A Soldier's Offering

I recently posted an entry with a  poem called The Palmetto and the Pine from the introduction of an old book Under Both Flags.

In the same section of that book is another brief poem, A Soldier's Offering that I had overlooked but that I do think is worth posting since it continues the theme of reconciliation and seems to explain the title of the previous piece of verse I shared here. George M. Vickers is listed as the author of the following lines


The laurel wreath of glory,
That decks the soldier's grave,
Is but the finished story,
The record of the brave;
And he who dared the danger,
Who battled well and true,
To honor was no stranger,
Though garbed in gray or blue.

Go, strip your choicest bowers,
Where blossoms sweet abound,
Then scatter free your flowers,
Upon each moss-grown mound;
Though shaded by the North's tall pine
Or south's palmetto tree,
Let sprays that soldiers' graves entwine,
A soldier's tribute be.