You Can Never Win Them Back
You can never win them back,
never! never!
Though they perish on the track
of your endeavor;
Though their corses strew the earth
That smiled upon their birth,
And blood pollutes each hearthstone
forever!
They have risen, to a man
stern and fearless;
Of your curses and your ban
they are careless.
Every hand is on its knife;
Every gun is primed for strife;
Every palm contains a life
high and peerless!
You have no such blood as theirs
for the shedding,
In the veins of Cavaliers
was its heading.
You have no such stately men
In your abolition den,
To march through foe and fen,
nothing dreading.
They may fall before the fire
of your legions,
Paid in gold for murd’rous hire—
bought allegiance!
But for every drop you shed
You shall leave a mound of dead;
And the vultures shall be fed
in our regions.
But the battle to the strong
is not given,
While the Judge of right and wrong
sits in heaven!
And the God of David still
Guides each pebble by His will;
There are giants yet to kill—
wrong’s unshriven.