With muffled drum, with banners furled, with martial step and slow,
Oh, gather by the sacred dust, the dust that lies below;
Oh, gather by the sacred dust of comrades loyal, true,
Wave over them thy benison, the red, the white, the blue.
May this fair Union stand complete, a monument divine
To those who sacrificed their lives at freedom’s holy shrine;
Upon each thirtieth of May with solemn tread we come,
And pay them tender tribute to the throbbing of the drum.
We marched with them, we fought with them, our bed the sullen sod,
With not a star above us and without a hope, save God;
’Mid cannon’s roar, the halt, the dash, the victory, retreat,
We saw them falling ’round us as the sickle fells the wheat.
Oh, dark the days that followed fast on Baltimore, Bull Run,
Beneath the torrid fierceness of a blazing southern sun;
With Butler in his bold campaigns, with Sherman by the sea,
We shoulder stood to shoulder in the battle of the free.
And ever through the living past there flows a tender vein,
To stir the heart and open wounds that bleed and bleed again,
As tearful eyes and empty arms to death itself appealed,
Alas for those who sadly knelt on Desolation’s field!
Oh, there are many lonely lie beneath the rev’rent blue,
But they will not be missing from the final grand review;
Let wives and mothers gather near, and little children weep
Above the dreary pillows where the martyred heroes sleep.
The martyred heroes; yonder shaft of granite guards a spot,
The sepulchre of comrades that can never be forgot;
While pride endures, and nations thrive, and patriots survive
Must Lowell keep the mem’ry of her own great loss alive.
She scatters garlands o’er her dead and softly tolls the bells,
But for her martyred heroes are the precious immortelles.
Oh, Ladd and Whitney, side by side, in peaceful silence rest,
Among the fairest jewels that adorn Columbia’s breast.
We cannot think of them as lost, for moving on and on
The soul shall rise triumphant on the resurrection morn;
Upon the angel wings of prayer let thought sublime ascend
Until we feel the grandeur that the dying comprehend.
With muffled drum, with banners furled, with martial step and slow,
Oh, gather by the sacred dust, the dust that lies below;
And mingle with the breath of flowers that sigh above the brave,
The note of lamentation, like an echo from the grave.
The laurel wreath, the tearful eye and Honor’s fairest crown
Are drops in life’s great ocean to the price that they laid down.
Hush! listen to the sacred dirge, it swells,—it sobs,—it dies:
Until we see them marching, marching home beyond the skies.