ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN.
* * * * *
ODE.
[Sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate
dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C.]
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 keep 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,
Then 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 valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!
HENRY TIMROD.
* * * * *
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY.
[The women of Columbus, Mississippi, strewed flowers alike on the
graves of the Confederate and the National soldiers.]
By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver
Asleep are the ranks of the dead;--
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;--
Under the one, the Blue;
Under the other, the Gray.
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