A Forty hours' bombardment! Great guns throwing
   Their iron hail: shells their mad mines exploding:
Furnaces lighted: shot at red-heat glowing:
   Shore-battr'ies and fort-armament, firing, loading—
War's visible hell let loose for forty hours,
And all her devils free to use their powers—
And yet not one man hit, her flag when Sumter lowers.

"Oh, here's a theme!" quoth Punch, of brag abhorrent,
   "'Twixt promise and performance rare proportion!
This show-cloth, of live lions, giving warrant,
   Masking some mangy, stunted, stuffed abortion:
These gorgeous covers hiding empty dishes,
These whale-like antics among little fishes—
Here is the very stuff to meet my dearest wishes.

What ringing of each change on brag and bluster!
   These figures huge of speech, summed in a zero:
This war-march, ushering in Bombastes' muster:
   This entry of Tom Thumb, armed like a hero.
Of all great cries e'er raised o'er little wool,
Of all big bubbles by fools' breath filled full,
Sure here's the greatest yet, and emptiest, for John Bull!

John always thought Jonathan, his young brother,
   A little of a bully; said he swaggered:
But in all change of chaff with one another,
   Nor John nor Jonathan was e'er called 'laggard.'
But now, if John mayn't Jonathan style 'coward,'
He may hint Stripes and Stars were better lowered
From that tall height to which, till now, their flag-staff towered."

Punch nibbed his pen, all jubilant, for galling—
   When suddenly a weight weighed down the feather,
And a red liquid, drop by drop, slow falling,
   Came from the nib; and the drops rolled together,
And steamed and smoked and sung—"Not ink, but blood;
Drops now, but soon to swell into a flood,
Perchance e'er Summer's leaf has burst Spring's guarding bud.

Blood by a brother's hand drawn from a brother—
   And they by whom 'tis ta'en, by whom 'tis given,
Are both the children of an English mother;
   Once with that mother, in her wrath, they've striven:
Was't not enough, that parricidal jar,
But they must now meet in fraternal war?
If such strife draw no blood shall England scoff therefore?

If she will laugh, through thee, her chartered wit,
   Use thou no ink wherewith to pen thy scoff:
We'll find a liquor for thy pen more fit—
   We blood drops—see how smartly thou'lt round off
Point, pun and paragraph in this new way:
Till men shall read and laugh, and, laughing, say,
'Well thrust! Punch is in vein: 'tis his red-letter day.'"

The weight sat on my quill: I could not write;
   The red drops lustered to my pen—in vain;
I had my theme—"Brothers that meet in fight,
   Yet shed no blood!"—my jesting mood turned pain.
I thought of all that civil love endears,
That civil strife breaks up and rends and sears,
And lo! the blood-drops in my pen were changed to tears!

And for the hoarse tongues that those bloody gouts
   Had found, or seemed to find, upon my ears
Came up a gentle song in linkèd bouts,
   Of long-drawn sweetness—pity breathed through tears.

      And thus they sang—"'Twas not by chance,
      Still less by fraud or fear,
      That Sumter's battle came and closed,
      Nor cost the world a tear."

Far across Atlantic waters
   Groans in chains a Giant King;
Like to him, whom Ocean's daughters
   Wail around in mournful ring,
In the grand old Grecian strains
Of Prometheus in his chains!

Needs but Fancy's pencil pliant
   Both to paint till both agree;
For King Cotton is a giant,
   As Prometheus claimed to be.
Each gave blessings unto men,
Each dishonour reaped again.

From the gods to sons of clay
   If Prometheus brought the flame,
Who King Cotton can gainsay,
   Should he equal honour claim?
Fire and life to millions giving,
That, without him, had no living.

And if they are one in blessing,
   So in suffering they are one;
   Freeze in frost and scorch in sun:
That, upon his mountain chain,
This, upon his parching plain.

Nor the wild bird's self is wanting—
   Either giant's torment sore;
If Prometheus writhed, while panting
   Heart and lungs the vulture tore,
So Columbia's eagle fierce,
Doth King Cotton's vitals pierce.

On those wings so widely sweeping
   In its poise the bird to keep,
See, if you can see for weeping.
   "North" and "South" are branded deep—
On the beak all reeking red,
On the talons blood-bespread!

But 'tis not