Lines
Sacred to the Memory of
Capt. Henry C. Gorrell of Greensboro’, N.C.,
Of the Second North Carolina Regiment,
Who fell in an attack which he led against the Federal Batteries at the battle of Fair Oaks, June 14, 1862.
MAY HE REST IN PEACE.
They laid him away in the cold damp ground,
On the banks of a Southern stream;
Not far from his home in his own native land
Where the rays of a tropic sun gleam.
No coffin to enclose his mangled remains
No shroud save his uniform coat,
But his name is entwined with the laurels of fame,
And on memory’s tablet ’tis wrote.
He sleeps all unheeding the cannon’s deep roar,
Or the sound of the murmuring stream;
The armies march o’er him in battle array,
Yet he fears not their musketry’s gleam.
For his “home” he fought, for his “rights” he died,
He’s a martyr to a “Glorious Cause;”
The Confederacy he loved, and to see her prevail
He died while defending her laws.
In a little white cottage in the land of the South,
They are waiting his coming again:
But dream not that his body all mangled and torn,
Had been laid ’neath the field of the slain.
Sleep, soldier, sleep! in thy rough Southern tomb,
While above thee may soft breezes wave,
And in summer the birds shall thy requiem sing
From the trees over thy “Patriot grave.”
