Ah, your song drowns in tears! Yet you do not wish me to live, Lenore? O love, I can do nothing but die!
The sunlight fades from the hills, the air wavers and glimmers, and day is dim. Thy face is mistier than a vision of angels. There are faint, strange voices in my ear, swift rustlings, far harmonics;—has sense become so attenuated that I hear the blood in my failing pulses? Lenore, love, lower. Thy lips to mine, and breathe my life away. Twice would I die to save thee!
—Anselmo! man! where art thou? Come back ere I fall,—strength flares up like a dying flame. Never tell her why I betrayed Italy!
—Closer, dear love, closer! What old murmurs do I hear?
"The night is spread for thee,
The heavens are wide,
And the dark earth's mystery"—
So,—in thy arms,—from thee to God! O love, forever—kiss—forgive!—Lift me, that I confront eternity and Christ!
AFTER "TAPS."
Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!
As I lay with my blanket on,
By the dim fire-light, 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 gravestones:
Give the bugle breath, and that image of Death
Will fly from the reveille's tones.