God!  How the city woke!  With what a rush of wonder in her streets, “Burr” of strained voices, earthquakes of feet, Tramping to rolling drums, The crowd swept to the Battery.  Roofs were black with gazing folk in knots, Leveling their spyglasses Like phalanx spears, From sea wall to the chimney tops.

    Over the rippling harbor came
    The growling, bull-dog bark of culverins,
    Red rockets curved and plunged
    Across the dawn. 
    The world seemed drunk with confidence
    That day—­
    Some secret nervousness about the slaves;
    What they might think or say;
    But they did neither;
    The bugles shouted at the Citadel. 
    Hours were punctuated by glad bells,
    Soon to be hid away,
    And gales of laughter came from gardens,
    Where bright tear-dashed eyes must weep farewells
    The braver lips refused to falter—­
    Mouths then seemed only made to kiss
    For men in gray,
    Who left the ancient houses of proud names,
    Through magic gates upon that magic day
    When the lost cause was still-born in its hope.

    II

    And I had gone—­
    It seemed no man’s work then—­
    To buy supplies from “good friends” at the North—­
    Two years at old St. Louis and then down the river,
    Past winking lights of towns and federal rams,
    In flat-boats with a precious freight of barrels,
    Marked for the Yankees; but one night
    We supped past their last fort
    And floated down to Vicksburg through the dark. 
    How dull the lanterns glimmered at the quay! 
    But there was welcome, too,
    Proud, thankful hands,
    To take the medicine and powder,
    And unload sorghum barrels
    That we might change to quinine and to gold,
    If we could ever get them to Nassau. 
    The column which they printed in the “News”
    On wall-paper, first made me think
    That it was worth-while man’s work after all.

    Then, out across the miles of leaguered states,
    Through pine-barrens where frowsy men in gray
    Lay with their wounded in the haggard camps—­
    A glimpse of old times in Atlanta
    Like a last febrile glow in well-loved eyes. 
    Now rolling in flat cars, trundling to the sea,
    Back of the bull-head, wood-devouring engines. 
    At last by night to Charleston
    Just before the iron ring closed—­
    Ours was the last freight train of the war,
    Before the anaconda squeezed;
    But I had won (perhaps) if we could get
    Those precious barrels to England or Nassau.

    How changed my city was—­
    The grass grew in her streets,
    And there were blackened ruins raw with fire;
    A few old darkies crept along her ways;
    The busy thunder of the drays was gone;
    And ruin spoke with statue lips.