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                     [Illustration: S. C. MERCER]




                                 POEMS

                                  BY

                             S. C. MERCER

                    [Illustration: text decoration]

              Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito
                              --_Virgil_

                    [Illustration: text decoration]

                              LOUISVILLE
                       JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY
                             INCORPORATED
                                 1908




                           Copyright, 1908,
                                  BY
                             S. C. MERCER




          FOREWORD.


The poems here collected are in the main reprints of pieces that
originally appeared in various newspapers and periodicals, beginning
with the Louisville Journal in the late ’50s. This newspaper was at that
time edited by the brilliant George D. Prentice, my personal friend, who
a few years after I had left college offered me the assistant editorship
of his paper. The imperative duty which at that time I owed to others
forced me to decline this offer, although for many years I wrote
editorials and verses for this then powerful and widely read journal.
Many of the poems here collected have appeared in the columns of the
Louisville daily papers and have been copied in other journals, North
and South, and in poetic collections. Others were first printed in the
Nashville Press and Times, of which I was editor during my two terms as
Public Printer of Tennessee, during the administrations of Military
Governor Andrew Johnson and of Governor Brownlow in the days of
Reconstruction.

It will be noticed that the partisan poems breathe the spirit of the
times in which they were written--the stormy ’60s--but I have not
thought it wise to change their tone, they being now only the record of
a long-since departed day. There has been some controversy as to the
authorship of the poem “The Angel of the Hospital,” owing to a
manuscript copy of this poem being found on the body of a young
Confederate officer killed in one of the battles in Georgia, and from
which the poem was reprinted in many of the Southern newspapers. I had
previously, however, printed it in the Louisville Journal, and as
newspapers were scarce in the South at that time, the unfortunate youth
must have copied the verses before passing the newspaper on to his
comrades.

THE AUTHOR.

Hopkinsville, June 30, 1908.




          INDEX


                                                                    PAGE
The Two Kentuckians                                                    1

The Hunter’s Last Ride                                                 6

The Old Rock Spring                                                   10

A Lyric for Lilian                                                    11

The Strawberry Bowl                                                   12

Hymn                                                                  18

John Morgan and His Men                                               19

The Whippoorwill                                                      24

The New South                                                         25

A Fever Dream                                                         26

Major Bassett’s Chase                                                 29

The Ten Brothers                                                      31

Echo River                                                            33

The Angel of the Hospital                                             36

The Two Singers                                                       39

Battle of Mill Spring                                                 41

The Greek Slave                                                       42

Ode to Impudence                                                      44

My Birthday                                                           48

Battle of Nashville                                                   49

Blonde and Brunette                                                   53

Gray and Blue                                                         54

Bishop Dudley’s Dirge                                                 55

The Dress Circle                                                      56

In Memoriam                                                           60

The Sorrows of Hinda and Kleinfelter                                  61

Dr. John A. Broaddus                                                  65

To Leonora                                                            67

At His Post                                                           69

Reconciliation                                                        71

Ophelia                                                               74

Death of the Seasons                                                  76

New Year Ode, 1861                                                    78

Monody                                                                83

Washington’s Birthday Ode                                             86

To April                                                              87

Ode on the Death of Leo XIII                                          88

Chiabrera’s Epitaph                                                   90

Elegy                                                                 91

To the Law and Order League                                           92

“With Thy Shield, or Upon It”                                         94

Confirmation at St. Andrew’s                                          96

The Christmas Flower 98

To the Soldiers of General Dumont