In the novel, 13th Mississippi private Romy Lowe adds to his mess’s reminesence of the death of General Barksdale at Gettysburg by declaiming from Thomas Babington MacCauley’s poem “Ivry”:

“A thousand spurs are striking deep; a thousand spears in rest,

“A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;

“And in they burst, and on they rush’d, while, like a guiding star,

“Amidst the thickest carnage blaz’d the helmet of Navarre.”

The complete poem, which was popular before the war and known to most educated people, as Romy was, is here.