WE could not pause, while yet the noontide air | |
| Shook with the cannonade’s incessant pealing, | |
| The funeral pageant fitly to prepare— | |
| A nation’s grief revealing. | |
| |
| The smoke, above the glimmering woodland wide | 5 |
| That skirts our southward border in its beauty, | |
| Marked where our heroes stood and fought and died | |
| For love and faith and duty. | |
| |
| And still, what time the doubtful strife went on, | |
| We might not find expression for our sorrow; | 10 |
| We could but lay our dear dumb warrior down, | |
| And gird us for the morrow. | |
| |
| One weary year agone, when came a lull | |
| With victory in the conflict’s stormy closes, | |
| When the glad Spring, all flushed and beautiful, | 15 |
| First mocked us with her roses, | |
| |
| With dirge and bell and minute-gun, we paid | |
| Some few poor rites—an inexpressive token | |
| Of a great people’s pain—to Jackson’s shade, | |
| In agony unspoken. | 20 |
| |
| No wailing trumpet and no tolling bell, | |
| No cannon, save the battle’s boom receding, | |
| When Stuart to the grave we bore, might tell, | |
| With hearts all crushed and bleeding. | |
| |
| The crisis suited not with pomp, and she | 25 |
| Whose anguish bears the seal of consecration | |
| Had wished his Christian obsequies should be | |
| Thus void of ostentation. | |
| |
| Only the maidens came, sweet flowers to twine | |
| Above his form so still and cold and painless, | 30 |
| Whose deeds upon our brightest records shine, | |
| Whose life and sword were stainless. | |
| |
| They well remembered how he loved to dash | |
| Into the fight, festooned from summer bowers; | |
| How like a fountain’s spray his sabre’s flash | 35 |
| Leaped from a mass of flowers. | |
| |
| And so we carried to his place of rest | |
| All that of our great Paladin was mortal: | |
| The cross, and not the sabre, on his breast, | |
| That opes the heavenly portal. | 40 |
| |
| No more of tribute might to us remain; | |
| But there will still come a time when Freedom’s martyrs | |
| A richer guerdon of renown shall gain | |
| Than gleams in stars and garters. | |
| |
| I hear from out that sunlit land which lies | 45 |
| Beyond these clouds that gather darkly o’er us, | |
| The happy sounds of industry arise | |
| In swelling peaceful chorus. | |
| |
| And mingling with these sounds, the glad acclaim | |
| Of millions undisturbed by war’s afflictions, | 50 |
| Crowning each martyr’s never dying name | |
| With grateful benedictions. | |
| |
| In some fair future garden of delights, | |
| Where flowers shall bloom and song-birds sweetly warble, | |
| Art shall erect the statues of our knights | 55 |
| In living bronze and marble. | |
| |
| And none of all that bright heroic throng | |
| Shall wear to far-off time a semblance grander, | |
| Shall still be decked with fresher wreaths of song, | |
| Than this beloved commander. | 60 |
| |
| The Spanish legend tells us of the Cid, | |
| That after death he rode, erect, sedately, | |
| Along his lines, even as in life he did, | |
| In presence yet more stately; | |
| |
| And thus our Stuart, at this moment, seems | 65 |
| To ride out of our dark and troubled story | |
| Into the region of romance and dreams, | |
| A realm of light and glory; | |
| |
| And sometimes, when the silver bugles blow, | |
| That ghostly form, in battle reappearing, | 70 |
| Shall lead his horsemen headlong on the foe, | |
| In victory careering! | |
| |
