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THE CIVIL WAR
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Each thin hand resting on a grave,
Her lips apart in prayer,
A mother knelt, and left her tears
Upon the violets there,
O'er many a rood of vale and lawn,
Of hill and forest gloom,
The reaper Death had reveled in
His fearful harvest home.
The last red summer's sun had shone
Upon a fruitless fray--
From yonder forest charged the blue,
Down younder slope the gray!
I thought of Willie's clear blue eye,
His wavy hair of gold,
Thus clustered on a fearless brow
Of purest Saxon mold;
Of Harry with his raven locks
and eagle glance of pride;
Of how they clasped each other's hand
And left their Mother's side;
How hand in hand they bore my prayers
And blessing on the way-
A noble heart beneath the blue,
Another 'neath the gray.
I looked and saw his blood, and his;
A swift and vivid dream
Of blended years flashed o'er me, when
Like some cold shadow, came
A blindness of the eye and brain-
The same that seizes one
When men are smitten suddely
Who overstare the sun;
And while blurred with the sudden stroke
That swept my soul, I lay,-
They burried Willie in his blue,
And Harry in his gray.
The hush of death was on the scene,
And sunset o'er the dead,
In that opppressive stillness
A pall of glory spread.
I know not, dare not question how
I met the ghastly glare
Of each upturned and stirless face
That shrunk and whitened there,
I knew my noble boys had stood
Through all the withering day-
I knew that Willie wore the blue,
That Harry wore the gray.
The dead, with white and folded hands,
That hushed our village homes,
I've seen laid calmly, tenderly,
Within their darkened rooms;
But there I saw distorted limbs,
And many an eye aglare,
In the soft purple twilight of
The thunder-smitten air;
Along the slope and on the sward
In ghastly ranks they lay,
And there was blood upon the blue,
And blood upon the gray.
The shadows fell upon their graves;
They fall upon my heart;
And through the twilight ofmy soul
Like dew the tears will start, -
The starlight comes so silently,
And lingers where they rest;
So hope's revealing starlight sinks
And shines within my breast.
They ask not there where yonder heaven
Smiles with eternal day,
Why Willie wore the loyal blue--
Why Harry wore the gray!
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ONE IN BLUE AND ONE IN GRAY
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Background Music - Taps by John Wayne
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