Roses of Memory
A rose’s crimson stain,
A rose’s stainless white,
Fitly become the immortal slain
Who fell in the great fight.
When Armistead died amid his foes,
Girt by the rebel cheer,
God plucked a soul like a white rose
In June time o’ the year.
The blood in Pickett’s heart
Was of a ruddier hue
Than the reddest bloom whose petals part
To welcome heaven’s dew.
I think the fairest flowers that blow
Should greet the life-stream shed
In that historic long ago
By this historic dead.
The immemorial years
Such valor never knew
As poured a flood of crimson blood
At Gettysburg with you.
Living and dead, in faith the same,
I see you on that height,
Crowned with the rosy wreath of fame
Won in the fatal fight.
Not these had made afraid
King Arthur’s mystic sword—
Not Bayard’s most chivalric blade,
Nor Gideon’s, for the Lord.
Yours was the strain of high emprise,
Yours the unfaltering faith,—
The honor lofty as the skies,
The duty strong as death.
When Douglas flung the heart
Of Bruce amid his foes,
And said: “He leads. We do not part:
I follow where he goes,”
No mightier impulse stirred his soul
Than that which up you height
Moved you with Pickett toward the goal
Of freedom in that fight.
The fair goal was not won,
The famous fight was lost;
But never shone the all-seeing sun
On more heroic host.
Your deeds of mighty prowess shame
All deeds of derring-do
With which Time’s bloody pages flame.
—Hail and farewell to you!
Unto the dead farewell!
They are hid in the dark and cold;
And the broken shaft and the roses tell
What is left of the tale untold.
They are deaf to the martial music’s call
Till a judgment dawn shall break,
When the trumpet of Truth shall proclaim to all:
“They perished for my sake!”
Let them be quiet here
Where birds and blossoms be;—
And hail to you, who bring the tear
And the rose of memory
To water and deck each lowly grave
Of those who in God’s sight
With loyal hearts their hearts’ blood gave
For the eternal right!
Alike for low and high
The roses white and red:
For valor and honor cannot die,
And they were of these dead.
The private in his jacket of gray
And the general with his star
The Lord God knighted alike that day,
In the red front of War.