AT FORT PILLOW
The house is ashes where I dwelt
Beyond the mighty inland sea,
The tombstones shattered where I knelt
By that old church upon the lee.
The prowling fiends who came with fire
Camped on the consecrated sod,
And trampled in the dust and mire
The holy tenement of God!
The spot where darling mother sleeps,
Beneath the glimpse of yon sad moon,
Is crushed, with splintered marble heaps,
To stall the horse of some dragoon.
And when I ponder that black day,
It makes my frantic spirit wince;
I marched—with Longstreet—far away,
But have beheld the ravage since.
The tears are hot upon my face,
When thinking what bleak fate befell
The only sister of our race—
A thing too horrible to tell.
They say that ere her senses fled,
She rescued, of her brothers cried,
Then feebly bowed her stricken head,
Too good to live thus—so she died.
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