| |
| HE is dead, the beautiful youth, | |
| The heart of honor, the tongue of truth, | |
| He, the life and light of us all, | |
| Whose voice was blithe as a bugle-call, | |
| Whom all eyes followed with one consent, | 5 |
| The cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word, | |
| Hushed all murmurs of discontent. | |
| |
| Only last night, as we rode along, | |
| Down the dark of the mountain gap, | |
| To visit the picket-guard at the ford, | 10 |
| Little dreaming of any mishap, | |
| He was humming the words of some old song: | |
| “Two red roses he had on his cap | |
| And another he bore at the point of his sword.” | |
| |
| Sudden and swift a whistling ball | 15 |
| Came out of a wood, and the voice was still; | |
| Something I heard in the darkness fall, | |
| And for a moment my blood grew chill; | |
| I spake in a whisper, as he who speaks | |
| In a room where some one is lying dead; | 20 |
| But he made no answer to what I said. | |
| |
| We lifted him up to his saddle again, | |
| And through the mire and the mist and the rain | |
| Carried him back to the silent camp, | |
| And laid him as if asleep on his bed; | 25 |
| And I saw by the light of the surgeon’s lamp | |
| Two white roses upon his cheeks, | |
| And one, just over his heart, blood-red! | |
| |
| And I saw in a vision how far and fleet | |
| That fatal bullet went speeding forth, | 30 |
| Till it reached a town in the distant North, | |
| Till it reached a house in a sunny street, | |
| Till it reached a heart that ceased to beat | |
| Without a murmur, without a cry; | |
| And a bell was tolled, in that far-off town, | 35 |
| For one who had passed from cross to crown, | |
| And the neighbors wondered that she should die. | |
| |
