THE BALLAD OF THE CRESCENT CITY. 111

1

IV.

In the City of the Crescent, by red Mississippi's waves, Walks the haughty Creole lady with her daughters and

her slaves;

But her eye no longer flashes with its wonted fire of hate; Her tongue is strangely silent now, and modest is her

gait;

With quiet mien and humble she passes soldiers by,
Nor ever on our country's flag turns a defiant eye.
What wondrous glamour so hath changed the haughty

lady's mien ?

The crime of her rebellious heart hath she in sorrow seen?

Or has her spotless bosom owned that Yankees there may be

Worthy of even a Creole's love? Is hers no longer free ? No; it is none of these have tamed the lady's rebel soul; On each mudsill she, certes, still breathes inward curse and dole!

And as for love, save for her knight, no love her heart can stir,

Since o'er a julep's sugared brink he swore to die for her; For though he died not, but preferred another field to seek,

'"T was only, as she knows, because the julep was too weak!

'Twas none of these! A sterner cause for change of mien had she !

For spitting once too often at the Banner of the Free, And once too oft through her pure lips the venom letting

loose,

The haughty Creole dame was shown into the Calaboose!

Harpers' Weekly.

NEW ORLEANS WON BACK.

A LAY FOR OUR SAILORS.

BY ROBERT LOWELL.

[The opening words of the burden are a scrap of an old song caught up.]

CATCH - Oh! up in the morning, up in the morning,

Up in the morning early !

There lay the town that our guns looked down,
With its streets all dark and surly.

God made three youths to walk unscathed

In the furnace seven times hot;

And when smoky flames our squadron bathed,
Amid horrors of shell and shot,

Then, too, it was God that brought them through
That death-crowded thoroughfare:

So now, at six bells, the church pennons flew,
And the crews went all to prayer.
Thank God! thank God! our men won the fight,
Against forts, and fleets, and flame :
Thank God! they have given our flag its right,
In a town that brought it shame.

Oh! up in the morning, up in the morning,
Up in the morning early!

Our flag hung there, in the fresh, still air,
With smoke floating soft and curly.

Ten days for the deep ships at the bar;

Six days for the mortar-fleet,

That battered the great forts from afar;

And then, to that deadly street!

A flash! Our strong ships snapped the boom

To the fire-rafts and the forts,

NEW ORLEANS WON BACK.

To crush and crash, and flash and gloom,
And iron beaks fumbling their ports.

From the dark came the raft, in flame and smoke;
In the dark came the iron beak;

But our sailors' hearts were stouter than oak,
And the false foe's iron weak.

Oh! up in the morning, up in the morning,
Up in the morning early!

113

Before they knew, they had burst safe through,
And left the forts, grim and burly.

Though it be brute's work, not man's, to tear
Live limbs like shivered wood;

Yet, to dare, and to stand, and to take death for share,

Are as much as the angels could.

Our men towed the blazing rafts ashore;

They battered the great rams down;

Scarce a wreck floated where was a fleet before,

When our ships came up to the town.

There were miles of batteries yet to be dared,

But they quenched these all, as in play;

Then with their yards squared, their guns' mouths bared,
They held the great town at bay.

Oh! up in the morning, up in the morning,
Up in the morning early!

Our stout ships came through shell, shot, and

flame,

But the town will not always be surly;

For this Crescent City takes to its breast

The Father of Waters' tide;

And here shall the wealth of our world, in the West,

Meet wealth of the world beside:

Here the date-palm and the olive find

A near and equal sun;

And a hundred broad, deep rivers wind

To the summer-sea in one:

Here the Fall steals all old Winter's ice,
And the Spring steals all his snow;
While he but smiles at their artifice,
And like his own nature go.

Oh! up in the morning, up in the morning,
Up in the morning early!

May that flag float here till the earth's last

year,

With the lake mists, fair and pearly.

THE VARUNA.

Sunk April 24th, 1862.*

BY GEORGE H. BOKER.

Who has not heard of the dauntless Varuna?
Who has not heard of the deeds she has done?
Who shall not hear, while the brown Mississippi
Rushes along from the snow to the sun?

Crippled and leaking she entered the battle,

Sinking and burning she fought through the fray; Crushed were her sides, and the waves ran across her, Ere, like a death-wounded lion at bay, Sternly she closed in the last fatal grapple, Then in her triumph moved grandly away.

Five of the rebels, like satellites round her,
Burned in her orbit of splendor and fear;
One, like the pleiad of mystical story,

Shot, terror-stricken, beyond her dread sphere.

We who are waiting with crowns for the victors,
Though we should offer the wealth of our store,

* After sinking five of the enemy in the naval battle below New Orleans.

THE NEW BALLAD OF LORD LOVELL. 115

Load the Varuna from deck down to kelson,

Still would be niggard, such tribute to pour On courage so boundless. It beggars possession, It knocks for just payment at heaven's bright door!

Cherish the heroes who fought the Varuna;
Treat them as kings if they honor your way;
Succor and comfort the sick and the wounded;
Oh! for the dead let us all kneel to pray.

THE NEW BALLAD OF LORD LOVELL.*

LORD LOVELL he sat in St. Charles's Hotel,

In St. Charles's Hotel sat he;
As fine a case of a Southern swell

As ever you 'd wish to see see see,
As ever you'd wish to see.

Lord Lovell the town had vowed to defend:
A-waving his sword on high,

He swore that his last ounce of powder he'd spend,
And in the last ditch he'd die.

He swore by black and he swore by blue,
He swore by the stars and bars,

That never he'd fly from a Yankee crew
While he was a son of Mars.

He had fifty thousand gallant men,
Fifty thousand men had he,

Who had all sworn with him that they'd never
Surrender to any tarnation Yankee.

* Mansfield Lovell, of New York, commanded the Rebel troops at New Orleans, and, on the approach of the national fleet and army to that place, "led his forces out of the town."