The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 9: Poetry and Eloquence.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

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[276]

Small tributes! but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than 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.

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Over their graves

Over their graves rang once the bugle's call,
The searching shrapnel and the crashing ball;
The shriek, the shock of battle, and the neigh
Of horse; the cries of anguish and dismay;
And the loud cannon's thunders that appall.

Now through the years the brown pine-needles fall,
The vines run riot by the old stone wall,
By hedge, by meadow streamlet, far away,
Over their graves.

We love our dead where'er so held in thrall.
Than they no Greek more bravely died, nor Gaul—
A love that's deathless!—but they look to-day
With no reproaches on us when we say,
‘Come, let us grasp your hands, we're brothers all, Over their graves!’

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A Georgia volunteer

The author of these verses was born in Lyons, New York, but on her marriage to Gideon Townsend she made her home in New Orleans. How thoroughly she identified herself with her adopted section is evident.

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Far up the lonely mountain-side
My wandering footsteps led;
The moss lay thick beneath my feet,
The pine sighed overhead.
The trace of a dismantled fort
Lay in the forest nave,
And in the shadow near my path
I saw a soldier's grave.