Civil War Lyrics  A Georgia Volunteer by Mary Ashley Townsend | Civil War Music

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A Georgia Volunteer

As performed by The Rebelaires

For the Cause

The poem “A Georgia Volunteer” was written not long after the war’s end by Mary Ashley Townsend.  It reflects the sad and remorseful attitudes of many Southerners following the Confederacy’s defeat.  The poem was set to music in 1994 by artists from Waycross, Georgia.

Far up the lonely mountain-side

My wandering footsteps led;

The moss lay thick beneath my feet,

The pine sighed overhead.

The trace of a dismantled fort

Lay in the forest nave,

And in the shadow near my path

I saw a soldier's grave.


The bramble wrestled with the weed

Upon the lowly mound;

The simple head-board, rudely writ,

Had rotted to the ground;

I raised it with a reverent hand,

From dust its words to clear,

But time had blotted all but these--

“A Georgia Volunteer!”


Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,

Adown thy rocky glen,

Above thee lies the grave of one

Of Stonewall Jackson's men.

Beneath the cedar and the pine,

In solitude austere.

Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies

A Georgia Volunteer!


I saw the toad and scaly snake

From tangled covert start,

And hide themselves among the weeds

Above the dead man's heart;

But undisturbed, in sleep profound,

Unheeding, there he lay;

His coffin but the mountain soil,

His shroud Confederate gray.


Yet whence he came, what lip shall say--

Whose tongue will ever tell

What desolated hearths and hearts

Have been because he fell?

What sad-eyed maiden braids her hair,

Her hair which he held dear?

One lock of which perchance lies with

A Georgia Volunteer!



Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,

Adown thy rocky glen,

Above thee lies the grave of one

Of Stonewall Jackson's men.

Beneath the cedar and the pine,

In solitude austere.

Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies

A Georgia Volunteer!


What mother, with long watching eyes,

And white lips, cold and dumb,

Waits with appalling patience for

Her darling boy to come?

Her boy! whose mountain grave swells up

But one of many a scar,

Cut on the face of our fair land,

By gory-handed war.


What fights he fought, what wounds he wore,

Are all unknown to fame;

Remember, on his lonely grave

There is not e'en a name!

That he fought well and bravely too,

And held his country dear,

We know, else he had never been

A Georgia volunteer.


Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,

Adown thy rocky glen,

Above thee lies the grave of one

Of Stonewall Jackson's men.

Beneath the cedar and the pine,

In solitude austere.

Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies

A Georgia Volunteer!


A Georgia Volunteer!


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