Chambersburg By Moonlight

 CHAMBERSBURG BY MOONLIGHT
___________ 

BY DR. A. L. M., U. S. ARMY. 

The moonlight lingers on the wall,
And on the joy departed hall
Where peaceful grandeur swelled its tide,
And rebel flames exhausted died.

These sad mementoes of the past,
Reflect a chivalry so vast.
It ends in nothing but a name,
And old M’Causland’s bastard fame.

The sick were thrust out in the air,
The dead, were not respected there;
And that poor babe’s last dying cry,
Beat through the smoking fire lit sky.

No roof o’er spread its suffering head,
It had been burned down o’er the dead,
It’s clay cold mother, as it lay;
This, this, was southern chivalry.

But these old walls that loom so tall,
Like monuments, their shadows fall,
Upon a race, who would not give
The tribute to the foe, and live.

Then let them stand, spires of the past,
They are thy glory, let them last
For ages that are yet to come,
When southern chivalry is dumb.

Upon them let thy children gaze,
And they’ll grow strong in freedom’s praise,
And nerve their arms to deeds of fame
That yet shall carve a nations’ name.

Abodes of peace, thy ruins stand
As beacon lights throughout the land;
As monuments of blackened crime
With which the villains’ name won’t rhyme.

Repose beneath their shade will give
New life to heroes, that yet live.
For liberty still lingers where
Vile traitors dared pollute the air.

These marks of brutish beasts remain.
But on them will remain the stain,
When that ignoble race is done,
And victory is nobly won.

Their star of empire fades away,
As does the night at coming day,
And all their boasted power and might,
Sinks down before the blaze of right.

Secession is a thing of crime,
That blackens still, by coming time,
Lending its votaries to the tomb!
And shrouding all that’s dear, in gloom.

The loving heart, the tender wife,
Is torn from all that’s dear in life;
Virtue disgraced, and seas of blood,
Engulph the Nation like a flood.

The young and lovely in their prime,
Rush through the catalogue of crime,
Who would have blushed with honest shame,
Ere vile secession’s hellish flame

Wreathed round the nation like a coil,
Of some vast serpent, who would spoil
Fair Heaven itself, could he but reach
Its jasper walls, to form a breach.

These blackened ruins now attest,
The serpent who should never rest,
Until his fangs are borne away
And he is crushed by Liberty.