When the South was beaten They were playing John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the Grave, And Babylon is Fallen and Wake Nicodemus. Now the boys and girls are dancing To the Merry Whirl and Hello Frisco Where they waltzed in crinoline When the Union was saved. There was the Marble Terrace Glory of the seventies! They wrecked it, And brought colors and figures From later Athens and Pompeii And put them on walls. And beneath panels of red and gold, And shimmering tesseræ, And tragic masks and comic masks, And wreaths and bucrania, Upon mosaic floors Red lipped women are dancing With dark men. Some sit at tables drinking and watching, Amorous in an air of French perfumes. Like ships at mid-night The kingdoms of the world Know not whither they go nor to what port. Nor do you, embryo hands, In the seed not yet sown Know of the wars to come. They may fill the sky with armored dragons And the waters with iron monsters; They may build arsenals Where now upon marble floors The boys and girls Are dancing the Alabama Jubilee, The processional of time is a falling stream Through which you thrust your hand. And between the dancers and the silence forever There shall be the livers Gazing upon the torches they have lighted, And watching their own which are failing, And crying for oil, And finding it not! II CAPTAIN JOHN WHISTLER (_Captain John Whistler built Fort Dearborn in 1803. His son, George Washington, who was an engineer and built a railroad in Russia for the Czar in 1842, was the father of the artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler._) Throw logs upon the fire! Relieve the guard At the main gate and wicket gate! Lieutenant Send two men ’round the palisades, perhaps They’ll find some thirsty Indians loitering Who may think there is whiskey to be had After the wedding. Get my sealing wax! Now let me see “November, eighteen four: Dear Jacob: On this afternoon my daughter Was married to James Abbott, it’s the first Wedding of white people in Chicago-- That’s what we call Fort Dearborn now and then. They left at once on horseback for Detroit.” The “Tracy” will sail in to-morrow likely. “To Jacob Kingsbury”--that’s well addressed. Don’t fail to give this letter to the captain, That it may reach Detroit ere they do. I wonder how James Abbott and my Sarah Will fare three hundred miles of sand and marsh, And tangled forest in this hard November? More logs upon the fire! The mist comes down! The lake roars like a wind, and not a star Lights up the blackness. They have almost reached The Calumet by now. Good luck James Abbott! I’m glad my Sarah wed so brave a man, And one so strong of arm.