Page:Maryland, My Maryland and There's Life in the Old Land Yet (1862).djvu/4

 the despotism which crushes their fatherland; and, indeed, throughout the Army of the Potomac it has been adopted as a favorite war song, as we learn from several army correspondents of the press. The correspondent of the Charleston Mercury, writing from Centreville, thus speaks of the part it was made to play in the ceremony of distributing the new battle flag to the various regiments of the army:

“All of the officers, on receiving the ‘Southern Cross’ made their acknowledgements in patriotic pledges to do their duty. The bands then played the familiar air from H Puritani, to which music some soul stirring lines, suggestive of the rescue of Maryland, had been written by J. R. Randall, a young poet of New Orleans, whose fugitive verses have already attracted much attention.—Printed copies of these verses were distributed among the several regiments.”

Mr. Randall, the author of the poem, is a native of Maryland, and has been some years a resident of New Orleans. A previous poem from his pen on the same theme appeared in the Delta last spring. It was full of pathos and plaintive melody, and was not pitched to so defiant and rousing a key as the second, which was rewarded as the best production of the kind which the war has inspired. Had the author written only these two poems we could say he possessed a peculiar genius for composing war songs. But discriminating readers who have met with his other poems would unhesitatingly dispute this verdict, and claim for him rarely rich and brilliant powers of imagination, humor and satire, together with extraordinary felicity of language upon every theme which may fire a poet. or to be embellished with verse.