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

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 kept 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,

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 valour lies,
 * By mourning beauty crowned.