Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/252

 renewed force. The saxifrages and the smilacina have not ventured far out of the all-sheltering wood, but the Confederate gray is borne all over the score of memorial acres by the wild immortelles, everlasting, as the children call them, and no caretaker's rake or lawnmower can keep these down, or clip the violets so close that their blue fails to nestle lovingly where heroes lie. All over the place from spring until autumn these two set their garlands side by side, as do those who mourn on the one Memorial Day of the year. Thus constant are the sun and rain and the tiny herbs of the brown earth.

As the boldest soldiers in the fray held oftenest the foremost ramparts and felt themselves fortunate in their position, so I think it must be with those veterans who rest nearest the brow of the hill, where it seems as if they could look forth over miles of beautiful forests to the blue hills which are other ramparts on the horizon. Here of an early morning of this misty May they might well think they saw gray troopers form and advance in battalions that sweep down from the hills to eastward and charge over the treetops of the vale