Page:Maryland, my Maryland, and other poems - Randall - 1908.pdf/43

 The house is ashes where I dwelt
 * Beyond the mighty inland sea,

The tombstones shattered where I knelt
 * By that old church upon the lee.

The prowling fiends who came with fire
 * Camped on the consecrated sod,

And trampled in the dust and mire
 * The holy tenement of God!

The spot where darling mother sleeps,
 * Beneath the glimpse of yon sad moon,

Is crushed, with splintered marble heaps,
 * To stall the horse of some dragoon.

And when I ponder that black day,
 * It makes my frantic spirit wince;

I marched—with Longstreet—far away,
 * But have beheld the ravage since.

The tears are hot upon my face,
 * When thinking what bleak fate befell

The only sister of our race—
 * A thing too horrible to tell.

They say that ere her senses fled,
 * She rescued, of her brothers cried,

Then feebly bowed her stricken head,
 * Too good to live thus—so she died.