| |
| A ROSE’S crimson stain, | |
| A rose’s stainless white, | |
| Fitly become the immortal slain | |
| Who fell in the great fight. | |
| When Armistead died amid his foes, | 5 |
| Girt by the rebel cheer, | |
| God plucked a soul like a white rose | |
| In June time o’ the year. | |
| |
| The blood in Pickett’s heart | |
| Was of a ruddier hue | 10 |
| Than the reddest bloom whose petals part | |
| To welcome heaven’s dew. | |
| I think the fairest flowers that blow | |
| Should greet the life-stream shed | |
| In that historic long ago | 15 |
| By this historic dead. | |
| |
| The immemorial years | |
| Such valor never knew | |
| As poured a flood of crimson blood | |
| At Gettysburg with you. | 20 |
| Living and dead, in faith the same, | |
| I see you on that height, | |
| Crowned with the rosy wreath of fame | |
| Won in the fatal fight. | |
| |
| Not these had made afraid | 25 |
| King Arthur’s mystic sword— | |
| Not Bayard’s most chivalric blade, | |
| Nor Gideon’s, for the Lord. | |
| Yours was the strain of high emprise, | |
| Yours the unfaltering faith,— | 30 |
| The honor lofty as the skies, | |
| The duty strong as death. | |
| |
| When Douglas flung the heart | |
| Of Bruce amid his foes, | |
| And said: “He leads. We do not part: | 35 |
| I follow where he goes,” | |
| No mightier impulse stirred his soul | |
| Than that which up you height | |
| Moved you with Pickett toward the goal | |
| Of freedom in that fight. | 40 |
| |
| The fair goal was not won, | |
| The famous fight was lost; | |
| But never shone the all-seeing sun | |
| On more heroic host. | |
| Your deeds of mighty prowess shame | 45 |
| All deeds of derring-do | |
| With which Time’s bloody pages flame. | |
| —Hail and farewell to you! | |
| |
| Unto the dead farewell! | |
| They are hid in the dark and cold; | 50 |
| And the broken shaft and the roses tell | |
| What is left of the tale untold. | |
| They are deaf to the martial music’s call | |
| Till a judgment dawn shall break, | |
| When the trumpet of Truth shall proclaim to all: | 55 |
| “They perished for my sake!” | |
| |
| Let them be quiet here | |
| Where birds and blossoms be;— | |
| And hail to you, who bring the tear | |
| And the rose of memory | 60 |
| To water and deck each lowly grave | |
| Of those who in God’s sight | |
| With loyal hearts their hearts’ blood gave | |
| For the eternal right! | |
| |
| Alike for low and high | 65 |
| The roses white and red: | |
| For valor and honor cannot die, | |
| And they were of these dead. | |
| The private in his jacket of gray | |
| And the general with his star | 70 |
| The Lord God knighted alike that day, | |
| In the red front of War. | |
| |
