While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear,
Falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses.”
At the head of the procession in Hyde Park, as the body was taken from the train to its resting-place, was the Army band from West Point, with “its members in uniforms composed of dark blue tunic, lighter blue trousers with white stripes. Their silver instruments gleamed.” First there were the sounds of muffled drums. Then the band took up Chopin’s “Funeral March.” Six hundred West Pointers “formed a solid phalanx facing the grave from the west. The brief rites were conducted by the Rev. George W. Anthony, the venerable rector. It was brief and simple. As the body was lowered into the grave he intoned the opening lines of the widely used hymn of John Ellerton:
“Now the laborer’s task is o’er;
Now the battle day is past;
Now upon the farther shore
Lands the voyager at last.
Father, in Thy gracious keeping