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Home  »  An American Anthology, 1787–1900  »  1243 Roses of Memory

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Armistead ChurchillGordon

1243 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.