From camp to camp, from battlefield to battlefield, through the long and toilsome march, by day and by night, these sacred charities followed, and the prayers of the devoted and the true were ceaselessly with you through all dangers.
Leagues { 364}and leagues separated you from home, but the blessings there invoked upon you hovered over and around you, and sweetened your sleep like angels' visits.
While the boy soldier slept by his camp fire at night and dreaming of home, and what his valor would achieve for his country, uttered even in his dreams prayers for the loved ones who had made that home so dear to him, the mother dreaming of her son breathed at the same time prayers for his safety, and for the triumph of his cause. The prayers and blessings of mother and son, borne heavenward, met in the bosom of their common God and Father.
``As your your's was then, tho' fighting blue,
"_Fame Hath Crowned with Laurel the Swords of Grant and Lee._"
ETHINKS to-night I catch a gleam of steel among the pines,
`And yonder by the lilied stream repose the foemen's lines;
`The ghostly guards who pace the ground a moment stop to see
`If all is safe and still around the tents of Grant and Lee.=
`'Tis but a dream; no armies camp where once their bay'nets
`And Hesper's calm and lovely lamp shines on the dead alone;
`A cricket chirps on yonder rise beneath a cedar tree
`Where glinted 'neath the summer skies the swords of Grant and Lee.=
`Forever sheathed those famous blades that led the eager van!
`They shine no more among the glades that fringe the Rapidan;
`To-day their battle work is done, go draw them forth and see
`That not a stain appears upon the swords of Grant and Lee.=
`The gallant men who saw them flash in comradeship to-day
`Recall the wild, impetuous dash of val'rous blue and gray;
`And 'neath the flag that proudly waves above a Nation free,
`They oft recall the missing braves who fought with Grant and Lee.=
`They sleep among the tender grass, they slumber 'neath the pines,
`They're camping in the mountain pass where crouched the serried lines;
`They { 366}rest where loud the tempests blow, destructive in their glee--
`The men who followed long ago the swords of Grant and Lee.=
`Their graves are lying side by side where once they met as foes,