THE UNCONQUERED BANNER
The peerless poet of that desperate age
Wrote an immortal lyric, but the rage
Of the aggressive section is no more,
And thus our Southern flag, from shore to shore,
Emerges like an eagle from its sleep
To woo the sun, and, in its heart to keep
The never-dying principle of Right,
Surviving every fierce, unequal fight.
Men die, but principles can know no death—
No last extinguishment of mortal breath.
We fought for what our fathers held in trust;
It did not fall forever in the dust.
Our foemen sought to make us worse than slaves
And envy all who sleep in hero-graves;
They failed at last to do the deed they meant—
They failed in trying God to circumvent.
And well for them they failed, for, in the end,
Their fate and ours must ever interblend,
If we have Cæsar, so must Cæsar be
With them in fullest perpetuity.
If they have empire and the sordid ban
Of Shylock and the money-changing clan;
The South is blameless; for she holds in fee
The stainless swords of Washington and Lee.
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