Classic Poem

Justice to history — 'tis for the stone;
Justice to bravery — 'tis for the bronze;
Justice to chivalry — 'tis for the song.

What sculptors cannot shape, poets must sing;
So to the singing more than stone or bronze,
The pageantry of martial days moves forth,
And the great General on his charger looms
Into the true perspective of the years.

The immortal Lee — remote from present eyes,
But clear in history's revealing light —
Stands out for vision and for wonderment,
By love remembered, age succeeding age,
The Battle-Soul of the Confederacy.

And thou, O History's Child, far past the time
Of those high tides of passion, may'st behold
What Heaven beheld when blindness smote the earth,
And war through blindness gulfed a glorious people.

Lo, war's Commander on the heights of peace! —
List to the story of the Mighty Captain,
From Stratford House to Lexington, and see
Lee as he was, and is, and ever shall be,
Epochal there amid his silent guns,
A hero growing in his soldier fame,
Forevermore the Idol of the South!