Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/306

288 Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake The voice of wood and brake, Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms, A million men to arms.

There shall be deeper hues upon her plains Than all her sunlit rains, And every gladdening influence around, Can summon from the ground. Oh! standing on this desecrated mold, Methinks that I behold, Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, Spring kneeling on the sod, And calling, with the voice of all her rills, Upon the ancient hills To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves Who turn her meads to graves.

THE COTTON BOLL

While I recline At ease beneath This immemorial pine, Small sphere! (By dusky fingers brought this morning here And shown with boastful smiles), I turn thy cloven sheath, Through which the soft white fibers peer, That, with their gossamer bands, Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, And slowly, thread by thread,