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Show WHEN COLUMBIA CROWNS HER DEAD By T. C. HARBAUGH. What has set the drums a-beatlng 'neath the tender skies of May ? Why troop the children from the fields with flowers fresh and gay ? I see the vet'rans gather In their buttoned coats of blue. With here and there an empty sleeve to prove the wearer true; I hear them talk of battles In their youth- time long ago, Where side by side they stood and mt the onslaughts of the foe; And now the lioice is silent, and each soldier boms his head. For well they know this sacred day Columbia Colum-bia crowns her dead. The flag half-mast Is flying and the air is filled with praise Of those who by the Nation stood throughout through-out her trying days. When strode the Cod of Battles in his fury o'er the land, And crimson grew Potomac's tide and red the Rio Grande; When the cannon tore the cedars in the green vales of the South, Where now the blue-bird builds her nest deep in the mortar's mouth; But ah I the snowy wings of Peace above those fields are spread. And Columbia, like a mother, comes to crown her gallant dead. No more I hear the rumble of the battle's brazen car, I hate to part the flowers fair to find the wounds of war; I hear a robin singing where the colonel braliely died, And a butterfly is hov'ring where the legions multiplied ; . Tlie bugle is no longer heard on fields we love to name. And the roses bloom In beauty in the sacred camps of Fame, And down the street a-marching, with Old Glory at their head, Come the "bet'rans, for Columbia bids them all salute her dead. Sleep on. O wearers of the b'.uel the meed of praise you've won, Sleep on the long, long sunvver thro' in shadow and in sup : The sweetest bloom that Nature yields lies on the soldier's breast. And nevermore war's clarion notes shall break your peaceful rest : The battle 'chocs vanish like a distant cannon's boom, Beholdl Columbia gently lays a wreath upon a tomh, ' 'Jlfj chl. dren I Peace be with you!" speaks she low with drooping' head, Tlien she kisses all the rosesshe has laid upon her dead. |