The Picket Guard
By Ethel Lynn Beers (1827 � 1879) |
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"All quiet along the Potomac," they say,
"Except now
and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat,
to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing--a private or two, now and then,
Will
not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer
lost--only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the
death rattle."
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;
Their tents
in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
Or the light of the
watch-fires, are gleaming.
A tremulous sigh, as the
gentle night-wind
Through the forest-leaves softly is
creeping;
While stars up above, with their glittering
eyes,
Keep guard--for the army is sleeping.
There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread,
As he
tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And thinks of the
two in the low trundle-bed
Far away in the cot on the
mountain.
His musket falls slack--his face, dark and
grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters
a prayer for the children asleep--
For their mother--may
Heaven defend her!
The moon seems to shine just as
brightly as then,
That night, when the love yet unspoken
Leaped up to his lips--when low-murmured vows
Were
pledged to be ever unbroken.
Then drawing his sleeve
roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are
welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to its place
As
if to keep down the heart-swelling.
He passes the
fountain, the blasted pine-tree--
The footstep is lagging
and weary;
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of
light,
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was
it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a
rifle--"Ah! Mary, good-bye!"
And the life-blood is ebbing
and plashing.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
No sound save the rush of the river;
While soft falls the
dew on the face of the dead--
The picket's off duty
forever. |
By Ethel Lynn Beers (1827 � 1879)
Listed
July 18, 2012 |
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Note: (September 18,1861)
The stereotyped announcement, "All Quiet on the
Potomac," was
followed one day in September, 1861, by
the words, "A Picket Shot,"
and these so moved the
authoress that she wrote this poem on the
impulse of
the moment.
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