THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES CANNON-FLASHES "JUPITEK ILLA PIAE SECREVIT LITORA GEXT1." Horace, Epodon, Lib. Carm. xvii, 63 'IXJURIOSO NE PEDE PRORUAS "STAXTEM COLVMXAM, XEU POPULUS FREQUEXS "AD ARMA CESSAXTES, AD ARMA "COXCITET IHPERIUMQUE FRANGAt." Horat. Carm., Lib. 1, xxxv, 13-16. CLAES MARTENZE. I^EW YORK: W. II.'KELLEY & COMPANY. 653 BROADWAY. 1866. TO OUR VOLUNTEERS. N the battle-cry alarming, Said rebellious hordes are arming, Everything looked drear. Women hugged their babes in terror, Strong men cursed the traitors' error, Freedom dropped a tear. Old men almost ceased advising : Youths were everywhere arising ; Nations stopped to hear. 612830 UUKT TO Ol R VOLUNTEERS. Then arose the anthem, ringing. From the fields, of armies, singing, . " On ! right on. we steer." And a million arms caressed them. Many million voices blessed tnem. / Blessed the Volunteer. Foes had torn his native land. By her he must fall or stand. She to him is dear, He could hear the musket rattle, Face the cannon in the battle, Die, but could not fear : TO OUR VOLUNTEERS. Such a band are your defenders, Who can die but can't surrender-S- Such the Volunteer. Here was freedom's army going To the place where shells were mowing, Fields of armies clear; Yet no step is seen to falter, No determinations alter, In the Volunteer. ^ Now they charge ! But some are lying On the field, some dead, some dying ; Shoutings reach the ear TO OrR YOU NTKEKS. Then the maimed and wounded heroes, Struggling weakly in the death-throes. Lisp a patriot cheer. Weakened by the feeble effort. Thinking not of his discomfort. Falls the Volunteer. Freedom in her heart embalms you, Cursing every dart that harms you, Every sword and spear ; Every age will crown you brave. Old and young will know the grave Of the Volunteer. AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. men are not by same or similar methods Educated. One takes God's word divine, And ponders it, and says "'tis naught!" or worse; But he may from a feeling, living heart Work out philanthropy, nor ever think Of revelation, until, in working out His heart-work, he becomes co-partner with Infinity, and wakes to find that lie In loving man has learned to love his God. AUTHOR'S Al'OLOGY. An earthly father does not think to please All children with like gifts; one little eye Will dance enraptured at a pole-and-ape, Another craves a telescope. In man God planted, sometimes in choking thorn-ground. Sometimes in soil like dust on road-side rocks, Again, so deep down under self and sense, That it will never rise and burst its cell, Its prison-house, to bud and bloom for good. But yet 'tis there, God-planted still, a germ That swells with almost heart-pulsations. Vain ! AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. Why vain V Because, tho' God-implanted germ It be, yet needing care or it is naught. 'Tis not His way to give a watch (to use A similie) and then return to wind it. Some men are satisfied to live and breathe. And chew the cud that may be in the way. And look with cattle-eyes on scenes that show The thoughtful study of divinity ; And yet they pass their cattle-lives, and dream Their sensuous somnolence, while one. Their neighbor, aye ! their very blood, perhaps, Brings out his heart and mind, and lavs them down i- 10 AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. In view of all the picture, and communes With it, and feels an interest. Yes, and more ! He feels an inspiration, and he goes Away, and lives better, and works harder. Working is living' : he that does not one, Does not the other. Yet all cannot work At making theories, and thoughts in shape ; Not every man can frame philosophy. Few Bacons have so knocked the rugged edges Off them by their thoughts, that all men who hear Their names suffix (if not in word in thought) AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. 11 Their other name, Philosopher. Tis not For every man to put the hidden things Of earth and sense where the rude and robbed Can read them. ' Robbed," we said, advisedly, For every man untaught is robbed of more Enjoyment than he knows, because untaught. You've seen a school-boy spelling out his task, A Bible chapter, say, to make it plain. When some terrific proper names, first seen, Have driven from his mind context and sense : Leave him to grow, and robbed of higher growth AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. The names that make their images in us. And light the caverns of the brain all up With borrowed rays of joy. are what to him? Mere bugaboos to frighten him. and when He meets them, balks then stumbles hits on some thing Then stops to breathe, and seems to hear the fiend ('Tis nothing else to him) hiss out the echo : I say he's robbed ! a monument of wrong ! And what is that, which having got. we say " That one is educated T It is not That having thumbed a dozen heavy tomes AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. 