Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Jacqueline
By William Haines Lytle (18261863)A
As our troop rode home from mounting guard,
And I saw Gil Perez’s brow grow dark,
While his face seemed longer by half a yard.
What care I for the Spaniard’s ire,
His haughty lip and glance of fire;
What so fit for these Southern lords
As the tempered edges of freemen’s swords?
Their hands in our noblest blood imbrue,
And then with accursed foreign wiles
Our gentle Northern girls pursue?
Hail to him who for freedom strikes!
Up with your banners and down with the dykes!
Better be whelmed ’neath ocean waves
Than live like cowards the lives of slaves.
For we love our blue-eyed Leyden girls,
And would welcome the shock of Toledo blades
Were the prize but a lock of their golden curls.
Hope on, brothers, the day shall come
With flaunting of banner and rolling of drum,
When William the Silent shall rally his men,
And scourge these wolves to their homes again.