Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/218

 212 Southern Historical Society Papers.

fined to us, but there were desolated and anguish torn hearts, sad memories, vacant chairs, voids created, never again to be filled on both sides. We should sympathize with each other, as the brave soldier of either side felt for and gave the last drop of his canteen to a wounded or dying opponent. The household before the war, and after the war! both sides! a gifted divine and poet of South Carolina, in his elegant essay "God in history," has sweetly sung. I give you his words :

" Fair faces beaming round the household hearth,

Young, joyous tones in melody of mirth,

The sire, doubly living in his boy,

And she the crown of all that wealth of joy!

These make the home, like some sweet lyre given

To sound on earth the harmonies of heaven.



A sudden discord breaks the swelling strain;

One chord has snapped the harmony again

Subdued and slower moves, bat nearer more

Can pour the same glad music as of yore ;

Less and less full the strains successive wake,

Chord after chord must break and break and break !

Until on earth, the lyre dumb and riven,

Finds all its chords restrung to loftier notes in heaven."

Upon some quiet summer evening you may gaze upwards and see the tints of the blue and gray so commingled in the sky that human vision, at the immeasurable distance, fails to separate them, and may it not be a happy speculation that departed spirits of the blue and the gray once opposed in angry contest, now in blended harmony inhabit those airy mansions ; and the spirits of our own departed comrades, where are they ? (I am not of those who would "rashly climb where angels fear to tread," or seek unduly to penetrate into mysteries not revealed.) May it not be that in a time like this, in a place like this, apart from the bustle and din of the busy and social world, in the "quietude of silence," may we not think dream, if you choose in reverence that they hover around us, that we seem to hear the rustling of their wings in the air, and gentle whisperings of their voices :

Comrades! you are thinking of us; we are watching over you, waiting for you; and the utterances of a prayer like this:

"Teach them, dear Father, their vices to shun, Teach them to worship, that when life is done, They may cross the dark river, Thy judgment appease, And rest (with \&) 'nealh the shade of unwithering trees."