Excerpt from
Ode for Decoration Day
by Henry Peterson (1818-1891) |
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O GALLANT brothers of the generous South,
Foes for a
day and brothers for all time!
I charge you by the
memories of our youth,
By Yorktown's field and
Montezuma's clime,
Hold our dead sacred�let them quietly
rest
In your unnumbered vales, where God thought best.
Your vines and flowers learned long since to forgive,
And
o'er their graves a broidered mantle weave:
Be you as
kind as they are, and the word
Shall reach the Northland
with each summer bird,
And thoughts as sweet as summer
shall awake
Responsive to your kindness, and shall make
Our peace the peace of brothers once again,
And banish
utterly the days of pain.
And ye, O Northmen! be ye
not outdone
In generous thought and deed.
We all do
need forgiveness, every one;
And they that give shall
find it in their need.
Spare of your flowers to deck the
stranger's grave,
Who died for a lost cause:
A soul
more daring, resolute, and brave,
Ne'er won a world's
applause.
A brave man's hatred pauses at the tomb.
For
him some Southern home was robed in gloom,
Some wife or
mother looked with longing eyes
Through the sad days and
nights with tears and sighs,
Hope slowly hardening into
gaunt Despair
Then let your foeman's grave remembrance
share:
Pity a higher charm to Valor lends,
And in the
realms of Sorrow all are friends. |
By Henry Peterson (1818-1891)
Listed February 22, 2013 |
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