SLEEP sweetly in your humble graves, -- Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause! Though yet no marble column craves The pilgrim here to pause, In seeds of laurel in the earth The blossom of your fame is blown, And somewhere, waiting for its birth, The shaft is in the stones! Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years Which keep in trust your stories tombs, Behold! your sisters bring their tear, And these memorial blooms. Small tributes! but your shades will smile More proudly on these wreaths to-days, Then when some cannon-moulded pile Shall over look this bay. Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A COWBOY'S WORRYING LOVE by JAMES BARTON ADAMS LOST AT SEA by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH DISTANCES by WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE ON A PRESSED FLOWER IN MY CPOY OF KEATS by WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE THE FORCED RECRUIT AT SOLFERINO by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING |