Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead

Henry Timrod (1828–1867)

[At Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C.]

SLEEP sweetly in your humble graves,—

Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause!

Though yet no marble column craves

The pilgrim here to pause,

In seeds of laurel in the earth

The blossom of your fame is blown,

And somewhere, waiting for its birth,

The shaft is in the stone!

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years

Which keep in trust your storied tombs,

Behold! your sisters bring their tears,

And these memorial blooms.

Small tributes! but your shades will smile

More proudly on these wreaths to-day,

Then when some cannon-moulded pile

Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!

There is no holier spot of ground

Than where defeated valor lies,

By mourning beauty crowned!