A Meditation:

Attributed to a northerner after attending the last of two funerals from the same homestead—those of a national and a confederate officer (brothers), his kinsmen, who had died from the effects of wounds received in the closing battles.

A Meditation.

How often in the years that close,

When truce had stilled the sieging gun,

The soldiers, mounting on their works,

With mutual curious glance have run

From face to face along the fronting show,

And kinsman spied, or friend—even in a foe.

What thoughts conflicting then were shared.