Far up the lonely mountain-side
My wandering
footsteps led;
The moss lay thick beneath my feet,
The
pine sighed overhead.
The trace of a dismantled fort
Lay in the forest nave,
And in the shadow near my path
I saw a soldier's grave.
The bramble wrestled with
the weed
Upon the lowly mound;
The simple head-board,
rudely writ,
Had rotted to the ground;
I raised it
with a reverent hand,
From dust its words to clear,
But time had blotted all but these--
"A Georgia
Volunteer!"
Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,
Adown
thy rocky glen,
Above thee lies the grave of one
Of
Stonewall Jackson's men.
Beneath the cedar and the pine,
In solitude austere.
Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies
A Georgia Volunteer!
I saw the toad and scaly snake
From tangled covert start,
And hide themselves among the
weeds
Above the dead man's heart;
But undisturbed, in
sleep profound,
Unheeding, there he lay;
His coffin
but the mountain soil,
His shroud Confederate gray.
Yet whence he came, what lip shall say--
Whose tongue
will ever tell
What desolated hearths and hearts
Have
been because he fell?
What sad-eyed maiden braids her
hair,
Her hair which he held dear?
One lock of which
perchance lies with
A Georgia Volunteer!
Roll,
Shenandoah, proudly roll,
Adown thy rocky glen,
Above
thee lies the grave of one
Of Stonewall Jackson's men.
Beneath the cedar and the pine,
In solitude austere.
Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies
A Georgia Volunteer!
What mother, with long watching eyes,
And white lips,
cold and dumb,
Waits with appalling patience for
Her
darling boy to come?
Her boy! whose mountain grave swells
up
But one of many a scar,
Cut on the face of our fair
land,
By gory-handed war.
What fights he fought,
what wounds he wore,
Are all unknown to fame;
Remember, on his lonely grave
There is not e'en a name!
That he fought well and bravely too,
And held his country
dear,
We know, else he had never been
A Georgia
volunteer.
Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,
Adown
thy rocky glen,
Above thee lies the grave of one
Of
Stonewall Jackson's men.
Beneath the cedar and the pine,
In solitude austere.
Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies
A Georgia Volunteer! |
