Fredericksburg

With frosted breath, we wait the break of day; Our bravest wishing night would stay the morn; When we will face a bristled wall of gray, And wonder who will die upon the horn; December thirteenth breeds a foggy dawn; We gathered musket, sword, and God divine; To Marye's Heights, we marched in columns drawn, To fall in brother's blood at Longstreet's line; With grey a third the blue at Burnside's feet, And Franklin's troops as dead and surely done, We crossed the Rappahannock in defeat; Our legacy, but graves with nothing won. A northern snow has whitened up the ground; Beneath a virgin sea, our ghosts are drowned.