Friday, September 27, 2013

"Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal."

From Allen Guelzo's Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, in the evening, after the fighting had ended on the second terrible day of battle:
...George Hillyer of the 9th Georgia heard someone in McLaws' division begin singing, and loudly enough to be heard over both exhausted lines:
Come, ye disconsolate, where e'er ye languish
Come to the mercy seat fervently kneel
Here bring your wounded hearts, Here tell your anguish;
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.
Hillyer wrote years later that he had "heard...much that the world applauds in the way of high grade music, but...I have never heard music like that." The voice quavered through hymns and songs, and finally finished its impromptu serenade with "When This Cruel War Is Over." Across the now silent battlefield, "thousands of soldiers on both sides clapped and cheered."
Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

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