In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,We saw your dead uncoffined lie.
"We heard the starving prisoner's sighs, And saw, from line and trench, your sons Follow our flight with home-sick eyes Beyond the battery's smoking guns."
"And heard and saw ye only wrong And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks?" "We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song, The crash of Slavery's broken locks!
"We saw from new, uprising States The treason-nursing mischief spurned, As, crowding Freedom's ample gates, The long-estranged and lost returned.
"O'er dusky faces, seamed and old, And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil, With hope in every rustling fold, We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.
"And struggling up through sounds accursed, A grateful murmur clomb the air; A whisper scarcely heard at first, It filled the listening heavens with prayer.
"And sweet and far, as from a star, Replied a voice which shall not cease, Till, drowning all the noise of war, It sings the blessed song of peace!"