Stephen Brooke

Stephen Brooke Poems

Stephen Brooke Biography

Author, artist, musician, and over-the-hill surfer Stephen Brooke lives in an old farmhouse in the Florida Panhandle. For more, visit his site at stephenbrooke.com)

The Best Poem Of Stephen Brooke

Ghosts In Gray

Beneath the fading stars they pass,
too dim for mortal sight,
Shadows moving in the mist,
before dawn's first pale light.
They have arisen rank on rank,
to rejoin the fight,
And a lonely fife is playing ‘Dixie'
somewhere in the night.

From a hundred battlefields
where rebel blood once flowed,
From the ruined ramparts
where the rebel color showed,
Still true to their defeated cause
and to their soldiers' code,
Ghosts in gray go marching down
a dusty southern road.

A call to arms has wakened them
from solitary sleep;
Their exiled brothers they have joined,
with pledges yet to keep.
And though no man is left to mourn,
no woman left to weep,
They did not lie forgotten,
Southern mem'ries run too deep.

They have but a few hours here
before they fade away,
Departing from this world
with the coming of the day.
May they find the peace at last
that they deserve, I pray,
And as they pass by, I salute
those gallant ghosts in gray.

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