| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900. |
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| 1324. Over Their Graves |
| | | By Henry Jerome Stockard |
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| OVER their graves rang once the bugle’s call, | |
| The searching shrapnel and the crashing ball; | |
| The shriek, the shock of battle, and the neigh | |
| Of horse; the cries of anguish and dismay; | |
| And the loud cannon’s thunders that appall. | 5 |
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| Now through the years the brown pine-needles fall, | |
| The vines run riot by the old stone wall, | |
| By hedge, by meadow streamlet, far away, | |
| Over their graves. | |
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| We love our dead where’er so held in thrall. | 10 |
| Than they no Greek more bravely died, nor Gaul— | |
| A love that ’s deathless!—but they look to-day | |
| With no reproaches on us when we say, | |
| “Come, let us clasp your hands, we ’re brothers all, | |
| Over their graves!” | 15 |
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