The shout of the savage their requiem, the hiss of the rifle their knell.
For what quiet and sheltered God's air would they barter that stained desert sod
Where at His trumpet summons of duty they gave back their souls to their God?
"Private, Number One Company, shot through the heart. First to fall." Words immortal, sublime
In their teaching, their power to move, and their pathos to plead, for all time.
Shall we blench where they led? Shall we falter where they at such cost won their crown?
"Greater love hath no man—" we all know it; they obeyed it and laid their lives down.
"Friends" then, martyrs now, heroes both ways, they bequeath us their strength for our parts;
Their example their fittest memorial, their epitaphs deep in our hearts.
From those graves on the far blood-stained prairie, on the field where their battle was done,