Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Henry LyndenFlash

863 Stonewall Jackson

NOT midst the lightning of the stormy fight,

Nor in the rush upon the vandal foe,

Did kingly Death, with his resistless might,

Lay the great leader low.

His warrior soul its earthly shackles broke

In the full sunshine of a peaceful town;

When all the storm was hushed, the trusty oak

That propped our cause went down.

Though his alone the blood that flecks the ground,

Recalling all his grand heroic deeds,

Freedom herself is writhing in the wound,

And all the country bleeds.

He entered not the nation’s Promised Land

At the red belching of the cannon’s mouth,

But broke the House of Bondage with his hand—

The Moses of the South!

O gracious God! not gainless is the loss:

A glorious sunbeam gilds thy sternest frown;

And while his country staggers ’neath the Cross,

He rises with the Crown!