Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead

[At Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C.] 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 keep 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, Then 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 valor lies,   By mourning beauty crowned!