The Southron's Chant of Defiance

You can never win us back
Never! never!
Though we perish on the track
Of your endeavor;
Though our corses strew the earth,
That smiled upon their birth,
And blood pollutes each hearth
Stone forever!

We have risen to a man,
Stern and fearless;
Of your curses and your ban
We are careless.
Every hand is on its knife,
Every gun is pruned for strife,
Every palm contains a life,
High and peerless!

You have no such blood as ours
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!

We may fall before the fire
Of your legions,
Paid with gold for murderous hire--
Bought allegiance;
But for every drop you shed,
You shall have a mound of dead,
And the vultures shall be fed
In your 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 the pebble with his will.
There are giants yet to kill--
Wrongs unshriven.