The Draft
[January, 1865.]
Old Father Abe has issued his “Call”
For Three Hundred Thousand more!
By Jupiter, boys, he is after you all—
Lamed and maimed—tall and small—
With his drag-net spread for a general haul
Of the “suckers” uncaught before.
I am sorry to see such a woeful change
In the health of the hardiest;
It is wonderful odd—it is “passing strange”—
As over the country you travel and range,
To behold such a sudden, lamentable change
All over the East and the West.
“Blades” tough and hearty a week ago,
Who tippled and danced and laughed,
Are “suddenly taken,” and some quite low
With an epidemical illness, you know:
“What!—Zounds!—the cholera?” you quiz;—no—no—
The doctors call it the “Draft.”
What a blessed thing it were to be old—
A little past “forty-five;”
’Twere better indeed than a purse of gold
At a premium yet unwritten, untold,
For what poor devil that’s now “enrolled”
Expects to get off alive?
There’s a miracle wrought in the Democrats;
They swore it was murder and sin
To put in the “Niggers,” like Kilkenny cats,
To clear the ship of the rebel rats,
But now I notice they swing their hats
And shout to the “Niggers”—“Go in!”