LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG.
After the Bishop’s sermon the final absolution of the body was given and then the procession marched to the modest little cemetery and Mother Angela was laid to rest within a stone’s throw of where the greater part of her life work had been performed.
Mother Angela is the original of the Sister of the Holy Cross portrayed in the following poem:
I.
The din of the battle has died away;
The twilight has grown to a deeper gray;
The moon rises pale through the mistly cloud,
While the blood-stained rivulet moans aloud;
And the beams are faint in the kindly stars,
For hope shines no more from their golden bars.
The leaves of the tremulous aspen sigh
As the night winds, wailing, sweep mournfully by.
The ambulance glides through the gloomy path,
To heed the wreck of the War Demon’s wrath;
And the Angel of Peace, from his home sublime,
Weeps o’er man’s wretchedness, folly and crime.
II.
’Tis the hour of midnight. How lightly tread
The feet of the watcher, ’mid dying and dead.
Lo! the sable veil and the saintly air,
And the lofty calm of a beauty rare,
Proclaim that watcher, the chosen bride,
Of the world’s Redeemer—the Crucified
The stifled groan, the sharp cry of distress
With their burden of woe, through the hot air press,
And the Sister of Holy Cross low doth bend;
Her prayer with the pestilence breath to blend.
O Sister of Holy Cross, why art thou
Thus won by the pallid and death-cold brow?
III.
He is not thy brother, yon prostrate form,
Who moans there all bathed in his life-blood warm;
And the veteran wounded—his locks so gray—
He is not thy father; then, wherefore stay?
All these are but strangers. Thou, too, art frail;
Contagion is borne on the midnight gale.
Ah! a veteran heart, and a nerve more strong,
Unto scenes and to sights like these belong.
O I see her bend with a gentler grace,
And a holier light in her tranquil face,
And sweet tears methinks from her mild eyes flow
As she bends o’er her crucifix fondly, low!