early fall in the heat of earth's battle:

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves;
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause,
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!

The shaft which the prophetic eye of Timrod saw "in the stone" was in
time revealed, and years later that other shaft, awaiting the hour for
doing homage to the poet, found the light. To-day the patriot soldiers
asleep in Magnolia, and their poet alike, have stately testimonials of
the loving memory of their people.

[Note: The quotations from Henry Timrod found in this book are
used by special permission of the B.F. Johnson Publishing Company,
the authorized publishers of Timrod's Poems.]