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| O GALLANT brothers of the generous South, | |
| Foes for a day and brothers for all time! | |
| I charge you by the memories of our youth, | |
| By Yorktown’s field and Montezuma’s clime, | |
| Hold our dead sacred—let them quietly rest | 5 |
| In your unnumbered vales, where God thought best. | |
| Your vines and flowers learned long since to forgive, | |
| And o’er their graves a broidered mantle weave: | |
| Be you as kind as they are, and the word | |
| Shall reach the Northland with each summer bird, | 10 |
| And thoughts as sweet as summer shall awake | |
| Responsive to your kindness, and shall make | |
| Our peace the peace of brothers once again, | |
| And banish utterly the days of pain. | |
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| And ye, O Northmen! be ye not outdone | 15 |
| In generous thought and deed. | |
| We all do need forgiveness, every one; | |
| And they that give shall find it in their need. | |
| Spare of your flowers to deck the stranger’s grave, | |
| Who died for a lost cause:— | 20 |
| A soul more daring, resolute, and brave, | |
| Ne’er won a world’s applause. | |
| A brave man’s hatred pauses at the tomb. | |
| For him some Southern home was robed in gloom, | |
| Some wife or mother looked with longing eyes | 25 |
| Through the sad days and nights with tears and sighs, | |
| Hope slowly hardening into gaunt Despair | |
| Then let your foeman’s grave remembrance share: | |
| Pity a higher charm to Valor lends, | |
| And in the realms of Sorrow all are friends. | 30 |
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