Go! wearing the gray of grief! 
   Go! watch o’er the Dead in Gray! 
 Go guard the private and guard the chief,
   And sentinel their clay!

 And the songs, in stately rhyme,
   And with softly sounding tread,
 Go forth, to watch for a time—­a time,
   Where sleep the Deathless Dead.

 And the songs, like funeral dirge,
   In music soft and low,
 Sing round the graves,—­whilst not tears surge
   From hearts that are homes of woe.

 What though no sculptured shaft
   Immortalize each brave? 
 What though no monument epitaphed
   Be built above each grave?

 When marble wears away,
   And monuments are dust,—­
 The songs that guard our soldiers’ clay
   Will still fulfil their trust.

  With lifted head, and steady tread,
    Like stars that guard the skies,
  Go watch each bed, where rest the dead,
    Brave Songs! with sleepless eyes.

ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN.

* * * * *

ODE.

[Sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C.]

  Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,—­
    Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause! 
  Though yet no marble column craves
    The pilgrim here to pause,

  In seeds of laurel in the earth
    The blossom of your fame is blown,
  And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
    The shaft is in the stone!

  Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
    Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
  Behold! your sisters bring their tears,
    And these memorial blooms.

  Small tributes! but your shades will smile
    More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
  Then when some cannon-moulded pile
    Shall overlook this bay.

  Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! 
    There is no holier spot of ground
  Than where defeated valor lies,
    By mourning beauty crowned!

HENRY TIMROD.

* * * * *

THE BLUE AND THE GRAY.

[The women of Columbus, Mississippi, strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and the National soldiers.]

  By the flow of the inland river,
    Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
  Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver
    Asleep are the ranks of the dead;—­
      Under the sod and the dew,
        Waiting the judgment-day;—­
      Under the one, the Blue;
        Under the other, the Gray.

  These in the robing of glory,
    Those in the gloom of defeat,
  All with the battle-blood gory,
    In the dusk of eternity meet;—­
      Under the sod and the dew,
        Waiting the judgment-day;—­
      Under the laurel, the Blue;
        Under the willow, the Gray.