Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Grant—Dying
By Thomas Chalmers Harbaugh (1849–1924)I
I heard the branches sighing
Beneath my window, soft and low:
“The great war chief is dying!”
His marches o’er, his battles won,
His bright sword sheathed forever,
The grand old soldier stands beside
The dark and silent river;
Within her fairest bowers,
Of Shiloh’s never-fading leaves,
And Donelson’s bright flowers;
Grim Vicksburg gives a crimson rose,
Embalmed in deathless story,
And Appomattox adds a star
To crown the wreath of glory.
Insatiate and impartial,
With icy fingers, stoops to touch
The Union’s old field-marshal,
Who, like a soldier brave, awaits
The summons so appalling,
While o’er the land, from sea to sea,
The silent tear is falling.
His battle-drums are beating;
His bugles always blew advance—
With him was no retreating;
And tenderly, with moistened eye,
Columbia bends above him,
And everywhere the sorrowed heart
Tells how the people love him.
To where the pines are sighing,
The winds waft messages of love
To Grant, the hero, dying.
The Old World sends across the wave
A token of its sorrow;
The greatest chief alive to-day
May fall asleep to-morrow.
The land is filled with weeping,
And be his passing like a child’s—
The counterfeit of sleeping.
A million boys in blue now stand
Around their dying brother;
The mighty world knows but one Grant,
’Twill never know another.
To live fore’er in story;
The fields he won, the land he saved,
Will be his lasting glory.
O mighty Ajax of the North!
Old field-marshal immortal!
My saddened heart’s with thee to-day
Before the darkened portal.
How mournful was their sighing!
It seemed to me a nation’s sobs
O’er Grant, the soldier, dying.
O touch him, touch him softly, Death,
Insatiate and impartial;
He is the Union’s mightiest chief—
My cherished old field-marshal!
April, 1885.