REST AND SHADE.
THE LAST WORDS OF STONEWALL JACKSON.
"Let us cross over the river, an'l rest under the shade of the tress." (These were the farewell words— of whom ? Of course post sigh nj for the idlesse of Arcady, of some v:o nout spirit drooping for tho coding stream ? No : they came from the lips of one who had never lno?.n or asked for repose or shade, whose crossings of rivers ha:l hitherto been done in the face of blasts of hostile shells, from a stern, v.nresling man, not old, but under forty years, not exhausted, but in the full tide o' gigantic enterprise, not peaceful, but the fiercest soldier of his a^e—one Stonewall Jackson dying by his luirts on the field of Chancellorsville. Thoy were his last words, closing a scries of sharply uttered commands—"Order Hill to prepare for action !" 'Pass the. infantry to the front !" Then, ''very quietly and clearly," th 3 beautiful, almost metrical sentence recorded above ( antl straightway, says his fine historian, the late Colonel Henderson, "the soul ~of th:i great Captain passed: into* the peaee of God."
Jackscn bad long been delirious from his terrible wounds—those rapid orders were, of course, nothing but "the last words of Marmion," the breath of a martial spirit hovering over the fighting-lins, so lons 'its home, before it took flight. But we have always been convinced that h's final words welled from th 3 clear spring of his own unclouded tnind. Often does Death, listening, " dull cold-cared" legatee, for Ins assured entail—often does he hear his ov.n inheritance. That last faint whisker sometimes carries the Farthiian shot of his escaping en?my, •he soul. The deep interest of Stonewall Jackson's dying words, however, lies not in their individual application, though that in his case is unexpected enough, but in their gensral. The passing warrior whispered not only his own but a universal yearning. For one instant of time all the pain 'and passion of ths world, all its weakness, its inherent humility, its beast-like sense of burden, found voice in those most unlikely lips, the thin sold'ier's lips still ruled rigid and straight, not by death, though within a tick of death, but by the utterance of order of battle. For all the world wants rest, and shade, wants it more every day ; not only the old world, moreover, not only the scorched toiler umbering into the "labourer's sweet sleep," but the happy shepherd boy himself, shouting on the wold, has caught sight of that immortal sea wh'ich will bear hdm hence, and. he, too, cries '"Thalassa !" —''Linesman," in ths "Spectator."
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King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 671, 23 May 1914, Page 3
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432REST AND SHADE. King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 671, 23 May 1914, Page 3
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