1906- Poetry

Charlotte Daily Observer 5/20/1906 Sec.3 p. 3 and  5/20/1906 Sec.3, p. 5

 

 

ODE TO NORTH CAROLINA  

PATTIE WILLIAMS GEE.  

To stay the rocks from heralding the shame

That in oblivion of men’s praise or blame

Her stalwart sons have stood with silent tongue

And the proud Mother’s paean is unsung,

A daughter of the pines by Honor called

Would climb Old Bald,

From whose Titanic brim

Down slopes which sweep to greet the low sea’s rim

Vulcanus rolled

With sombrous ores, his uncut gems and rugged gold;

Demeter swung her surging plumes—

All her arms held of matchless bloom, of subtle beauty and of wild perfumes—

And where tall Tuscaroras roamed,

Great Roanoke’s waters fumed and foamed,

The fluttering, floating, mellow-throated sung,

Upon the wind’s exultant music flung—

Would gonfalons of eager song unfold

Above the wold

Fruited and plumed,

Fern-clothed and bloomed

Bride for the Sun

To love, to woo, to feast his amorous lips upon;

And over oriole mountain peaks

Where circling eagles’ piercing shrieks

Are lost in cloud-blown skies.

 

—II—  

O, Carolinians, lift your eyes!

O, Carolinians, lift your eyes

And heed it well

That it is yours amid surpassing loveliness to dwell!  

—III—  

Yours the consecrated sod

Which first the European trod,

Where the first suppliant knelt to God

On this wide continent;

Yours the Mother on whose breast,

Smiling in confiding rest,

On whose patriotic breast,

Lay the first American;

And to your children’s children tell,

(O, Carolinians, heed it well!)

That here our history began;

That here the woman stricken sore

Scorned to spare the sons she bore.

Say no solemn rite was said

O’er the first for freedom dead,

The first red blood for freedom shed,

But tell them, Carolinians, how

From wounds and bruise of sword and lance,

From purple pools of Alamance,

There sprang the flower of Mecklenburg,

The laurel flower sprang, and how

Our blood-wrought crown of Liberty

Crowned first their Mother’s brow!

 

—IV—  

O, blood-wrought crown of Liberty,

So doubly dear, so fair!

O, blood-wet leaves of Liberty

Which drenched her shining hair

When foes unnumbered sacked her shores

And left her, naked, with disheveled hair,

And left a leprous reptile at her doors,

A leprous reptile that a woman may not name,

O, Liberty, O, Liberty, men blush at thy great name!

Since Nero burned imperial Rome

And lit his lights beneath her dome

Was known no scourge like this!

But who could bear to lift a crucifix for anguished lips to kiss?

Ah, who could bear to stir a woman’s pain,

Whose cannons’ mouths are closed, whose guns, corrosive, cold,

Lie still,

And o’er whose wind-swept hill

Where sleep her sacred slain

A flawless moon unfolds in sympathy

To mount in glory and in glory wane,

Whose silver plain

The peaceful stars o’er-flood with silent melody to light the reign

Of love where in the strong New South is born —

Born of the Old South’s marvelous resources,

Born of the Old South’s wondrous water courses

From snow-crowned mountains rushing clear and cold

Through fields of brilliant bloom and laughing corn—

A joyous Naiad clothed in robes of gold!

 

—V—

 

But words would fail my timid muse to tell

Of all my Mother’s virtues or to dwell

Upon each deed chivalric of her sons;

Of that inviolate soil o’er which no foreign flag was ever flung;

Of Ashe, Waddell and Harnett, whose “resistance was unto death.”

Bold Purpose flowered to Promise, strong incipient life to breath;

Of Moore’s lonely Creek where Victory first rung

Her solemn bells; of Ramseur’s Mill

And the four hundred under Locke

Who stilled the booming of a thousand guns;

Of Joseph Graham whose twenty score

Not once but thrice repulsed four thousand more

Flung powerless upon a human rock;

Of that immortal field in Memory’s raptured fabric woven

Whereon no foe was lost, no foe uncaptured or uncloven;

Of her who won a warrior’s crest

And blazoned Charlotte with the Hornet’s Nest,

With the proud ‘scutcheon of the Hornet’s Nest;

Or of Penelope of old

Leading, as chronicles relate,

The women of bold Edenton to hold

High council and protest

Against the coercion of an alien State

In mad exaction of an alien tax;

Of New Berne, Hillsboro and of Halifax;

And of her heroes in two later wars

Who bore her colors proudly, gladly died to serve her cause!

