Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LINES ON THE BACK OF A CONFEDERATE NOTE, by SAMUEL ALROY JONAS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LINES ON THE BACK OF A CONFEDERATE NOTE, by                    
First Line: Representing nothing on god's earth now
Last Line: Like our hope of success it has passed.
Subject(s): American Civil War; Confederate States Of America; Patriotism; United States - History; Confederacy


REPRESENTING nothing on God's earth now,
And naught in the waters below it,
As the pledge of a nation that's dead and gone,
Keep it, dear friends, and show it.

Show it to those who will lend an ear
To the tale that this trifle can tell,
Of a liberty born of a patriot's dream,
Of a storm-cradled nation that fell.

Too poor to possess the precious ores,
And too much of a stranger to borrow,
We issued today our promise to pay
And hoped to redeem on the morrow.

The days rolled by and the weeks became years,
But our coffers were empty still.
Coin was so rare that the treasury'd quake
If a dollar dropped into the till.

But the faith that was in us was strong indeed,
And our poverty well we discerned,
And this little note represented the pay
That our suffering veterans earned.

They knew it had hardly a value in gold,
Yet as gold each soldier received it.
It gazed in our eyes with a promise to pay,
And every true soldier believed it.

But our boys thought little of price or of pay,
Or of bills that were long past due;
We knew if it brought us our bread today,
'Twas the best our poor country could do.

Keep it; it tells all our history over,
From the birth of the dream to its last:
Modest and born of the Angel of Hope,
Like our hope of success it has passed.





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