Oh yes! we're all "fraternal" now,
Purged of our sins, we're clean and pure,
Congress will "reconstruct" us soon--
But no gray people on _that_ floor!
I'm harmonized--"so-called"--but long
To see those times once more!

Gay days! the sun was brighter then,
And we were happy, though so poor!
That past comes back as I behold
My shattered friend upon the floor,
My splintered, useless, ruined mug,
From which I'll drink no more.

How many lips I'll love for aye,
While heart and memory endure,
Have touched this broken cup and laughed--
How they did laugh!--in days of yore!
Those days we'd call "a beauteous dream,
If they had been no more!"

Dear comrades, dead this many a day,
I saw you weltering in your gore,
After those days, amid the pines
On the Rappahannock shore!
When the joy of life was much to me
But your warm hearts were more!

Yours was the grand heroic nerve
That laughs amid the storm of war--