AT FORT PILLOW.
BY JAMES R. RANDALL.
You shudder as you think upon
The carnage of the grim report—
The desolation when we won
The inner trenches of the Fort.
But there are deeds you may not know,
That scaurge the pulses into strife,
Dark memories of deathless woe,
Pointing the bayonet and knife.
The house is ashes where I dwelt,
Beyond the mighty inland sea,
The tomb-stones shattered where I knelt
By that old church in Pointe Coupee.
The Yankee fiends that came with fire,
Camped on the consecrated sod,
And trampled in the dust and mire,
The holy eucharist of God !
The spot where darling mother sleeps,
Beneath the glimpse of yon sad moon,
Is crushed with splintered marble heaps,
To stall the horse of some dragoon !
God ! when I ponder that black day,
It drives my frantic spirit mad,
I marched—with Longstreet—far away,
But since have seen the ruin sad.
The tears are hot upon my face,
When thinking what black fate befell
The only sister of our race—
A thing too horrible to tell.
They say, that ere her senses fled,
She, rescue of her brothers cried,
Then feebly bowed her stricken head,
Too pure to live thus—so she died.
Two of those brothers heard no plea,
With their proud hearts forever still—
John shrouded 'by the Tennessee,
And Arthur there at Malvern Hill.
But I have heard it everywhere
Vibrating like a passing knell,
'Tis universal as the air,
And solemn as a funeral bell.
By scorched lagoon or murky swamp
My wrath has known nor rest nor check,
I've slain the picket by his camp,
And killed the pilot on the deck.
With deadly rifle, sharpened brand,
A week ago upon my steed,
With Forrest and his warrior band,
I made the hell-hounds writhe and bleed.
You should have seen our leader go
Upon the battle's burning marge,
Swooping like falcon on the foe,
Heading the gray line's iron charge !
The Southern yell rang loud and high
The moment that we thundered in,
Smiting the demons hip and thigh,
Cleaving them unto the chin.
My right arm bared for fiercer play,
The left one held the rein in slack,
In all the fury of the fray
I sought the white man, not the black.
Throbbing along the frenzied vein
My blood seemed kindled into song,
The death-dirge of the sacred slain,
The slogan of immortal wrong.
It glared athwart the dripping glaives,
It blazed in each avenging eye—
The thought of desecrated graves,
And some lone sister's desperate cry.
Wilmington, April 25th.