AFTER “TAPS.”
Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! As I lay with my blanket on, By the dim firelight, in the moonlit night, When the skirmishing fight was done.
The measured beat of the sentry’s feet, With the jingling scabbard’s ring! Tramp! tramp! in my meadow-camp By the Shenandoah’s spring!
The moonlight seems to shed cold beams On a row of pale grave-stones: Give the bugle breath, and that image of Death Will fly from the reveille’s tones.
By each tented roof, a charger’s hoof Makes the frosty hillside ring: Give the bugle breath, and a spirit of Death To each horse’s girth will spring.
Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! The sentry before my tent, Guards in gloom his chief, for whom Its shelter to-night is lent.
I am not there. On the hillside bare I think of the ghost within; Of the brave who died at my sword-hand side, To-day, ’mid the horrible din
Of shot and shell, and the infantry yell, As we charged with the sabre drawn. To my heart I said, “Who shall be the dead In my tent at another dawn?”
I thought of a blossoming almond-tree, The stateliest tree that I know; Of a golden bowl; of a parted soul; And a lamp that is burning low.