In camp, on the march, in the battle,
His thought would repeat evermore,
"At the place fore-ordained in the vision
I shall pass to the Dark River's shore."
And often awaiting the summons,
He asked for the wild Indian name,
When curled o'er American hamlets
The smoke from the guns' sudden flame.
The forest one evening was silent
As though in the calm of a trance
Yet within it two armies were resting,
The soldiers of Britain and France.
Our Highlanders slumbered, march-wearied,
Their sentries at watch in the wood:
Behind their long lines of entrenchment
The French in their bivouacs stood.
"Inverawe, take your sleep ere the morning,
When our praise or our death shall be sung,"
A comrade cried; "soon for Carillon
A chime that is new shall be rung!"
But the air of that night of midsummer
Seemed chilly, and sleep fled away;
And he wandered to where, near Carillon,
The charge would be sounded at day.
To the North a pale ray of Aurora
Shot white o'er the black forest spars,
A lake through the pines softly gleaming
Lay calm in the radiance of stars.
It seemed a sweet heaven, whose brightness
Life's dark prison-bars could not hide:
As he gazed, lo, he thought that a figure
Advanced from that silvery tide.
Distinct as a luminous shadow,
It moved in the starlight alone,
Till it came to him close, and he shuddered,
For the face that he saw was his own!
The cloak of the dread apparition
His own, but bedabbled in blood!
Inverawe stretched his hand, but the spectre
Had vanished like mist in the wood.
To the fires of his comrades returning,
"Ah! friends, you deceived me," he said;
"Why conceal from my ears that Carillon
Has the name that was named by the dead?
'Tis Ticonderoga, the fortress
We march on the morrow to storm,
Where Death and the Phantom stand watching
The hour when our column shall form."
The morn brought the hell of the onset,
When bayonet and Highlanders' blade
Sank crushed where the trenches were flashing
In the roll of the long fusillade.
Repulsed! O how sadly at night-fall
The remnant was gathered and told!
In silence they thought of the wounded,
And mourned the brave hearts that were cold.
Ere thundered again the dim battle
Saluting the deathless in God,
A truce found that Leader all gory,
Yet gasping his breath on the sod.
They bore him to camp, where around him
They pressed as he beckoned in pain:
His voice seemed a breath in the forest,
"I die—I have seen him again."
AN ISLESMAN'S FAREWELL.
Ah! must we part, my darling?
O let the days be few,
Until your dear returning
To one who loves but you!
Where'er your ship be sailing,
Think on your own love true;
The back of the wave to you, darling,
The back of the wave to you!