Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 28.djvu/383

 Cbn/> reakingfrom their shattered ranks, around his steed they crowd; " I did my best for you " 'twas all those trembling lips could say, Ah! happy those whom death has spared the anguish of to-day.

Weep on, Virginia! weep these lives given to thy cause in vain The sons who live to wear once more the Union's galling chain: The homes whose light is quenched for aye the graves without a

stone The folded flag the broken sword the hope forever flown.

Yet raise thy head, fair land, thy dead died bravely for the right The folded flag is stainless still the broken sword is bright; No blot is on thy record found no treason soils thy fame! Weep thou thy dead with cover'd head we mourn our England's shame.

A CONFEDERATION OF SOUTHERN MEMORIAL ASSOCIATIONS.

[What the noble women of the South have already accomplished, severally, and in local associations, in impressing regard for virtue and truth, is daily gropingly manifest.

What their fathers, brothers, sons, and sweethearts did, has passed 'into immortal history, as of supremity in manhood's realiza- tion.

In the grace of woman's scepter, a sweeter or grander exemplifi- cation of her sex, has not been; could not be.

In the prescience of that guardian angel of the Southern home in providence, in tenderness, in self forgetful ness, in exacting sacri- fice, and in transcendent devotion to right and honor, she has sig- nalized herself as the glory of her sex.

The impress of the deeds of the worthy and the heroic may not be effaced by traduction.

They must live in regardful memory, instinctively. Aye, more! in the advance of scholarship, misrepresentation save for a day will be impossible.

Never again can history be more than evanescently falsified.

Our sisterhood of the balmy South have with them not only the