Your virgin lilies sacrifice,
Your pansies with their pleading eyes,
Your royal roses bright and brave
Anoint to deck a hero's grave;
But they who faced a petty foe
Nor stayed to plan its overthrow,
While others fearless turned to wield
Their arms on many a fiery field,
These slunk from out the heedless crowd
And buttoning on their gory shroud
While wrong, the ranks of right despoiled
Lay down to sleep when others toiled.
Cowards, weak cowards, let them lie
Unnoticed 'neath their natal sky,
The onward march of triumph treads
With scorn the grasses o'er their heads;;
Erect no pedestal of pride
O'er the ignoble suicide.
No virgin lilies sacrifice,
No pansies with their pleading eyes,
No royal roses bright and brave
Condemn to deck a coward's grave.
No trailing myrtle vainly place
To cover O'er a life's disgrace;
Weeds, coarsest weeds, should veil the mound
With its profaned, unhallowed ground,
Fit symbol they of low desires
Of hearts consumed by fiendish fires,
Of minds distorted, souls that grow
To dwarfish statures base and low;
And if perchance a wild flower springs
Or bird, in passing, stops and sings
Where only thistles, grass and weeds
Spring up each year to drop their seeds,
'Tis like a breath of Mercy's prayer
Midst changeless justice bleak and bare.
Your pansies with their pleading eyes,
Your royal roses bright and brave
Anoint to deck a hero's grave;
But they who faced a petty foe
Nor stayed to plan its overthrow,
While others fearless turned to wield
Their arms on many a fiery field,
These slunk from out the heedless crowd
And buttoning on their gory shroud
While wrong, the ranks of right despoiled
Lay down to sleep when others toiled.
Cowards, weak cowards, let them lie
Unnoticed 'neath their natal sky,
The onward march of triumph treads
With scorn the grasses o'er their heads;;
Erect no pedestal of pride
O'er the ignoble suicide.
No virgin lilies sacrifice,
No pansies with their pleading eyes,
No royal roses bright and brave
Condemn to deck a coward's grave.
No trailing myrtle vainly place
To cover O'er a life's disgrace;
Weeds, coarsest weeds, should veil the mound
With its profaned, unhallowed ground,
Fit symbol they of low desires
Of hearts consumed by fiendish fires,
Of minds distorted, souls that grow
To dwarfish statures base and low;
And if perchance a wild flower springs
Or bird, in passing, stops and sings
Where only thistles, grass and weeds
Spring up each year to drop their seeds,
'Tis like a breath of Mercy's prayer
Midst changeless justice bleak and bare.
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