The sentinel treads his lonely round-- As dawn in the East is breaking A cannon's deep thundering shakes the ground! Another! an army springs up at the sound-- To thousands Death's _reveille_ waking! What a thrilling pang traverses his soul! And a tear down his cheek is stealing, For a thought of home, with the drum's deep roll, Spite a soldier's manliness, over him stole, As the trumpet of battle was pealing. A moment he saw his darlings and wife; To Heaven he breath'd a short prayer! To his country then consecrated his life, Rush'd in where the clamor of battle was rife-- When a tempest of ball filled the air. * * * * * A wounded soldier, who fell by the Run, Lies panting for breath and for water-- His hand still grasping his trusty gun-- Expires 'mid the glad notes of "victory won!" On Manassas' red field of slaughter. * * * * * In a far away cabin, a wailing is heard, When the lists of the fallen have come; A mother, long sicken'd by hope deferr'd, A widow with orphans is made at a word, And she weeps o'er the "darlings at home." AT FORT PILLOW. You shudder as you think upon th' carnage of the grim report, The desolation when we won the inner trenches of the fort; But there are deeds ye may not know, that scourge the pulses into strife; Dark memories of deathless woe pointing the bayonet and knife. The house is ashes where I dwelt, beyond the mighty inland sea, The tombstones shattered where I knelt by that old church at Pointe Coupee; The Yankee fiends that came with fire, camped on the consecrated sod, And trampled in the dust and mire the holy Eucharist of God! The spot where darling mother sleeps, beneath the glimpse of yon sad moon, Is crushed with splintered marble heaps, to stall the horse of some dragoon; God! when I ponder that black day it makes my frantic spirit wince; I marched--with Longstreet--far away, but have beheld the ravage since. The tears are hot upon my face, when thinking what black fate befell The only sister of our race--a thing too horrible to tell! They say that ere her senses fled, she rescue of her brothers cried; Then freely bowed her stricken head, too poor to live thus--so she died. Two of those brothers heard no plea; with their proud hearts forever still-- John shrouded by the Tennessee, and Arthur there at Malvern Hill; But I have heard it everywhere, vibrating like a passing knell; 'Tis as perpetual as the air, and solemn as a funeral bell. By scorched lagoon and murky swamp, my wrath was never in the lurch; I've killed the picket in his camp, and many a pilot on his perch; With steady rifle, sharpen'd brand, a week ago upon my steed, With Forrest and his warrior band, I made the hell-hounds writhe and bleed.