[May 12, 1864]
We could not pause, while yet the noontide air
Shook with the cannonade's incessant pealing,
The funeral pageant fitly to prepare—
A nation's grief revealing.
The smoke, above the glimmering woodland wide
That skirts our southward border in its beauty,
Marked where our heroes stood and fought and died
For love and faith and duty.
And still, what time the doubtful strife went on,
We might not find expression for our sorrow;
We could but lay our dear dumb warrior down,
And gird us for the morrow.
One weary year agone, when came a lull
With victory in the conflict's stormy closes,
When the glad Spring, all flushed and beautiful,
First mocked us with her roses,
With dirge and bell and minute-gun, we paid
Some few poor rites—an inexpressive token
Of a great people's pain—to Jackson's shade,
In agony unspoken.
No wailing trumpet and no tolling bell,
No cannon, save the battle's boom receding,
[When Stuart to the grave we bore], might tell,
With hearts all crushed and bleeding.
The crisis suited not with pomp, and she
Whose anguish bears the seal of consecration
Had wished his Christian obsequies should be
Thus void of ostentation.
Only the maidens came, sweet flowers to twine
Above his form so still and cold and painless,
Whose deeds upon our brightest records shine,
Whose life and sword were stainless.
They well remembered how he loved to dash
Into the fight, festooned from summer bowers;
How like a fountain's spray his sabre's flash
Leaped from a mass of flowers.