Cover them over with beautiful flowers, Deck them with garlands, those brothers of ours, Lying so silent by night and by day Sleeping the years of their manhood away. Give them the meed they have won in the past; Give them the honors their future forcast; Give them the chaplets they won in the strife; Give them the laurels they lost with their life.

In these lines Carleton adopts the voice of a communal mourner, urging public acts of remembrance for “brothers of ours” who have died in their prime. The imagery of flowers, garlands, chaplets, and laurels draws on classical and Christian traditions of honoring the dead, but the emphasis is civic and fraternal: the living owe the fallen the recognition they can no longer receive. The repeated imperatives (“Cover,” “Deck,” “Give”) turn grief into duty, suggesting that memorial ritual is not mere sentiment but a moral accounting—repaying courage, sacrifice, and unrealized futures with honor. The stanza’s steady cadence reinforces the solemnity of collective commemoration.