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.
By each tented roof, a charger's hoof
Makes the frosty hill-side 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 hill-side 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.
Oh, thoughts that kill! I thought of the hill
In the far-off Jura chain;
Of the two, the three, o'er the wide salt sea,
Whose hearts would break with pain;
Of my pride and joy,--my eldest boy;
Of my darling, the second--in years;
Of _Willie_, whose face, with its pure, mild grace,
Melts memory into tears;
Of their mother, my bride, by the Alpine lake's side,
And the angel asleep in her arms;
Love, Beauty, and Truth, which she brought to my youth,
In that sweet April day of her charms.
"HALT! _Who comes there?_" The cold midnight air
And the challenging word chill me through.
The ghost of a fear whispers, close to my ear,
"Is peril, love, coming to you?"
The hoarse answer, "RELIEF," makes the shade of a grief
Die away, with the step on the sod.
A kiss melts in air, while a tear and a prayer
Confide my beloved to God.
Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!
With a solemn, pendulum-swing!
Though _I_ slumber all night, the fire burns bright,
And my sentinels' scabbards ring.
* * * * *
"Boot and saddle!" is sounding. Our pulses are bounding.
"To horse!" And I touch with my heel
Black Gray in the flanks, and ride down the ranks,
With my heart, like my sabre, of steel.