Vicksburg and Corinth! These will grandly light
The page of History, when lost to Rome
Are all the crumbling arches which have bent
Above her laurel'd Caesars;-not a stone
Left to commemorate the Coliseum.

T

EXAS!* The breath of the imperial plains
Is in that name! Its very sound awakes
The genius of an empire. Ere she donn'd
The robes of statehood, and to yonder flag
Lifted her lone but lustrous star, she grac'd
The forum of republics-nobly won
An immortality of fame on fields
Forever glorified by History's pen-

Wrested the boon of Freedom from the clutch

Of hell-born tyranny, whose other name
Was Mexico-a vampire, on the flesh,

Gor'd in her bull-fights, fed, drunk with the blood
Of her inhuman butcheries! Texas

It was who to the crown of martyrdom

Bequeath'd its richest gems, since Christians scorn'd

A Nero on the throne, and lifted songs

In the arena. Hers a Goliad,

Where Fannin perish'd, with his brave command.

Hers, too, an ever-glorious Alamo,

Whose sacrifice of death will wake a thrill
When lost to all remembrance is the name
Of bold Leonidas, whose Spartan band
Guarded the pass. Thermopylae could boast
Its messenger of death. The Alamo had none!
Can Texans e'er forget those stalwart men
Who lit her frontier fires? With Austin camp'd

• Texas adopted her Ordinance of Secession February 1, 1861, and was the seventh State to leave the Union.

Beside her sullen streams? With hearts of oak
Endur'd the hidden dangers and defied
Unfalteringly the lonely silences,

To carve an empire from the wilderness?

Hark, hear the Rangers! Who could e'er mistake
The thundering hoof-beats of those cavalcades?
Worthy to hang upon cathedral walls-
The inspiration of a Raphael's brush-

The dauntless cow-boy of the western plains.
Let Texas shrine him in a mother's heart,

And twine her greenest laurels 'round his brow.
Sam Houston's figure, like a mountain fir,

Looms in her glorious back-ground, there to stand,
Till Time's last thunder peals,-whose rugged trunk
No storm unloos'd upon the prairie-wilds,
Could ever bend, and on whose spreading boughs,
Now rests the smile of History. Lamar,

The meteor of San Jacinto's field,

Whose dashing chivalry recall'd the tilts

Of Charlemagne's paladins, to whose sword,
Brightest among the blades, was likewise link'd
A statesman's genius and a poet's pen.

His, too, an eloquence which lingers yet

In many a golden echo of the hills.

Could men whose gallant sires were such as these-
Bowie's compatriots, comrades-in-arms

Of Crockett and of Travis, fail to meet
The test of Freedom's gory Gettysburgs?
Still lov'd is Anson Jones. Unfad'd still
Is Burleson's memory. Bright in all hearts
The radiant name of Rusk. Still reverenc'd
A Wigfall. Twice a Senator, he sat

In two august assemblies. Texas still
Recalls his flashing eye, his towering form.
Scurry is not forgotten-aye, Burnet,

Still comes again, in many a Texan's dream.

Magruder's shade still walks the camp-fire rounds.
Wharton and Green and Maxey are not dead-

They wake once more, when Memory waves her wand.
Hallow'd the soil of Texas, while she holds

An Albert Sidney Johnston, while she clasps
A Reagan to her heart, and while she keeps
Fond ward and watch above the sleeping knights,
Who, in her great wide bosom, wait the dawn
To ride once more with Jackson and with Lee.

V.

THE ROLL CALL OF THE STATES (Continued)

F

AIR Tennessee!* The smile of Bonnie Kate,

Still lingering, like a golden sunset, lights

The Smokies and the Cumberlands, still wreathes
The dimpled valleys, like an April dawn!

Hark, hear ye not the shout of Shelby's men!
The crackling rifles of the volunteers,

Who rush to fill the ranks, when through the glens
And o'er the glades, there rings, like Roderick's horn,
The call of John Sevier!-who wade the streams
And climb the heights and thread the woods, to rout
Cornwallis from the cloud-capp'd battlements
Of old King's Mountain, and to point the way
To glorious Yorktown and to victory!

Look! See ye not the gathering frontier bands?
The sound of Andrew Jackson's voice is heard:-
"On to New Orleans!-men of Tennessee,
By the Eternal!-Packenham must bite
The dust of Louisiana! Forward march!"
He hastens now to where the Seminoles
Lurk in the swamps of Florida, he moves
Like lightning, to pronounce the Red Man's doom,
To sound the Indian's melancholy knell!
Fair Tennessee! Entomb'd within whose lap
Sleep three great Presidents†-upon whose heights,
Where Lookout frowns on Chattanooga's plain,
Once roar'd the battle-storm above the clouds,
Where Missionary Ridge across the way
Now lifts aloft its snow-white monuments,

* Tennessee joined the Confederacy June 8, 1861. It was the last State to secede (11th) but finally by a popular vote of over 57,000 decided to leave the Union. † Jackson, Polk and Johnson.