Peace--O blessed Peace!
The war-worn veterans hailed thee with a shout
Of Alleluias;--homeward wound the trains,
And homeward marched the bayonet-bristling columns
To "_Hail Columbia_" from a thousand horns--
Marched to the jubilee of chiming bells,
Marched to the joyful peals of cannon, marched
With blazing banners and victorious songs
Into the outstretched arms of love and home.
But there be columns--columns of the dead
That slumber on an hundred battle-fields--
No bugle-blast shall waken till the trump
Of the Archangel. O the loved and lost!
For them no jubilee of chiming bells;
For them no cannon-peal of victory;
For them no outstretched arms of love and home.
God's peace be with them. Heroes who went down,
Wearing their stars, live in the nation's songs
And stories--there be greater heroes still,
That molder in unnumbered nameless graves
Erst bleached unburied on the fields of fame
Won by their valor. Who will sing of these--
Sing of the patriot-deeds on field and flood--
Of these--the truer heroes--all unsung?
Where sleeps the modest bard in Quaker gray
Who blew the pibroch ere the battle lowered,
Then pitched his tent upon the balmy beach?
"Snow-bound," I ween, among his native hills.
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