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.