The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1862-04-10
The Battle Near winchester, Va.

[The following lines were written by member
of Company NJ, 1st Michigan Cavalry, after visit
ing the battle ground near Winchester, and seeing
many of the dead soldiers lying here and there in
the wood and open field
Oh how the saddened soul delights to tread,
The narrow path that winds amid the dead
Where man has fought and found an early grave,
AD honor to the Country, he gave his life to save
Here, cold in death, with visage startling pale.
The palld form bespeaks its silent tale;
Points the lone mourner to the scnseless clay,
And, like the dust it honors, wastes away.
Saw We proud rcachers after reasons fount,
Whose vein ambition o'er its source would mount,
Hold ye no mystic converse with the dead,
When on the graves of centuries we tread?
Who tracks the spirit in the land of dreams,
When matter sleeps, and minds in brightness
beams
When time and space, the living and the dead,
Together meet around the sleepers head?
Let bigots preach and unbelevers scorn-
When flesh has might, the spirit has its morn;
And, while the eye is resting from its toll,
The soul, embarrassed. leaves its mortal coil
Speaks with its kindred in loveier sphere,
Where watchful seraphs lend willing ear
Drinks in new vgor at the exhaustess spring,
And hastens homeward on its joyful wing.
The dead I'VE feel their tear-drops in the rain,
And hear their sighs when the winds of March
complain.
In the deep thunder-lo, their startling cry;
In the thick wood-their mournful lullaby,
We speak-they hear-for mortal words once
spoken,
Neer die till ON the eternal ear they've broken.
Beneath that sturdy oak of gigantic form,
Which stood amid the battles fiercest storm;
Lays cold in death, a form of noble sire,
Perchance elder, chaplain, chorister or squire
Whose hands o'er many wasted form were raised,
To gld with light the eye that death had glazed,
In peace, the leader of the laughing throng,
In woe, the chaunter of the funeral song; ea
But, in battling for the Union and the laws,
He fell, martyr to his country's cause.
But here-who can view this form unmoved;
Here sleeps the son his mother dearest loved
The loyal youth, with courage cool and firm,
Fought hard and brave the bat.le-tide to turn
Fought for the Constitution and the Laws
Fought for his country and his country's cause,
Fought, bled and died mid the battles deafnins
roar; 1900
A victim to the foe, he FELL to rise no more
Near another oak, which spreads its giant form,
! Like an old seer to wrestle with the storm; ~
A Father sleeps, to keep his watch no more,
Till times last whistle dies along the shore;
Safe from the waves, the battle and the strife,
He rests in peace from all the cares of life;
Those children of father thus bereft,
Will rise in after years and call him blessed
Strange are the thoughts that fit across the mind
Then pondering Ger the dead, we leave the worl
| behind, Ha t.-.
And from the drowsy turret sad and gray,
The owl pours forth her inharmonious lay,
Around us memory tells her tale of woe,
The rich, the poor the naughty, and the low
All in one common cause their blood have she'd
And now, oh fate; numbered with the dead
Leesburg, Va, March 28, 1862 .