May
AT ARLINGTON
The dead had rest; the Dove of Peace
Brooded o’er both with equal wings;
To both had come that great surcease.
The last omnipotent release
From all the world’s delirious stings.
To bugle deaf and signal-gun,
They slept, like heroes of old Greece,
Beneath the glebe at Arlington.
And in the Spring’s benignant reign,
The sweet May woke her harp of pines;
Teaching her choir a thrilling strain
Of jubilee to land and main.
She danced in emerald down the lines;
Denying largesse bright to none,
She saw no difference in the signs
That told who slept at Arlington.
She gave her grasses and her showers
To all alike who dreamed in dust;
Her song-birds wove their dainty bowers
Amid the jasmine buds and flowers,
And piped with an impartial trust—
Waifs of the air and liberal sun,
Their guileless glees were kind and just
To friend and foe at Arlington.
James Ryder Randall
May First
The linnet, the lark, and oriel
Were chanting the loves they chant so well;
It was blue all above, below all green,
With the radiant glow of noon between.
Joseph Salyards
(Idothea; Idyl III)
May Second
A strange fatality attended us! Jackson killed in the zenith of his successful career; Longstreet wounded when in the act of striking a blow that would have rivalled Jackson’s at Chancellorsville in its results; and in each case the fire was from our own men! A blunder! Call it so; the old deacon would say that God willed it thus.
Col. Walter H. Taylor
Stonewall Jackson wounded at Chancellorsville, 1863