Bring the brightest flowers of our northern May,
O surviving comrades, to deck to-day
The memorial stones of the nation's dead;
Be the brightest words to their memory said,
That we may recall for a bright, brief time
Their achievements high and their fate sublime.
Let us then regret we can do no more,
That our flowers will fade ere the day is o'er.
Though our words were bright and as sweet as flowers,
They would pass from mind with the passing hours.
They are dim in mind, all those years of dread,
As a vague, wild dream of the night that's fled.
They are passing slowly from mental view,
All those missing forms in their garb of blue.
Let us make for them this an Easter day,
From the dead past's grave roll the stone away;
Let us sing as they used those old rallying rhymes,
Tell the old tales o'er of those strange, wild times
When the nation's life in the balance hung
And those precious lives in the scale were flung—
They were thrown and lost, but the land was saved.
On those marble shafts are the names engraved
Of the noble dead of Grant County's braves;
But how many sleep in their distant graves!
Some in lonely spots by the way were laid,
Or in cotton-fields where the camp was made;
Some in long, low ridges that dumbly tell
Where the fight was fiercest and hundreds fell.
Scores are sleeping now in one common grave,
And that grave unlettered and unmarked save
By the battle scars on the gray-green wood
Which amid the storm of shot sternly stood,
While the leaden cones, as they fiercely flew,
Carved the epitaphs of the men they slew.
Down by Vicksburg's cane-brakes and cliffs of clay,
'Mid the swamps and sand-hills 'round Mobile Bay,
From the Ozark hills to the swamp-stained flow
Of the broad Savannah through rice-fields low,
From the hights of Arlington, fortress-crowned,
To the Texan prairies, these graves are found.
Were they slain blood—all those martyred ones—
'Mid the shock of steel and the flash of guns?
Did the slashing saber and musket ball
And the shattered shell fill the graves of all?
No; the weary marches and winter storms
Wore the life from out many youthful forms;
And disease in many a deadly shape
Slew its thousands who from the fight made 'scape;
And the silent sweep of miasma's breath
Brought a surer though a more lingering death
From the marshy rivers through all the South
Than the iron breath from the cannon's mouth.
In the canvas walls where the red flag waved
Men in weakness drooped or in fever raved.
How they moaned and pined through the long, long days
In the stagnant air and the sun's fierce blaze!
How they longed to dip fevered lip and hand
In some cool, bright spring of the far Northland!
In the weary hours of their wearing pain,
Like the captive Jews on Assyria's plain,
When 't was morn they said, "Would to God 't were night!"
But at night they said, "Would to God 't were light!"
And those prison pens—oh! how poor and weak
Are the words we write and the words we speak
To relate that story so dark and long
Of unmeasured misery, deep, foul wrong!
Let us draw the vail, for I may not brook
For those deep, dark horrors a longer look.
'T was in part the ransom the brave boys paid
For the nation's life when their graves were made.
How despondence weighed on the drooping men
And the homesick boys who should ne'er again
See the homes they left when their hearts beat high
And they saw all fair where their way should lie.
In their youthful fancy 't was but to go
Far away from our northern land of snow
To the "sunny South" with its soft, bright glow,
Where the orange trees and magnolias blow.
'T was to march away to a land of fame
There to win in battle a deathless name,
Where our heroes fought in a gorgeous throng
And all was romance and battle song.
But they found these pictures that fancy drew
Soon were toned with lines of a darker hue;
Smeared with blood and dust were the blouses blue
And the music hushed when the fierce shells flew;
For they went not forth from their boyhood's home
In a land of glory and song to roam,
But to hunger and thirst, and the pestilence' breath,
And privations sore, and to danger and death.
Say, how many went nor returned again?
There went forth two thousand two hunded men
From old Grant; one-third, as those marbles tell,
In the four long years of the war-time fell.
Though their graves are few that are with us here,
And their names are many, this thought shall cheer:
There are other hearts that are loyal too,
There are willing hands, there are memories true,
That will deck the graves which are far away
With the southern roses this selfsame day.
And when these white shafts have with flowers been dressed,
And the kindest thoughts for the dead expressed,
We must leave them then in their graves' long rest
To our Father, who knoweth and doeth best.