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That rippl'd back to Norman sires, or found
Its fountain-seat among the tilting knights
Of the Arthurian times. Upon the walls
Of Valor's battle-abbey, lifted high,
'Mid holy emblems, let the old flag droop,
Till morning breezes wake the eternal day—
Then, in the kindling East, shall melt the Bars
And, in an unending sunrise, set the Stars.

III.

THE ROLL-CALL OF THE STATES.

M

USE of the Mountain, bid the bugler sound
The roll-call of the States. Virginia first,*
Who bore upon a Spartan mother's breast

The matchless Washington; and then to prove

What seeds of laurel in her lap were left,

Gave to our cause a Jackson and a Lee!

Sweep the horizon round! Where can you match
Those twins of immortality, who light
The jewel'd arch of History's firmament,
With gems whose luster Time can never dim?
Virginia! In that rhythmic name is heard
The Rappahannock's roll, and through it smiles
The dreaming Shenandoah. Sown with the dust
Of Dixie's deathless dead, our Mecca-shrines
Are there, our Holy Land of memories.
Virginia, grand old mother, whose proud soil,
Harrow'd by War's grim plow-share, bloom'd
Into an endless chain of battle-fields-
Manassas, Seven Pines and Fredericksburg,
The Wilderness, Winchester, Malvern Hill,
The battles 'round old Richmond-Petersburg
And Appomattox, where our flag went down-
Ah, what a tangl'd maze of martyr-dust!
Enough to glorify another Greece

And sow with triumph all the Roman hills.
Whose radiant after-glow has made her woods

Red with autumnal splendors, till the sun

* Virginia did not secede until April 17, 1861, but is mentioned first because she

held the seat of government and furnished most of the battlefields.

Can spread no feast upon her western sky
To match the spectacle, when, at his best,
Above her far-fam'd Valley pois'd, he flames
To his majestic setting. Her immortal dead
In silent Hollywood, have made that realm
Of rest an emerald Westminster, aye,
A glorious Valhalla! Her proud trust,
The old Confederate capital, is there,
Our citadel of memories. Who but loves
That fair metropolis-gift of the gods-
Historic Richmond, on the James! There sleep
Two Presidents*, besides the other four

Who elsewhere slumber. But, in peace serene,
A peer among them all, there calmly dreams
Our disinherited but glorious chief,
Jefferson Davis! Peace to his repose,
Beside the waters which his couch o'erlooks!
Stuart is there, Pickett, and A. P. Hill.

There, bivouack'd for the night, in serried ranks,
A slumbering army waits to march at dawn.

On Spring Hill's starry heights, by cedars crown'd,
Jubal A. Early sleeps his comrade there,
Lynchburg's Lame Liont-he whose silvery tongue
Unveil'd the lofty shaft to Washington,
And kindl'd echoes which can never die,

While music haunts the valley of the James,

Or thunder's drum-beats wake the Peaks of Otter.
Virginia! Dear to us her sacred soil,

And glory haunted all her whispering groves.
There droop'd our Conquer'd Banner on its staff.
There, in the dust, our Southern Cross went down
To rise no more, and there a soldier's hand
Lee gave to Grant, in honor's golden truce.

*Monroe and Tyler.

Major John W. Daniel, afterwards a U. S. Senator.

Our "Old Dominion," which, at Jamestown, rock'd
The cradle of the western world, there lit
The Anglo-Saxon's earliest fires, and there
Reviv'd that ancient right of Runnymede,
Which guaranteed to every Englishman
Fair trial, by a jury of his peers!

Poets are hers:-the laurel'd Hope, Thompson
Whose "Battle-Rainbow" belts th' historic hills
And gentle Margaret Preston who awoke
The song-flowers of the Valley, but to wreathe
With immortelles, the harp of Lexington.
Nor can the Old Dominion e'er forget
John Esten Cooke, whose pen of martial fire
Wrote "Surry" and "Mohun." Tranquil be his rest,
Till break of day, in Millwood's cedar'd glooms,
Where the great Edmund Randolph calmly sleeps.
Dead-did I say? The great Virginians live!
In endless troops, they come from every fane-
Behold!-the glorious Ashbys ride again!
Dabney H. Maury from the tomb comes forth!
R. M. T. Hunter, Sedden, both Garnetts,
The stern McDowell, Mason and Mahone,
Pegram and Long, Lomax and Pendleton,
Rosser and Armistead, and all the rest,

Smile round the boards, at Memory's phantom feast!
Montpelier-Monticello-Arlington-

Mount Vernon-Gunston Hall. Where can you match
Virginia's shrines her holy sepulchres?

A Washington's last resting-place! Alone
This were enough of honor. Ah, but there,
In sacred Lexington, a Stonewall sleeps
Hard by th' incarnate flower of all the Lees.
Entomb'd within her hallow'd soil, she holds
Great Jefferson, who penn'd th' immortal scroll
Of Freedom; Patrick Henry, whose bold tongue,

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