When that veil shall be raised, Freedom's last feast be taken, A banquet to which all his followers will crowd; Oh, horror of horrors! who can view it unshaken? Without sense they will sit all in suppliance bowed! We do not forget that they once were our brothers, That we sat in our boyhood around the same board, That our heart's best idolatry blest the same mothers, And to the same fathers libations we poured. We rallied around the same star-spangled standard, When called to the field by the tocsin of war: But they from our side have unfeeling wandered, And we strip from our flag every recusant star. They have forced us to stand by our own Constitution, To defend our lov'd homesteads, our altars and fires, While they tamely submit to a tyrant's pollution, Beneath whose foul tread their own freedom expires. Then up with the banner, its broad stripes wide flowing-- 'Tis the emblem of Liberty--flag of the free; Let it wave us to triumph, and every heart glowing, Nerve each arm's bravest blow for its lov'd Tennessee. THE SOUTHERN HOMES IN RUINS. BY R. B. VANCE. Many a gray-haired sire has died, As falls the oak, to rise no more, Because his son, his prop, his pride, Breathed out his last all red with gore. No more on earth, at morn, at eve, Shall age and youth, entwined as one-- Nor father, son, for either grieve-- Life's work, alas, for both is done! Many a mother's heart has bled While gazing on her darling child, As in its tiny eyes she read The father's image, kind and mild; For ne'er again his voice will cheer The widowed heart, which mourns him dead; Nor kisses dry the scalding tear, Fast falling on the orphan's head! Many a little form will stray Adown the glen and o'er the hill, And watch with wistful looks the way For him whose step is missing still; And when the twilight steals apace O'er mead, and brook, and lonely home, And shadows cloud the dear, sweet face-- The cry will be, "Oh, papa, come!" And many a home's in ashes now, Where joy was once a constant guest, And mournful groups there are, I trow, With neither house nor place of rest; And blood is on the broken _sill_,[21] Where happy feet went to and fro, And everywhere, by field and hill, Are sickening sights and sounds of woe; There is a God who rules on high, The widow's and the orphan's friend, Who sees each tear and hears each sigh That these lone hearts to Him may send! And when in wrath He tears away The reasons vain which men indite, The record-book will plainest say Who's in the wrong, and who is right. 'TIS MIDNIGHT IN THE SOUTHERN SKY. BY MRS. M. J. YOUNG. 'Tis midnight in the Southern sky-- See the starry cross decline! The watching flowers, all bath'd in tears, Creep o'er the mournful sign!