Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1881-06-08
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY.

REV. A. J. HoUGH.
DeliDered at the Memorial Exercises in Hammond Ho
Ludto1 Nay 30th.
God loveth the blue:
He wrought it through
The folds of the mighty sea;
And the curtains that hide His face from view
Are stained with the same unfading hue
Hung up for eternity.
It's only thought:
Our brave boys fought
In the color God loves, arrayed,
Tho the Union dissolve for which they wrought,
And their dearest hopes all come to naught,
The blue will never fade
O'er the throne OF God,
Under the sod,
Our noble dead wrapt round.
Through the realms of space, 80 high and broad
That wings never pierced and feet neer trod,
The sacred blue is found.
While the centuries slow
Shall come and go,
And the nations rise and fall,
1t is sweet to the northern heart to know
That the sacred blue, with the stars, shall glow
Forever, and over all.
The gray is a dead
And useless shred
The sport of the wild winds breath
poisonous 6end in the marshes bred
The robe of spectre from Hades fed
shade from the vale of death
All the mists are gray;
At dawn of day,
Like the shades of ill. they depart!
So the cloth of gray is hiding away
As guilty thing; but the blue shall stay
In the sky and the nations heart.
How the gray will blind
And hauntsthe mind
With the strange forebodings of doom
But the blue is pure, and tender, and kind,
With a radiant soul iu its deeps enshrined
That warns and scatters the gloom
God loveth the blue:
We love it. too,
For gray clad hosts from the south
In open rebellion gathered and grew;
But the blue rose up and smote them through,
And charged at the cannon mouth.
While the thousands fell,
Through shot and shell
They swept DER the mountain sleeps,
Aud answered the rebels savage yell
With thunder of cannon fire of hell,
And piled them up in heaps
That terrible day
When the blue and gray
For four-years' struggle met;
When God seemed never to hear us pray,
And the hopes of the strongest died away
The memory haunts us yet
For the brave who rest
In blue cloth drest,
As they fell in that bloody strife,
We scatter. to day, with grief suppressed,
The flowers of sprins-her first and her best
Sweet emhems Of endless life.
'Tis all wecsn bring
These flowers of spring
The wealth Of golden May;
But speech cannot fashion, nor angel sing,
Ihe tender divine, and passionate thing
We mean the flowers should say.
Iu purple and red
Our love is said;
In the blue and the snowy bloom
We utter a sDeechless grief for the dead,
And send them back, for their blood once shed,
Our love in the sweet perfume
No pitying gaze,
No prayer for grace,
Had these noble boys OF ours;
But they died, all alone, in bloody place.
And nobody kissed them on the face
But we kiss them now with flowers
Oh they died alone,
And made tneir moan
Where death hail round them swept;
And their sad good bye was the bugle blown,
Their winding sheet blue cloak thrown
Around them as they slept.
And they died for you
The boys in blue;
Twas a sacrifice sublime.
For the many, perished the noble few;
And blossom and love shall be their due
From the nation, through all time
Bring the sweet, the rare,
And fill the air
With the flowers fragrant breath;
And let every patriot bosom bear
For the dead sweet love, for the mourning, prayer,
As we move to the place of death
And when through the street
With Offering sweet
We pass, let our thoughts be eiven
To the boys who followed the war drums bsst
And peacefully now their comrades greet
In the tender light of Heaven
They have left the field
Their wounds healed,
And finished each weary tramp:
Their arms are piled and their cannon sealed;
The army has faced about and wheeled
All into the silent camp
No treacherous foes
Break the repose
They won in the fearful strife:
The legons of God about them close,
And through the midst of the camp there flows
The river of water Of life.
Face tender and fair
The heavens wear,
And all is serene and still:
No chastity prisons are frowning there
! TOmbS, disease. starvation. desDair.-
No Libby or Andersonvle.
And would that the dead
Could hear us tread
In the graveyard on the hill
Could see the tears that are free ly shed,
And hear the words that are sung and said,
And know that we love them sti Ii.
They have heard the boom
From the guns of doom
That swept their ranks away;
Oh, would that into each narrow room
Our songs could float with the swest perfume
OF the iowels we strew to day!
How we wish they knew
II may be true
Some messenger OF Heaven
Shall tell to the boys who wore the blue
The sacred thing that to-day we do
For their lives so freely given
Nor need it be told
As truth too bold,
Or thing incredible,
That the spirit forms which the Heavens enfold
May the scenes of this hour with Joy behold
Be of us and with us still.
But the visions grow
More clear, and. 10
stir in the camp is made
Their forms are hurrying to and fro,
Eyes sparkle with JOY, and faces glow:
Are they mastering on parade?
II seems that to-day,
In grand array,
They gather in light Afar;
While the angels crown with garlands Of bay,
And the flowers of Heavens eternal May,
Our heroes who died in war.
Now earthward they sweep
In columns deep;
Their colors aloft they bear;
The tides of new life through their pulses leap;
A solid unbroken front they keep;
And now they halt In mid air
There isn't the trace
Of blood on a face.
To tell how they bleeding died; lgi
Their limbs have grown strong; they move withe
} OF them that nhabit some holy place;
, They look like the glorihed.
Oh list to our song,
, Immortal thrOnR