THE BLUE AND THE GRAY (2) by ANONYMOUS

EACH thin hand resting on a grave,
Her lips apart in prayer,
A mother knelt, and left her tears
Upon the violets there.
O'er many a rood of vale and lawn,
Of hill and forest gloom,
The reaper Death had revelled in
His fearful harvest home.
The last unquiet summer shone
Upon a fruitless fray;
From yonder forest charged the blue --
Down yonder slope the gray.

The hush of death was on the scene,
And sunset o'er the dead,
In that oppressive stillness,
A pall of glory spread.
I know not, dare not question how
I met the ghastly glare
Of each upturned and stirless face
That shrunk and whitened there.
I knew my noble boys had stood
Through all that withering day,
I knew that Willie wore the blue,
That Harry wore the gray.

I thought of Willie's clear blue eye,
His wavy hair of gold,
That clustered on a fearless brow
Of purest Saxon mould;
Of Harry, with his raven locks
And eagle glance of pride;
Of how they clasped each other's hand
And left their mother's side;
How hand in hand they bore my prayers
And blessings on the way --
A noble heart beneath the blue,
Another 'neath the gray.

The dead, with white and folded hands,
That hushed our village homes,
I've seen laid calmly, tenderly,
Within their darkened rooms;
But there I saw distorted limbs,
And many an eye aglare,
In the soft purple twilight of
The thunder-smitten air.
Along the slope and on the sward
In ghastly ranks they lay,
And there was blood upon the blue
And blood upon the gray.

I looked and saw his blood, and his;
A swift and vivid dream
Of blended years flashed o'er me, when,
Like some cold shadow, came
A blindness of the eye and brain --
The same that seizes one
When men are smitten suddenly
Who overstare the sun;
And while, blurred with the sudden stroke
That swept my soul, I lay,
They buried Willie in his blue,
And Harry in his gray.

The shadows fall upon their graves;
They fall upon my heart;
And through the twilight of this soul
Like dews the tears will start;
The starlight comes so silently
And lingers where they rest;
So hope's revealing starlight sinks
And shines within my breast.
They ask not there, where yonder heaven
Smiles with eternal day,
Why Willie wore the loyal blue,
Why Harry wore the gray.

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