Entered in the office of the Librarian of Congress, 1891.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
The long years come and go,
And the Past,
The sorrowful splendid Past,
With its glory and its woe,
Seems never to have been.
Seems never to have been!
O somber days and grand,
How ye crowd back once more,
Seeing our heroes graves are green
By the Potomac, and the Cumberland
And in the valley of the Shenandoah!
When we remember how they died,
In dark ravine and on the mountain side,
In leaguered fort and fire-encircled town,
And where the iron ships went down.
How their dear lives were spent
In the weary hospital tent,
In the cockpit's crowded hive,
—— it seems
Ignoble to be alive!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
CONTENTS.
Chapter I.
[Ancestry and Old Plantation Life]
Chapter II.