all their ranks, as we draw near ‘em.
They shake their old rum-wasted bones,
And mutter wrath in sullen tones;
Their joints creak as to fly they stretch ‘em,
Jugs crack and clutter as they catch ‘em,
From whose necks fly the spirits away
To animate a taper’s clay.
[two lines cut off in photograph]
??? ??? ???? ??? faith in transmigration :
One glance of terror casting back,
They hurry on the zig-zag track,
As flies the thief some lackless morning,
When found a neighbor’s crib of corn in.
No Yankee tin-man with his bags
Presents such varied wealth of rags;
And Freedom’s flag your Eagle gripes
Beats not the air with half the stripes;
Old Joseph’s coast of many colors
Bare scarce the index to these fellows;
So patched, and torn in many a tatter,
And flying as the legions scatter.
Off falls the mantle of disguise
That veiled them once to cheat our eyes,
When o’er the bowl of flip and toddy
They merry seemed as any body.
The mask is torn from every brow—
They stand in all their blackness now;
And horror sits in every glance,
At our fair Army’s swift advance.
They start up at the flush of water,
Like cowards at the sight of slaughter,
Or as the toad to a fiend up-flew, real,
Before the spear-point of Ithuriel.
Ah, vain they’d seek in peace to stand,
Till safe in Washingtonian band.
This by prophetic glance I see,
Soon be it read as History.
And it shall be, if we press on
Earnest as we have. now begun,
With all the thousands in our land
Who've joined the pure cold water band;
And when the red wine sparkles up,
Untasting pass the poisoned cup,
Shutting our lips against the rum,
"And every thing that makes drunk come:"
Then long ere we who've met to day
Find that our locks are growing gray,
In other years, the lisping child
Shall ask, in accents soft and mild,
"Whose is yon low and tombless grave,
Where briers and thorns together wave?"
And we may say-"Tis there in death
The earth's last Drunkard slumbereth."
George Shepard Burleigh
