Stop The Reunions - David Bailey Freeman

Let us stop these reunions, we now hear the cry;
They've been held long enough, we should now let them die.
Old age is a fact we cannot gainsay
And the fiat of time we must haste to obey.

Some one over eighty has had a good time;
Had a surfeit of honors-attention sublime;
Is now beset with a grouch or some bodily ill
And couldn't if he would go the gait still.

He seems mad at the boys around seventy-five,
Who, not ready to give up, would keep things alive.
He might can his ire and get out of the way
And let these youngsters have at least a brief sway.

No, we've said it, yes, once for all;
The word must go forth with no chance of recall.
Very well, as you'd have it, the mandate goes out.
We'll make it as sweeping as you've made it stout.

Go quickly and stop that band over there;
It's giving us a worn out, sickening air.
The strains of you "Dixie" we've heard till we're tired
And it's fouling the air is no longer desired.

The G.A.R.'s (Grand Army of the Republic), they bother us not,
And they may reun'e till doomsday for all that we wot,
"Marching Through Georgia" they may play at their pleasure,
With a snatch of "John Brown" thrown in for good measure.

Go to your schools, tell them books they might teach
Defending the Southland they must keep out of reach.
The Confed was a traitor, the Yank was a saint
Is the line to be followed as the one without taint.

That tattered battle flag, don't flaunt it again;
A glimpse of its folds gives us naught else but pain.
It's an emblem of nothing we care to cherish,
So let the cheap sentiment surrounding it perish.

And those Sons, who've been boasting their sires wore the gray,
Remind them we've had quite enough of their say.
Stop all such racket, your orders disband
That would keep yet alive the things we can't stand.

And those Daughters, too, from their purpose we'd swerve-
The South's so-called legends through the years to preserve.
Those "hallowed memories" have quite lost their charm,
And we know of them now as insignia of harm.

That bright little girl, who finds such great joy
As a Child of the Confederacy a term to employ,
Go stifle her error ere it taint her young mind
And something worth while for her seek to find.

Shall all this come about while our folks have a say?
I don't believe it; they don't want it that way.
The idea'll assuage like a punctured balloon
And the remnant in gray not yet cease to reune.

We Confeds to Old Glory are now loyal and true,
We love, nevertheless, our dear Southland, too.
With apologies none for our part in the play,
We'd see Old Animosity laid soundly away.