13 In each of four or five vernaculars. And crammed their substance in the lofts of brain, He may, at will, ransack and reproduce For future similie and figures apt ; But rather that, as there is nothing new That he has thought with others, and with self, And draws from that within, which, as we said, God planted. He that is a God of grace Is God of nature, too. The artist sees it. And when studying thi# he learns the first, The while he reproduces it, the hist. 14 AUTHOR'S APOLOGY Another, from an image in his mind, Not new for then 'twould be absurd chips off. First roughly, then more delicately nice. Until the image of his mind stands forth : A duplicate of what he had before, But vre knew nothing of until it comes Before our senses. Now we are learning, But he. in this, is educated. Say, If you will, the form existed in the Marble bed, before 'twas quarried, And I will tell you, yes ! and would have been AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. 15 Existing thus, while angel-hands at last Were rolling up the heavens as a scroll, Had not the hand of Genius set it free. 4 What say you ? " Just as well !" No ! No ! Gamaliel's lessons make Paul's joy In heaven, even yet, the more complete. That is our goal, and he who learns the most On earth will need least schooling there. Art Is but nature simplified for mortals. The music Mozart thought as far excelled The music which he dotted down as he 16 AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. Was capable of feeling' more than notes Are of expressing. So of that other Music Poetry. 'Tis thought exstatic. But when, 'tis tried to plant this thought, that we May come again, and see it there, and point Our friends to it. that they may love it, too. It will not leave the pen. or if it does. Leaves not to seek the paper, but the air. Man is finite. Hence man's deeds are finite. The mind is part of Deity immortal Partaking of the infinite, cannot Be prisoned in our little play-house world. AUTHOR'* APOLOOV. 17 We pick the eagle's plumes that fall to earth, And mortal eyes may follow him a time, Some more some less but all will lose the sight. And none' can even picture to themselves His feelings, soaring thus, till lost to us, Up there where we place " paradise." Man is finite. But let him soar to find The infinite. Aye, and he must soar thus : ' Mind not high things, but condescend to those " Of low estate," said Christ to men long since. Planets are mighty Avorlds. Our little earth Is truly little in comparison. 18 AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. Yet there are many things and places, too. Upon its shell, that \ve. poor men, call ' great." A spiders web is not of high estate. But take your telescope to Sirius. And there your spider-line would hide the earth. And even if our earth were magnified To be as large as all its orbit is. 'T would still be hid by this same spider-web. If things were only what they seem to us, The Dog-star but a little star would be, Reminding us of gas-jets, half turned off; AUTHOR'S APOLOUY. 19 And the great central sun, one million and Four hundred thousand times the size of earth, Would never be but half the size of Sirius. But so it surely is and stranger still. Its light would more than match a dozen suns. The meanest plough-boy learns to tell the tides, But he would stare to hear that one by them Could weigh the moon as if in balances. But when once proved, man freely grants the fact, Just as we do an axiom at sight. And thus we see mind, like art and ages, 20 AUTHOR'? APOLOGV, Is progressive. It starts with naught a babe, And may become an Humboldt presently. The " things of low estate." of which we read. Are not the little meannesses of earth. All earthly wisdom when transplanted there AVill be of very little worth. What then, Are we to shun it therefor '! No ! oh, no ! Being the best we have, use it as best We mav ; God likes not sloth or imiorance. v And so we learn that everything in life Is high or low