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Home  »  American Sonnets  »  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)

Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891.

At Fredericksburg

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)

THE INCREASING moonlight drifts across my bed,

And on the churchyard by the road, I know

It falls as white and noiselessly as snow….

’T was such a night two weary summers fled;

The stars, as now, were waning overhead.

Listen! again the shrill-lipped bugles blow

Where the swift currents of the river flow

Past Fredericksburg: far off the heavens are red

With sudden conflagration: on yon height,

Linstock in hand, the gunners hold their breath:

A signal-rocket pierces the dense night,

Flings its spent stars upon the town beneath:

Hark!—the artillery massing on the right,

Hark!—the black squadrons wheeling down to Death!