Calm as that second summer which
precedes
The first fall of the snow,
In the broad
sunlight of heroic deeds,
The City bides the foe.
As yet, behind their ramparts stern and proud,
Her bolted
thunders sleep --
Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud,
Looms o'er the solemn deep.
No Calpe frowns from
lofty cliff or scar
To guard the holy strand;
But
Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war
Above the level
sand.
And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched,
Unseen, beside the flood --
Like tigers in some Orient
jungle crouched
That wait and watch for blood.
Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,
Walk
grave and thoughtful men,
Whose hands may one day wield
the patriot's blade
As lightly as the pen.
And
maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim
Over a bleeding
hound,
Seem each one to have caught the strength of him
Whose sword she sadly bound.
Thus girt without and
garrisoned at home,
Day patient following day,
Old
Charleston looks from roof, and spire, and dome,
Across
her tranquil bay.
Ships, through a hundred foes, from
Saxon lands
And spicy Indian ports,
Bring Saxon steel
and iron to her hands,
And Summer to her courts.
But still, along yon dim Atlantic line,
The only hostile
smoke
Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine,
From some frail, floating oak.
Shall the Spring dawn,
and she still clad in smiles,
And with an unscathed brow,
Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles,
As
fair and free as now?
We know not; in the temple of
the Fates
God has inscribed her doom;
And, all
untroubled in her faith, she waits
The triumph or the
tomb. |
