SLEEP sweetly in your humble graves, <br />Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause; <br />Though yet no marble column craves <br />The pilgrim here to pause. <br /> <br />In seeds of laurel in the earth <br />The blossom of your fame is blown, <br />And somewhere, waiting for its birth, <br />The shaft is in the stone! <br /> <br />Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years <br />Which keep in trust your storied tombs, <br />Behold! your sisters bring their tears, <br />And these memorial blooms. <br /> <br />Small tributes! but your shades will smile <br />More proudly on these wreaths to-day, <br />Than when some cannon-moulded pile <br />Shall overlook this bay. <br /> <br />Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! <br />There is no holier spot of ground <br />Than where defeated valor lies, <br />By mourning beauty crowned.<br /><br />Henry Timrod<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-magnolia-cemetery/
