On the sweet summer grass in the moonlight, Long, by the tent of his leader, a watcher lay patiently waiting, Waiting the great Gray Captain, so many times hailed as the victor On those fields foregone; and the far-away cities had feared him. Ever with wild lost cry the whippoorwill cried in the woodland. Late, through the light of the moon, and the flickering shadow of branches, Lee came riding alone, the beloved magnanimous chieftain, All alone with defeat in the lucent night and the silence. Slowly he rode, as one who rides by the bier of a soldier, Hearing the muffled drums and the sob of a martial sorrow; Slowly he rode, with downcast head, and the deep moon-shadow Lay underneath his brows. At the last, from his horse, overwearied, Hardly he might dismount; on the saddle heavily flinging One lax arm, he stood awhile without word to the other; Moveless, horse and man, as if by the art of the sculptor Wrought in enduring bronze for an everlasting remembrance. Still in his brain, unbidden, labored the pitiless hammers Forging the things to be; and he saw the train of the wounded, Mile upon mile of moan, waggon to waggon succeeding, Crawl like a crippled snake painfully toward the Potomac; Saw his crippled Cause, as she dragged her way in the distance Dim, through fields of fire to a last sad field of surrender. --Memory, passionate, proud, sprang of a sudden resurgent; Swiftly he lived again the day, and beheld his Virginians Splendidly sweep to the shock that the land shall remember forever; Flashed the ardent eyes, and the spell of his silence was broken. Proudly he spoke of the charge, in a voice that deepened and trembled Naming dear names of the dead; then turned to the task of the living, Motioned to enter the tent, and delivered the trust of the morrow. So the spark of pride, in the heart of the leader beloved, Kindled a fresh, false hope; and he sat by the flare of the candle Planning the morrow’s course, and retrieval, if haply it might be. (Under the same clear moon, by the flow of the far Mississippi, Grant was waking too, the invincible taciturn soldier Chosen of fate; in his tent, by the candle-light feeble and fitful, Writing the final terms of the longed-for surrender of Vicksburg.) Stars swept on, meanwhile, in their still, predestinate pathways; Mornward wheeled the world; and Time, inexhaustible Mother, Bore to us once again the Day of the birth of a Nation Sprung from the life-blood of heroes, and consecrated to Freedom.