A touching Civil War ballad, 1864
words and music by James G. Clark
After the battle of Gettysburg a dead soldier was found on the field clasping in his hand an ambrotype of his three little children. No other incident of that fratricidal war is known to have touched the heart of so many people.
The sheet music:
Accompaniment by Benjamin R. Tubb:
Lyrics
- Upon the field of Gettysburg, the summer sun was high
When freedom met her haughty foe, beneath a northern sky
Among the heroes of the North, who swelled her grand array
And rushed like mountain eagles forth, from happy homes away
There stood a man of humble fame, a sire of children three
And gazed within a little frame, their pictured form to see
And blame him not, if in the strife, he breathed a soldier’s prayer
Refrain
O! FATHER, shield the soldier’s wife
And for his children care
And for his children care
- Upon the field of Gettysburg, when morning shone again
The crimson cloud battle burst, in streams of fiery rain
Our legions quelled the awful flood, of shot, and steel, and shell
While banners, marked with ball and blood, around them arose and fell
And none more nobly won the name, of Champion of the Free
Than he who pressed the little frame, that held his children three
And none were braver in the strife, than he who breathed the prayer - Upon the Field of Gettysburg, the full moon slowly rose
She looked, and saw ten thousand brows, all pale in death’s repose
And down beside a silver stream, from other forms away
Calm as a warrior in a dream, our fallen comrade lay
His limbs were cold, his sightless eyes, were fixed upon the three
Sweet stars that rose in memory’s skies, to light him o’er death’s sea
Then honored be the soldier’s life, and hallowed be his prayer
Sung here by Fred Feild: