Colonel Shaw
‘They buried him . . .’
Colonel Robert Shaw, a white man, commanded the first black regiment,The 54th Massachusetts in the American Civil War.
A mountain of stone carved with wordsIn every tongue decorates the Earth.Who knows which man buried deservesThe praise etched into the stone that willEndure until strangers wonder who he was?But so many turn to dust unsung,Loved or unloved by the good and the bad.Colonel Shaw died and the South buried,They thought, a white man with nothingBut his white skin –For them he was naked and alone.They gave him an epitaph, they thought,Which would forever besmirch his name:‘We buried him with his niggers.’
But a father whose name should beWritten on the wind penned his own:‘We can imagine no holier placeThan that in which he lies.’