AN ELEGY WRITTEN IN RICHMOND
I
Low in the eastern sky the breaking light
Pales in the vault of heaven the morning star,
Presaging me the dying hour of night,
And that the twilight gray is not afar;
II
For night is slowly changing into morn,
And through the gloom the forms of ships appear.
Across the Arm below, the bugle horn
Reveille’s call brings to my listening ear.
III
No other sound is on the morning air
To echo back from hills and dales around;
No home has man; no beast has here lair,
And desolation seems to own the ground;
IV
Save me who sit beneath an aged elm
Which some one’s home at Richmond once did grace,
Ere fell misfortune did it overwhelm
And left this tree alone to mark the place.