Henry Timrod

Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867

    I

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

    II

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!

    III

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

    IV

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

    V

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