One by one the pale stars faded, and at length the morning broke; But not one of all the sleepers on that field of death awoke.
Slowly passed the golden hours of the long bright summer day, And upon the field of carnage still the dead unburied lay;
Lay there stark and cold, but pleading with a dumb, unceasing prayer, For a little dust to hide them from the staring sun and air.
Once again the night dropped round them—night so holy and so calm That the moonbeams hushed the spirit, like the sound of prayer or psalm.
On a couch of trampled grasses, just apart from all the rest, Lay a fair young boy, with small hands meekly folded on his breast.
Death had touched him very gently, and he lay as if in sleep; Even his mother scarce had shuddered at that slumber, calm and deep.
For a smile of wondrous sweetness lent a radiance to the face, And the hand of cunning sculptor could have added naught of grace
To the marble limbs so perfect in their passionless repose, Robbed of all save matchless purity by hard, unpitying foes.
And the broken drum beside him all his life’s short story told; How he did his duty bravely till the death-tide o’er him rolled.
Midnight came with ebon garments and a diadem of stars, While right upward in the zenith hung the fiery planet Mars.