to man. according as AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. '21 He stands upon a lower or a grade Above : and by the atmosphere between He measures it. The upper air, though light, Appears to -magnify the things unreached ; The mountain top looks mighty from the valley, But from the mount the vale looks tame. Now back Our drawing-rooms are satisfied with light Which human toil has made from buried mines; A sun would scorch, and dazzle and destroy. The mind can drink great inspirations, too. Which ill would take the place of oxygen for lungs, AUTHOR'S APOLOjY. And as ill give the carbon back again To leaf-mouthed nature, to be reproduced. Just so the mind can hold commune with God, Which neither human cameras can catch To photograph, nor human words express. Our paper from the filth of city streets Requires a die. not yet found out, for this ; Nor will we know the secret till we die. Perhaps 'tis just as well. We love earth now, That is, for what it is a stopping place. What now is pleasure might be pain. AUTUOR'S APOLOGY. 23 Bring down your soaring eagle from his eyrie. And pinion him, and he becomes the thing Our thoughts appear whenever with our pens We try to rivet them on paper. Better Let them liy. We'll see them sometime, may be ; If not, what better would we be to have The fainting body chained to look upon When the spirit's dead ? And tho' tis pleasant Thus to dream and let the pencil try to follow, Do not expect that thoughts we only think, And cannot write or speak ; could live if writ, AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. And coffined in the covers beasts had once. And laid away in vaults (for vaults they are Of dead men's words, if not of dead men's bones), "Which we call libraries. NATIONAL MEMORY: AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. M|RATITUDE, than which there's no more native virtue, Has, from time immemorial, been the song of the poet. Young ^Eneas bore Anchises old from Troja. Virgil sang it in verses, which man will never let perish, Greece defended, sings the praise of her defenders, 26 NATIONAL MEMORY: And Leonidas, with the three hundred heroes of Sparta, Live to show the world "a good deed cannot perish.' Rome remembers Cato, nor forgets the Gracchi. All the world will remember the name of Cincin- natus. Macedon remembers youthful Alexander. Thebes in joy fulness points to the name of Epami- nondas. Is the name of William Tell or Winkelreid forgotten? Has Kossuth no place in the records Hungary treasures ? AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. 27 Think you Poland never thinks of Kosciusko ? Warren was not lost when Bunker Hill was taken, And Montgomery was not, though at Quebec he perished. Nation's hearts are great, and seldom cold and thankless. We can place by the side of our first love, Wash ington, many. Baker, Mitchell, and Lander, and Lyon, Reno, and Winthrop Are among the great we love so well to honor. i There is room for Ellsworth, too, among the number. 28 NATIONAL MEMORY. All the martyrs who fell 'neath the wasting scourge of rebellion Will be more and more beloved by future millions. Nations know to hate, as well as love their children, And their hatred is even as strong and lasting as love is. Does the Christian really hate the name of Judas ? Can we study with joyfulness tales of Cataline's treason ? No ! We run from treason as we shun contagion. Floyd and Breckenridge now are as foul as Benedict Arnold ; AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. 29 Judas is reproduced in a Jefferson Davis. Forty centuries have changed the home of empire. India, father of letters, is now but a British colony. Egypt, like her pyramids, is but a relic, Standing, proud of her history, mighty tomb of antiquity. Sparta's noble heroes are a race no longer; Now the Parthenon looks on the conquering race of Mohamed. Classic Athens, Corinth, Thebes, are homes of slaves. Carthage stood against the Romans three times ably. 30 NATIONAL MEMORY: Carthage now is a waste and a home fit only, for serpents. Rome, the world's great conqueror, is like her con quests ; On her several hills lives a race by no means " the Roman." That name is now past, and no more means dominion. In her arch-ways the owl at the present inhabitant hoots, And, in their ignorance, they, even, do not hear him. Presses now were giving all the wealth of letters, Luther, greatest of leaders, had made religion over ; AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. 