Classic Poem

Back from Southern scenes of blood
Came the joyous victors home,
In a blue-clad bannered flood
Pouring through Columbia's Rome,
While the crowd rolled and surged all around.
High the tattered banners wave
Proudly o'er the laurelled brave,
As above the hero's grave,
Sacred ground.

In the dust-cloud overhead
Troops a silent spectral host;
By the foeman's bullet sped
They have yielded up the ghost,
And the Southern pines wave o'er their tomb.
And the hollow rolling tread
Is the voices of the dead,
Lying cold, unsepulchred,
In the gloom.

Gazing on the moving tide,
All the present fades away,
With its pageant and pride,
Laurels green and banners gay,
And the far future's gates open wide:
And within those portals bright
Glorious visions greet my sight;
Brothers once again unite,