SIXTY-FIVE AND JOHN BULL

AH, Sixty-five, you have but brought
 Us the beginning of the end.
We have some grave mistakes to mend,
Some claims to press that may be fraught
With danger to another shore,
Whose skilled builders drew and planned,
Whose merchant princes built and manned
Such pirates as the Shenandoah.

You crammed our ears with neutral laws
Against the stomach of our sense.
Your statutes were but thin pretense,
And only valued for their flaws.
You played the Algerine, John Bull.
You laid your cruisers on our track
And furnished clubs to break our back
Just when you saw our hands were full.

You little thought four years to be
A lifetime for the stars and bars,
While yet the war-stained stripes and stars
Should proudly float on every sea.
And so you did a foolish thing:
You turned upon us in our need,
Bartered a nation’s faith for greed,
And kneeled to Cotton as a king.

A staunch, strong friend you might have made
Of this free nation, but you chose
Your friends among our deadly foes,
And squared your honor with your trade.
Thousands of loyal men and true
Sleep underneath the ocean’s waves
Or slowly rot in nameless graves
Who had been living but for you.

You swept our commerce from the seas:
You have a commerce of your own;
And custom, gray with ages grown
Bids us resent such wrongs as these.
They lie who say we favor strife;
But we can plant a telling blow
By land or sea, on any foe,
Who aims against the nation’s life.

Be thine, O Sixty-five, the meed
That guerdons valorous thought and deed.
Thou shalt stand out in bold relief
Among the years, the first and chief.
We are too near these huge events
To see their grandeur. Ages hence,
When time and distance lend a hue
Of mild enchantment to the view,
Let future generations say
For what we battled in our day.

Let struggling nations then decide
If it were selfishness or pride,
Or if the cause which Freedom dowers
Be not their own, as well as ours.