Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
The Picket-Guard
By Ethel Lynn Beers (18271879)
A
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.
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.
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.
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping;
While stars up above, with their glittering eyes,
Keep guard,—for the army is sleeping.
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.
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep,—
For their mother,—may Heaven defend her!
That night, when the love yet unspoken
Leaped up to his lips,—when low, murmured vows
Were pledged to be ever unbroken.
He dashes off tears that are welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to its place,
As if to keep down the heart-swelling.
The footstep is lagging and weary;
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle: “Ha! Mary, good by!”
And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing.
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.