Ode: Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867
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| Ode: Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867 by Henry Timrod |
Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
- Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
- The pilgrim here to pause
In seeds of laurel in the earth
- The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
- The shaft is in the stone!
Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
- Which kept in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! your sisters bring their tears,
- And these memorial blooms
Small tributes! but your shades will smile
- More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
- Shall overlook this bay.
Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
- There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valour lies,
- By mourning beauty crowned.