| |
| FAR up the lonely mountain-side | |
| My wandering footsteps led; | |
| The moss lay thick beneath my feet, | |
| The pine sighed overhead. | |
| The trace of a dismantled fort | 5 |
| Lay in the forest nave, | |
| And in the shadow near my path | |
| I saw a soldier’s grave. | |
| |
| The bramble wrestled with the weed | |
| Upon the lowly mound;— | 10 |
| The simple head-board, rudely writ, | |
| Had rotted to the ground; | |
| I raised it with a reverent hand, | |
| From dust its words to clear, | |
| But time had blotted all but these— | 15 |
| “A Georgia Volunteer!” | |
| |
| I saw the toad and scaly snake | |
| From tangled covert start, | |
| And hide themselves among the weeds | |
| Above the dead man’s heart; | 20 |
| But undisturbed, in sleep profound, | |
| Unheeding, there he lay; | |
| His coffin but the mountain soil, | |
| His shroud Confederate gray. | |
| |
| I heard the Shenandoah roll | 25 |
| Along the vale below, | |
| I saw the Alleghanies rise | |
| Towards the realms of snow. | |
| The “Valley Campaign” rose to mind— | |
| Its leader’s name—and then | 30 |
| I knew the sleeper had been one | |
| Of Stonewall Jackson’s men. | |
| |
| Yet whence he came, what lip shall say— | |
| Whose tongue will ever tell | |
| What desolated hearths and hearts | 35 |
| Have been because he fell? | |
| What sad-eyed maiden braids her hair, | |
| Her hair which he held dear? | |
| One lock of which perchance lies with | |
| The Georgia Volunteer! | 40 |
| |
| What mother, with long watching eyes, | |
| And white lips cold and dumb, | |
| Waits with appalling patience for | |
| Her darling boy to come? | |
| Her boy! whose mountain grave swells up | 45 |
| But one of many a scar, | |
| Cut on the face of our fair land, | |
| By gory-handed war. | |
| |
| What fights he fought, what wounds he wore, | |
| Are all unknown to fame; | 50 |
| Remember, on his lonely grave | |
| There is not e’en a name! | |
| That he fought well and bravely too, | |
| And held his country dear, | |
| We know, else he had never been | 55 |
| A Georgia Volunteer. | |
| |
| He sleeps—what need to question now | |
| If he were wrong or right? | |
| He knows, ere this, whose cause was just | |
| In God the Father’s sight. | 60 |
| He wields no warlike weapons now, | |
| Returns no foeman’s thrust— | |
| Who but a coward would revile | |
| An honest soldier’s dust? | |
| |
| Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll, | 65 |
| Adown thy rocky glen, | |
| Above thee lies the grave of one | |
| Of Stonewall Jackson’s men. | |
| Beneath the cedar and the pine, | |
| In solitude austere, | 70 |
| Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies | |
| A Georgia Volunteer. | |
| |
