Softly comes the twilight stealing gently through my prison bars,
While from out the vault of heaven, faintly glimmering come the stars;
Well I know my mother’s weeping for her long-lost wandering boy—
Does she know that still I’m living? even that would give her joy.
No, they tell her that I’m sleeping ’neath the turf on Shiloh’s plain;
That she ne’er will see her wanderer—never on this earth again;
Oh, my poor heart sinks within me, as the months roll slowly by,
And it seems in this cold Northland a lone captive I must die!
Yes, far away from friends and kindred, without a hand to mark my grave—
And not upon a field of glory I’ll sleep amid the Southern brave;
Mother! yes, your boy is dying! soon he’ll pass through death’s dark wave,
And the wintry wind be sighing o’er a captive’s lonely grave. |