These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the laurel, the Blue;
Under the willow, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hours
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers,
Alike for the friend and the foe:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the roses, the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray.
So, with an equal splendor,
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Broidered with gold, the Blue;
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.
So, when the summer calleth
On forest and field of grain,
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Wet with the rain, the Blue,
Wet with the rain, the Gray.
Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done,
In the storm of the years that are fading
No braver battle was won:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands, the Gray.
No more shall the war cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Love and tears for the Blue;
Tears and love for the Gray.
On the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the evacuation of New York
by the British--November 25, 1893--a bronze statue of Nathan Hale was
presented to the city of New York. It was given by the New York Society
of the "Sons of the American Revolution," a society founded in 1876 to
perpetuate the memory and deeds of the war for American independence.
The presentation was made by the president of the society, Mr. Frederic
Samuel Tallmadge, the grandson of Major Tallmadge, Hale's classmate and
fellow-captain. The statue is of bronze and is by Frederick Macmonnies
of Paris. It represents Hale bareheaded, bound about his arms and his
ankles, ready for his death. It was placed in City Hall Park where Hale
was, for a time, supposed to have been executed. On the pedestal are
graven his last wonderful words.
During the exercises at the unveiling of this statue Dr. Edward Everett
Hale said: "The occasion, I suppose, is without a parallel in history.
Certainly, I know of no other instance where, more than a century after
the death of a boy of twenty-one, his countrymen assembled in such
numbers as are here to do honor to his memory and to dedicate the statue
which preserves it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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