" FLOWERS for our dead! " — and at the word
As by a mandate from the Lord,
The green earth blossomed; far and wide
Hill, valley, to the call replied.

Flowers for our dead! Oh! lovely things!
God fashioned all your painted wings,
And gemmed your starry eyes with dew,
And gave you robes, red, white and blue.

And here, beneath his sky, we stand,
And take you from his gracious hand —
Passing around with reverent tread
To scatter you above our dead.

Oh, flowers! lie here, and breathe away
Your unspent lives above this clay;
'T was thus exhaled their nobler powers
Whose types ye are, unselfish flowers!

For thus they died — before their time —
In youth's glad bloom, in manhood's prime;
Yielding their lives up, one and all,
Obedient to a nation's call,

As ye do now! Oh, frail, sweet things,
How pure a fragrance round you clings!
So round the memory of our dead
How pure, how sweet the fragrance shed!