Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Popular Songs and Ballads of the Civil War: Southern: “The Brigade Must Not Know, Sir!”

By John Williamson Palmer (1825–1906)

“WHO’VE ye got there?”—“Only a dying brother,

Hurt in the front just now.”

“Good boy! he’ll do. Somebody tell his mother

Where he was killed, and how.”

“Whom have you there?”—“A crippled courier, Major,

Shot by mistake, we hear.

He was with Stonewall.”—“Cruel work they’ve made here;

Quick with him to the rear!”

“Well, who comes next?”—“Doctor, speak low, speak low, sir;

Don’t let the men find out!

It’s STONEWALL!”—“God!”—“The brigade must not know, sir,

While there’s a foe about!”

Whom have we here—shrouded in martial manner,

Crowned with a martyr’s charm?

A grand dead hero, in a living banner,

Born of his heart and arm:

The heart whereon his cause hung—see how clingeth

That banner to his bier!

The arm wherewith his cause struck—hark! how ringeth

His trumpet in their rear!

What have we left? His glorious inspiration,

His prayers in council met.

Living, he laid the first stones of a nation;

And dead, he builds it yet.

1863.