Stoop, Angels, Hither From the Skies!

It’s impossible to explain to a Yankee what “tacky” is.  They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one. – Pat Conroy ODE. 

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone!

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! your sisters bring their tears,
And these memorial blooms.

Small tributes! but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!

The best biography on Timrod is Walter Brian Cisco, Henry Timrod: A Biography.
See also The Poems of Henry Timrod.

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