31 Then a Genoese displayed a world to Europe, Fit for races which the old world could not nourish, Clad with luxuriant growth, while below were min eral riches. Here, then, martyrs for freedom and truth were coming together ; God had kept this land for such a race as they were. Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, and Puritans, staunch- est of all, Huguenots, fresh from scenes like Bartholomew's day, 32 NATIONAL MEMORY. Brands from the burning at Smithfield, and Spain's inquisitions. Tried by fire and sword, then sent to found an empire. Here, too, came from oppression Ireland's noblest offspring ; And Holland sent her sons, those true reformers, All, all pledged to God and the right and for liberty. England, mighty England, sought their subjugation, But she only effected ; ' a bond of union" among them. Steady was the march of this young nation forward ; AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. 33 Thrones and monarchs quailed before the rising republic. Eighty years had passed, and her step was not more slow ; Then, with volcanic eruption, burst a mighty re bellion Came from ambitious men grown fat on her honors. Cromwell led the English nation 'gainst oppression ; France believed that equality was her right, and the nation Rose to make it known. Yes! rose in revolution. 34 NATIONAL MEMORY. But here it was not a wrong, but a feeling of alien ation. " We have always had the greater part of power," Said a lordly minority to the mass of the people, " Give it to us still, or we will go and leave you." ONE YEAR OF THE REBELLION. 'ANY years had Christains, just for sake of union, Made excuses for slavery till they thought they be lieved them. When they found that system murdering their mother ; When they saw that their flag was trod in the dust by traitors; When, in April, Sumter's walls were battered ; 36 ONE YEAR OF THE REBELLION. When they saw our armies had been arranged for surrender ; When they saw our treasures carried to the traitor, Then, no longer waiting, rose the nation quickly, Made excuses no longer, but each was burning for battle. Only one resolve to all to crush rebellion. When this great uprising made itself apparent. Many who never had dared to think of slavery calmly. Now began to think 'tis not divine, nor human. ONE YEAR OF THE REBELLION. 37 When they thought of it then, as the corner-stone of the traitor, Old conservatives even fiercely said, " we hate it !" Every convulsion in history, whether we know it or not, Has an object mighty, framed by God in heaven. This rebellion, I take it, is not made an exception. This new world was not kept for centuries hidden for nothing. We are blessed with freedom we have got a Bible God intends we shall give to the rest of the world our blessings. 38 ONE YEAR OF THE REBELLION. How could we teach Christ to men and be inhuman? How show freedom to others, and hold a race in subjection Give the Bible to men, while we break its every precept Teach the golden-rule, and keep a sickening slave- pen Send our teachers to China, and turn our backs on the negro? Think of Christ's command to us " Teach every creature." ONE YEAR OF THE REBELLIOX. 39 Then, if we, in putting down this foul rebellion, Should be forced to uproot the poisonous growth which it fosters, Why should we be grieved? 'Twas God, not we, who did it. This is one of the ways that Jehovah purges a people. When disease is severe harsher drugs are called for; When the sin of a people cries to heaven against them, Then are they overthrown, or purged by fire from heaven. 40 ONE YEAK OF THE KEBELLIOM. When the traitors centered all their fires on Suniter, They thought Anderson, weak and surrounded, starved and deserted. Was a type of their foe, tied up, cramped and crippled Half of the North were with them, and many more living by cotton. But the first report that shook old Charleston harbor, Caught by wires, was carried to every home in the Union. Scarcely had the smoke of conflict fully vanished ONE YEAR OF THE REBELLION. 41 When the voice of an outraged people was crying for vengeance. * Now the sounds of cannon come again to Charleston; Cannon never to cease from their wrathful work of destruction. Till a ruined, wasted, scarred, and burning city Stands a monument fit for a deed the foulest in history ; Till the bastard counterfeit is sunk forever, * This was written >>efore the first year of the rebellion had closed, and was therefore prospective. See pa