 

—VI—  

But these are past,

These iron days are past

And though the adamant in which our souls were cast

No longer binds,

The Spirit which inspired them lives and burns

And on the winds

Of Duty seaward turns—

 

—VII—

 

Seaward where torn flags are trailing

Over crushed and crumbling walls;

Women wailing,

Captives sighing,

Brave men praying, fighting, dying

To be free from ancient thralls;

And again our righteous Mother,

Eager to relieve another,

Instant at her country’s call,

Sends one with this Spirit in him,

“To return with valour’s guerdon” —

This her hymn’s eternal burden—

“Or beneath a soldier’s pall!”

(Oh, the pity and the heartache

And the anguish of it all!)

For Alamance and Bethel’s story

Rung again amid the glory,

Rung again when at the daybreak

With the Southern fire within him,

With his father’s sword without him,

With the old flag wrapped about him,

(Oh, the triumph and the glory

And the rapture of it all!)

For his country’s vindication,

For a friend’s amelioration,

For the healing of his nation

And its rehabilitation

Gallant Bagley bleeds and falls!

 

—VIII—

 

Yes, Alamance and Bethel’s story

Told again amid the glory

Challenges a nation’s praise,

Challenges the world’s amaze!

 

—IX—

 

Oh, with this Spirit, Carolinians

Onward to those pure dominions

Overspread by angels’ pinions,

By the strong Thought angels’ pinions;

Through all dreaming

With its leaning

Toward the infinite;

Through all seeming,

To God’s meaning,

Clear and definite;

Onward to those pure dominions

Overspread by angels’ pinions

Where divine, intensest light is;

Turn not backward where the night is,

For the sun, full-orbed, is risen;

Myriad voices call you.  Listen.

“Onward with your souls unfettered;

Lifting standards golden-lettered,

‘Esse Quam Videri’ graven,

Which no coward hands nor craven

Dare upraise!”  The Future calls you,

All her luminous doors uncloses,

Pelts you with her full-blown roses;

Heavenly Art and Music call you,

Science, Letters, Learning, call you,

All the Intellects and Sages

Of the lost and buried ages

Chanting in a glad acclaim;

Brothers, she who bore you, calls you;

Crown her with a deathless fame.

 

 

THE VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION.  5/20/1906 Sec.3, p. 5

 (This poem, which was written by Rev. Dr. Walter W. Moore, president of Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Va., won the $50 prize offered by The Observer in 1898 for the best poem on the Mecklenburg Declaration.  It was read for the first time on the occasion of the Mecklenburg Independence Day celebration, May 20th, 1898.)

To Piedmont Carolina, where virgin prairie soil

Bespoke abundant harvests to reward the tiller’s toil,

From homes beyond the ocean there came in days of old

A band of sturdy heroes, a race of yeoman bold.

On all Catawba’s uplands—for there they found their rest,

Those woods and wide savannahs fulfilled their longing quest—

They reared their modest dwelling, they built the kirk and school,

For well they knew how danger grew from skeptic and from fool.

Behind the walls of Derry their fathers’ faith in God

Had filled their souls with courage to defy the tyrant’s rod;

‘Twere folly then to fancy that sons of sires like these

Would bear a yoke of bondage or obey unjust decrees.

 Their heirloom was a Volume which taught the rights of man,

And made the least a king and priest free from despotic ban;

The people are the sovereigns, with rights inalienate,

The people make the government; the people are the State.

This truth was taught by Craighead, thus Mecklenburg believed,

And when oppressive measures passed, her sons were not deceived;

While others talked of Redress as subjects of the crown,

They boldly broke the tyrant’s yoke, and flung the gauntlet down.

From seven congregations in which they preached and prayed,

From woodlands and plantations, in homespun garb arrayed,

These yeoman rode to Charlotte, these men of mien sedate,

While high emprise shone in their eyes—they came to found the State.

And there these dauntless statesmen, in ringing words and high,

Declared their independence—“We’ll win it or we’ll die;

With lives and sacred honor, with fortunes great or small,

We will serve the cause of freedom, we will break the Briton’s thrall.”

Next year the nation followed where Mecklenburg had lead,

To all the world, with flag unfurled, her high resolve she read:

“No more shall sons of freemen endure the tyrant’s rod,

This land shall be as freedom free, or we forsworn to God.”

Though flaming broil of battle where Britons bravest stood,

On field and flood, by blade and blood, they made their pledges good.

And now, where’ere their banner floats over land and sea,

With grateful lays the people praise the men who made us free.

Then up with granite column inscribed with lofty phrase,

Let Mecklenburg’s achievements resound through endless days;

Her sons were first to utter the disenthralling word,

Let men proclaim their deathless name till all the world has heard.