Page updated 05/25/2006.
The war has given birth to many gems of poetry, patriotic, humorous, and pathetic, illustrative of the times. The following was suggested by an affecting scene in one of the army hospitals.
A brave lad of sixteen years, belonging to a New England regiment, mortally wounded at Fredericksburg, and sent to the Patent Office Hospital in Washington, was anxiously looking for the coming of his mother. As his last, hour approached, and his sight grew dim, he mistook a sympathetic lady who was wiping the cold, clammy perspiration from his forehead, for the expected one, and with a smile of joy lighting up his pale face, he whispered tenderly, “Is that mother?" “Then," says the writer, "drawing her towards him with all his feeble strength, he nestled his head in her arms like a sleeping infant, and thus died with the sweet word mother on his quivering lips."
Is that mother bending o'er me,
As she sang my cradle hymn
Kneeling there in tears before me?
Say?—my sight is growing dim.
Comes she from the old home lowly,
Out among the northern hills,
To her pet boy dying slowly
Of war's battle wounds and ills ?
Mother! O, we bravely battled—
Battled till the day was done ;
While the leaden hail storm rattled—
Man to man and gun to gun.
But we failed — and I'm dying—
Dying in my boyhood's years,
There — no weeping — self-denying,
Noble deaths demand no tears.
Fold your arms again around me;
Press again my aching head;
Sing the lullaby you sang me—
Kiss me, mother, ere I'm dead.
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Page updated 05/25/2006.