When the bright sun sinks in the rose-lipped West, His last red ray is the headstone's crest; And the mounds he laves in a crimson flood Are a Soldier's wealth baptized in blood! Do ye ask who reared those headstones there, And crowned with thorns a sire's gray hair? And by whom the Land's great debt was paid To the Soldier old, in the graves they made? Shrink, Pity! shrink, at the question dire; And, Honor, burn in a blush of fire! Turn, Angel, turn from the page thine eyes, Or the Sin, once written, never dies! They were men of the Land he had fought to save From a foreign foe that had crossed the wave, When his sun-lit youth was a martial song, And shook a throne as it swelled along. They were sons of the clime whose soft, warm breath Is the soul of earth, and a life in death; Where the Summer dreams on the couch of Spring, And the songs of birds through the whole year ring; Where the falling leaf is the cup that grew To catch the gems of the new leaf's dew, And the winds that through the vine-leaves creep Are the sighs of Time in a pleasant sleep. But there lurked a taint in the clime so blest, Like a serpent coiled in a ring-dove's nest, And the human sounds to the ear it gave Were the clank of chains on a low-browed Slave! The Soldier old at his sentry-post, Where the sun's last trail of light is lost, Beheld the shame of the Land he loved, And the old, old love in his bosom moved. He cried to the land, Beware! Beware Of the symboled Curse in the Bondman there! And a prophet's soul in fire came down To live in the voice of old John Brown. He cried; and the ingrate answer came In words of steel from a tongue of flame; They dyed his hearth in the blood of kin, And his dear ones fell for the Nation's Sin! O, matchless deed! that a fiend might scorn, O, deed of shame! for a world to mourn; A Soldier's pay in his blood most dear, And a land to mock at a Father's tear! Is't strange that the tranquil soul of age Was turned to strife in a madman's rage? Is't strange that the cry of blood did seem Like the roll of drums in a martial dream? Is't strange the clank of the Helot's chain Should drive the Wrong to the old man's brain, To fire his heart with a santon's zeal, And mate his arm to the Soldier's steel? The bane of Wrong to its depth had gone, And the sword of Right from its sheath was drawn; But the cabined Slave heard not his cry, And the old man armed him but to die. Ye may call him Mad, that he did not quail When his stout blade broke on the unblest mail; Ye may call him Mad, that he struck alone, And made the land's dark Curse his own; But the Eye of God looked down and saw A just life lost by an unjust law; And black was the day with God's own frown When the Southern Cross was a martyr's Crown!