Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
The Bugle
By Grenville Mellen (1799–1841)O
Whose music up the deep and dewy air
Swells to the clouds, and calls on echo there,
Till a new melody is born;—
Is bending from her throne of beauty down,
With still stars beaming on her azure crown,
Intense and eloquently bright.
When the far voice of waters mourns in song,
And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long,
Barks at the melancholy moon.
Soaring and dying on the silent sky,
As if some sprite of sound went wandering by,
With lone halloo and roundelay.
Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart,
And my stirred spirit hears thee with a start
As boyhood’s old, remembered shout.
From sleeping city’s moon-bathed battlements,
Or from the guarded field and warrior tents,
Like some near breath around you steal?
Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise,
Shriller than eagle’s clamor, to the skies,
Where wings and tempests never soar?
No music that of air or earth is born,
Can match the mighty music of that horn,
On midnight’s fathomless profound.