Written during the meeting of the first Southern Congress, at Montgomery. February, 1861. /   / I. / Hath not the morning dawned with added light? / And shall not evening call another star / Out of the infinite regions of the night, / To mark this day in Heaven? At last, we are / A nation among nations; and the world / Shall soon behold in many a distant port / Another flag unfurled! / Now, come what may, whose favor need we court? / And, under God, whose thunder need we fear? / Thank Him who placed us here / Beneath so kind a sky - the very sun / Takes part with us; and on our errands run / All breezes of the ocean; dew and rain / Do noiseless battle for us; and the Year, / And all the gentle daughters in her train, / March in our ranks, and in our service wield / Long spears of golden grain! / A yellow blossom as her fairy shield, / June flings her azure banner to the wind, / While in the order of their birth / Her sisters pass, and many an ample field / Grows white beneath their steps, till now, behold, / Its endless sheets unfold / THE SNOW OF SOUTHERN SUMMERS! Let the earth /  Rejoice! beneath those fleeces soft and warm / Our happy land shall sleep / In a repose as deep / As if we lay intrenched behind                         / Whole leagues of Russian ice and Arctic storm! / II. / And what if, mad with wrongs themselves have wrought, / In their own treachery caught, / By their own fears made bold, / And leagued with him of old, / Who long since in the limits of the North / Set up his evil throne, and warred with God - / What if, both mad and blinded in their rage, / Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage, / And with a hostile step profane our sod! / We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth / To meet them, marshalled by the Lord of Hosts, / And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts / Of Moultrie and of Eutaw - who shall foil / Auxiliars such as these? Nor these alone, / But every stock and stone / Shall help us; but the very soil, / And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, / And all for which we love our noble land, / Shall fight beside, and through us; sea and strand, / The heart of woman, and her hand, / Tree, fruit, and flower, and every influence, / Gentle, or grave, or grand; / The winds in our defence / Shall seem to blow; to us the hills shall lend / Their firmness and their calm; / And in our stiffened sinews we shall blend / The strength of pine and palm! / III. / Nor would we shun the battle-ground, / Though weak as we are strong; / Call up the clashing elements around, / And test the right and wrong! / On one side, creeds that dare to teach / What Christ and Paul refrained to preach; / Codes built upon a broken pledge, / And Charity that whets a poniard's edge; / Fair schemes that leave the neighboring poor / To starve and shiver at the schemer's door, / While in the world's most liberal ranks enrolled, / He turns some vast philanthropy to gold; / Religion, taking every mortal form / But that a pure and Christian faith makes warm, / Where not to vile fanatic passion urged, / Or not in vague philosophies submerged, / Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, / And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven! / And on the other, scorn of sordid gain, / Unblemished honor, truth without a stain, / Faith, justice, reverence, charitable wealth, / And, for the poor and humble, laws which give, / Not the mean right to buy the right to live, / But life, and home, and health! / To doubt the end were want of trust in God, / Who, if he has decreed / That we must pass a redder sea / Than that which rang to Miriam's holy glee, / Will surely raise at need / A Moses with his rod! / IV. / But let our fears - if fears we have - be still, / And turn us to the future! Could we climb / Some mighty Alp, and view the coming time, / The rapturous sight would fill / Our eyes with happy tears! / Not only for the glories which the years / Shall bring us; not for lands from sea to sea, / And wealth, and power; and peace, though these shall be; / But for the distant peoples we shall bless, / And the hushed murmurs of a world's distress: / For, to give labor to the poor, / The whole sad planet o'er, / And save from want and crime the humblest door, / Is one among the many ends for which / God makes us great and rich! / The hour perchance is not yet wholly ripe / When all shall own it, but the type / Whereby we shall be known in every land / Is that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand, / And through the cold, untempered ocean pours / Its genial streams, that far off Arctic shores / May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze /                         Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas.