Chapter XIV

Good-night—Good-bye! Above our sorrow,
Comrade! thine is a fair “good-morrow,”
In some far, luminous world of light,
Yet, take this farewell—Love’s last token:
We leave thee to thy rest unbroken—
God have thee in his care—Good-night!

—F. L. STANTON.

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ATLANTA.

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We weep with Atlanta!
Her loss is the nation’s!
With deep lamentations
Our grief is revealed;
For her hero so youthful,
So radiant and truthful,
Her loyal defender,
Lies dead on the field.

We weep with Atlanta!
O sore her bereavement!
For he whose achievement
The continent thrilled,
His last word has spoken;
In silence unbroken.
By Death’s cruel mandate,
The proud pulse is stilled.

We weep with Atlanta!
For woe crowds upon her
When the soldier of honor
Death’s countersign gives.
Keep the grasses above him,
And let those who love him
Proclaim beyond doubting
That the hero still lives.

JOSEPHINE POLLARD.

NEW YORK CITY, _Dec. 27, 1889_.

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HENRY W. GRADY.

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TRUE-HEARTED friend of all true friendliness!
Brother of all true brotherhoods!—Thy hand
And its late pressure now we understand
Most fully, as it falls thus gestureless,
And Silence lulls thee into sweet excess
Of sleep. Sleep thou content!—Thy loved Southland.
Is swept with tears, as rain in sunshine; and
Through all the frozen North our eyes confess
Like sorrow—seeing still the princely sign
Set on thy lifted brow, and the rapt light
Of the dark, tender, melancholy eyes—
Thrilled with the music of those lips of thine,
And yet the fire thereof that lights the night,
With the white splendor of thy prophecies.

JAMES WHITCOMBE RILEY.

In _New York Tribune_, December 23, 1889.

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A REQUIEM.

_IN MEMORY OF “HIM THAT’S AWA’”._

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BURY him in the sunshine,
Bring forth the rarest flowers
In love to rest above the breast
Of this dead hope of ours!
Let not the strife and pain of life
One ray of joy dispel,
And we’ll bury him in the sunshine,
In the light he loved so well!

Bury him in the sunshine,
All that of earth remains;
Let every tear that damps his bier
Fall warm as April rains
That bring to light the blossoms bright,
And break the wintry spell.
Thus we’ll bury him in the sunshine,
In the light he loved so well!

Bury him in the sunshine,
Where softest breezes blow.
His dear face brought no dismal thought,
To those who love him so.
Let cheerful strains and glad refrains
A joyous requiem swell,
While we bury him in the sunshine,
In the light he loved so well!

Bury him in the sunshine,
While Christmas carols rise
In thankful mirth from smiling earth
To fair sun-litten skies.
Forget the gloom that shrouds the tomb,
And hush the dreary knell,
For we’ll bury him in the sunshine,
In the light he loved so well!

Bury him in the sunshine;
His peerless soul hath flown
To that fair land upon whose strand
No winds of winter moan.
Sublimer heights, purer delights,
Than mortal tongue can tell;
So, we’ll bury him in God’s sunshine,
In the light he loved so well!

MONTGOMERY M. FOLSOM.

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HENRY WOODFIN GRADY.

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MUST we concede the life so swiftly flown
That seemed but yesterday to breath our own—
The pulsing stayed that through our land he sent,
In whose one impact North and South were blent—
His cords yet vital stilled with tone abounding,
His heart-strings sundered by their vibrant sounding?

Too well we feel the import of our fears—
The wide-flashed word, “the South is steeped in tears!”
Fitly she weeps for her chivalric son
Who turned to her, in flush of triumph won,
The filial voice to gain her glad applause—
The golden tongue to plead—to gild her cause.

That spirit note—the music of his speech,
Is silenced now in earthly hearing’s reach;
Snapped is the silvern thread—the resonant soul—
Though severed still its pæans reverberant roll—
All hearts their hope-rung—chants in mourning merge,
All joyous dreams translate into a dirge.

Fallen in hero prime of conscious power
His fame lives on and soothes her anguished hour,
Yields to the land of Calhoun and of Clay
His name as heirloom to her later day,—
A legacy by life’s oblation left,
A breathing solace to a home bereft.

That knightly nature’s gift—that intellect’s grace,
Relieved attrition wrought by clash of race,
That reason poised in sympathy supreme,
Revealed translucent pathos in his theme,
Bade clamor cease—taught candor’s part to cure—
Bade truth appear more true, pure thought more pure.

But is the zenith reached—his record done,
His duty closed beneath meridian sun?
Was it for him like meteor flash to sweep
Athwart the heavens, as vaulting lightnings leap—
On living errand our dimmed orbit cleave—
On mission radiate, yet no message leave?

Ah, no! his flame rose not to fall anon;
His words as phrase to glitter and be gone;
Not evanescent in the minds of men,
His ling’ring oratory speaks again—
An era’s nuncio in a Nation’s view,
An envoy of another South, and new:

For now in prescience ’neath his Southern skies
The grander vision greets our Northern eyes;
The proud mirage he conjured up we see—
His picturing of her potency to be,
Her virile wealth of sun and soil and ore,
Her new-born Freedom’s force—far nobler store.

With sectional lines and warring feuds effaced,
Their racial problems solved—their blots erased—
Full in that vision circumfused shall rise
A symbol that his life-rays crystallize,
For all our state-loves lit in him to stand—
For bonds that Georgia’s Genius lent to all our land.

HENRY O’MEARA.

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HENRY W. GRADY.

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Upon the winds from shores uncharted blown,
That phantom came, stoled in his trailing mists;
He set his cruel gyves upon thy wrists:—
Thine ear was dulled save to his subtle tone:—
He led thee down where fade the paths unknown
In the deep hollows of the Shadow Land:
Love’s tears,—the tendance of her gentle hand,—
Thou didst remember not: her deepest groan
Stayed not thy feet—thine eyes were fixed away
Upon the mountains of some other clime!
Among the noblest, gathered from all time,
In God’s great universe somewhere to-day
He wanders where the cool all-healing trees
Uplift their fronds in fair Champs Elysées.

HENRY JEROME STOCKARD.

GRAHAM, N.C.

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WHO WOULD CALL HIM BACK?

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A LIFE-WORK finished: yet, hardly begun:
A course in which courage cowardice undone:
A leader of battles whose life’s setting sun
Leaves no cause unwon.

The scholar and statesman, dear to us all,
As he sleeps his last sleep, though fateful his fall,
Dreams only of peace—to life’s pain past recall—
That, kindred, is all.

The robe he wore with such marvelous grace,
Will be fitted to shoulders made for his place:
Efforts about which none could selfishness trace
Shall still bless his race.

Deeds he has done in humanity’s name
Will outlive the marble upreared to his fame:
Yet, would any one ask him, even through pain,
To live life again?

BELLE EYRE.

BOSTON, MASS.

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HENRY W. GRADY.

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LAMENTED Son of Georgia,
Thou wert New England’s honored guest
In welcome glad, but yesterday,
With charming speech and banquet’s zest.

In glowing life, so recently,
From Plymouth Rock and Bunker’s Hill,
Thy vision swept the Pilgrim’s sea,—
But now in death thy heart is still.

And in thine own dear native clime,
Thou art at rest in early tomb,
Where brightest skies expand sublime,
And choicest flowers forever bloom.

Thy work ere yet at zenith done,
But harvests, o’er thy fertile field,
Are waving in the noonday sun,
Like billows, with abundant yield.

Now fallen, but more glorious,
In peaceful triumph grander far
Than pageant kings victorious,
With bleeding captives, spoils of war.

O, ye bereaved, in mourning bowed,
Around Atlanta’s noble dead!
What woe is in your wailing land;
How hallowed is the ground ye tread!

A joyous home, now desolate,
A circle broken, sad and lone,
A vacant chair in Sable State,
A husband, father, loved one gone.

A widowed mother, mute with grief,
Whose weeping children call in vain,
Their cries and tears bring no relief,
Thou can’st not meet them here again.

And yet, beyond this hour of gloom,
Athwart the sky, the promised bow,
Above these clouds, and o’er thy tomb,
The starry heavens are bending low.

In memory of loving worth,
Sweet thoughts like hidden springs will flow;
Rare flowers in oasis have birth,
As Sorrow’s deserts verdant grow.

With patriotic, burning zeal,
Thy brilliant genius, tongue and pen,
Were wielded for the common weal,
The good of all thy countrymen.

O’er ruins of the effete Old,
Thou wrought to build a better New,
Whose peerless glories might unfold,
As North and South together grew.

Thou longed to note accordant band
Of Sister States through future years,
A Union for the world to stand
With little aid of blood and tears.

Of such a spirit, He who taught
Eternal Truth in Galilee;
The human and divine in-wrought
With perfect love and charity.

And so thy deeds will grow in grace,
They are exalted, wise and pure,
For freedom and the human race,
And in our hearts will long endure.

For thee nor local, fleeting fame,
But for all nations, space and time;
Around thy lofty, shining name,
Unfading laurels we entwine.

G. W. LYON.

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA, Jan. 18, 1890.

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WHAT THE MASTER MADE.

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THE Master made a perfect instrument to sound His praise,
It breathed forth glorious notes for many days,—
Chords of great strength, tones of soft melody,
Grand organ anthems—bird-like minstrelsy;
Its final burst of music—the Master’s master-stroke
Fell on the world—and then the spent strings broke.

MEL R. COLQUITT.

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IN ATLANTA, CHRISTMAS, 1889.

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I.

O PROUD Gate City of the South, reborn,
Risen, a phœnix, from war’s fiery flood—
Why draped in gloom, this precious natal morn
Of Him crowned martyr for earth’s peace and good?
Set in the faces of your old and young,
Is seen the sorrow, ruthless Fate hath sprung!

II.

Your prince lies stark amid the stately towers,
Which he, strong leader in a radiant day,
Had helped to build, when Georgia’s unbound powers
Amazed the world and held majestic sway.
GRADY is gone, like meteor flashing bright
Across the canopy of star-gemmed night!