“Stand thence, a mark for the better and nobler ambition!
For they are holy, the wounds that the Southerner dealt thee:
Count them blessed, and blessed the mother that bore thee.
“Would that the thing I best love, ay, the son of my bosom,
Suffering beside thee, had shared the high deed and its glory!
Shall we bend over those wounds with our tears and our balsams,—
Tears warm with rapture, balsams of costliest clearness?
Take thy deserving, then; wear it for life on thy forehead!
Crowned with those scars, shalt thou enter the just man’s heaven,—
Crowned with those scars, shalt thou stand in the record of heroes!