James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
May 12Obsequies of Stuart
By John R. Thompson (18231873)
W
Shook with the cannonade’s incessant pealing,
The funeral pageant fitly to prepare—
A nation’s grief revealing.
That skirts our southward border in its beauty,
Marked where our heroes stood and fought and died
For love and faith and duty.
We might not find expression for our sorrow;
We could but lay our dear dumb warrior down,
And gird us for the morrow.
With victory in the conflict’s stormy closes,
When the glad Spring, all flushed and beautiful,
First mocked us with her roses,
Some few poor rites—an inexpressive token
Of a great people’s pain—to Jackson’s shade,
In agony unspoken.
No cannon, save the battle’s boom receding,
When Stuart to the grave we bore, might tell,
With hearts all crushed and bleeding.
Whose anguish bears the seal of consecration
Had wished his Christian obsequies should be
Thus void of ostentation.
Above his form so still and cold and painless,
Whose deeds upon our brightest records shine,
Whose life and sword were stainless.
Into the fight, festooned from summer bowers;
How like a fountain’s spray his sabre’s flash
Leaped from a mass of flowers.
All that of our great Paladin was mortal:
The cross, and not the sabre, on his breast,
That opes the heavenly portal.
But there will still come a time when Freedom’s martyrs
A richer guerdon of renown shall gain
Than gleams in stars and garters.
Beyond these clouds that gather darkly o’er us,
The happy sounds of industry arise
In swelling peaceful chorus.
Of millions undisturbed by war’s afflictions,
Crowning each martyr’s never dying name
With grateful benedictions.
Where flowers shall bloom and song-birds sweetly warble,
Art shall erect the statues of our knights
In living bronze and marble.
Shall wear to far-off time a semblance grander,
Shall still be decked with fresher wreaths of song,
Than this beloved commander.
That after death he rode, erect, sedately,
Along his lines, even as in life he did,
In presence yet more stately;
To ride out of our dark and troubled story
Into the region of romance and dreams,
A realm of light and glory;
That ghostly form, in battle reappearing,
Shall lead his horsemen headlong on the foe,
In victory careering!