And all of earth's sublimity was melted in its lays!
Then, as the modest flower upturned her blue eyes to the sun,
There fell a dewdrop on her breast as shaken from a tree;
The lowliest of the sisterhood the godlike Crown had won;
For hers it was to consecrate Truth's Immortality.
The woodlands caught the airy fire upon their vernal plumes,
And echoed back the waterfall's exultant, trilling laugh;
And through the branches fell the light in slender golden blooms,
To sanctify the Violet, the Soldier's Epitaph.
I asked the General of the Mackerel Brigade, the other day, what kind of a flower he thought would spring above my head when I rested in a soldier's sepulchre? and he said "A cabbage!" my boy—he said "A cabbage!"