I wish I had a barrel of rum

Oh! pure as the breast of a virgin saint,Drift tenderly, soft and slow.Over the slopes of the sunrise land,And into the haunted dellsOf the forest of pine, where the roving windsAre tuning their memory bells.Into the forests of sighing pines,And over those yellow slopes,That show not the work of the cleaving plow,But cover so many…

I went to Yankee’s house, Yankee he had fled,Caught him on the battle-field, and there I killed him dead.

They cut down the trees, and they build;They work always – building.From the elevation of the mountainsideI behold the clouds:The clouds build many beautiful houses in the sky:They build, and they tear down;They build, and they dissolve. . . .The cities of white men,They are not beautiful like the cloud cities;They are not vast, like…

to Virginia by James B. Gray, his claimant.Sadly the fugitive weeps in his cell,Listen awhile to the story we tell;Listen ye gentle ones, listen ye brave,Lady fair! Lady fair! weep for the slave.Praying for liberty, dearer than life,Torn from his little one, torn from his wife,Flying from slavery, hear him and save,Christian men! Christian men!…

A soldier, alone in the dark and cold,Is keeping the watch tonight.As he paces his round he sees the lightOf his comrades’ campfire, gleaming far,Through the dusky wood, and one bright starLooks down with a twinkle of light and loveFrom the frosty sky that bends above.Large, clear and bright in the far off skiesIt twinkles…

I lament her sad fate, all so hopeless and dreary,I lament for her woes, and her wrongs unredressed.O who can imagine her heart’s deep emotion,As she thinks of her children about to be sold;You may picture the bounds of the rock-girdled ocean,But the grief of that mother can never be known.The mildew of slavery has…