Ii

We greet you, Victors, as in vast array You gather from the scenes of strife and death-- From spectral fortress walls where curls away The cannon's latest breath.

We greet you--from the crumbling battlements Where once again the old flag feels the breeze Stroke out its tattered stripes and smooth its rents With rippling ecstasies.

From living tombs where every hope seemed lost-- With famine quarantined by bristling guns-- The prison pens--the guards--the "dead-line" crossed By--riddled skeletons!

From furrowed plains, sown thick with bursting shells-- From mountain gorge, and toppling crags o'erhead-- From wards of pestilential hospitals, And trenches of the dead.