The Southern poetry of the civil war was even more rhetorical and stilted than that of the North. Its literary culture was more provincial, and its style a great deal more inflated and artificial. It was the "foemen" that they were to meet instead of the enemy, and "gore" instead of blood that was to be shed; and there was a great deal about the "clank of the tyrant's chain," and the "bloodstained sword," and such other fuliginous figures of speech. Sometimes there was a good deal of force behind this sounding rhetoric, as in Henry Timrod's A Call to Arms and in James R. Randall's There's Life in the Old Land yet, but for the most part it had an air of bombast and turgidity, which would have given a false impression in regard to the real spirit of determination among the Southern people, if one had only judged by its inflated expression. The pages of the Southern Amaranth, and other collections of rebel poetry, give the impression of having been written by school-boys, and contain little but sophomoric rhetoric of the most sounding and inflated description. That it had a fiery energy and an invincible determination behind it was abundantly shown, but the voice of the South in its polite literature was one of inflated extravagance. Nevertheless it produced the most manly and vigorous song of the whole war in Dr. J. W. Palmer's Stonewall Jackson's Way; and some verses appeared in a Richmond paper in 1861, entitled Call All, which have a fiery energy and directness unsurpassed, and were in the genuine language of the people: CALL ALL. Whoop! the Doodles have broken loose, Roaring around like the very deuce. Lice of Egypt, a hungry pack; After 'em, boys, and drive 'em back, Bull-dog, terrier, cur, and fice, Back to the beggarly land of ice. Worry 'em, bite 'em, scratch and tear Everybody and everywhere. Old Kentucky is caved from under; Tennessee is split asunder, Alabama awaits attack, And Georgia bristles up her back. Old John Brown is dead and gone, Still his spirit is marching on,-- Lantern-jawed, and legs, my boys, Long as an ape's from Illinois. Want a weapon? Gather a brick, A club or cudgel, a stone or stick, Anything with a blade or butt, Anything that can cleave or cut; Anything heavy, or hard, or keen; Any sort of slaying machine; Anything with a willing mind And the steady arm of a man behind. Want a weapon? Why, capture one; Every Doodle has got a gun, Belt and bayonet, bright and new. Kill a Doodle and capture two! Shoulder to shoulder, son and sire, All, call all! to the feast of fire, Mother and maiden, child and slave, A common triumph or a single grave.