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.