Nay, nay, Sweet, ask me no question; I have wronged thee; he shall tell thee how. Yet best thou shouldst never hear it. Sin to thee greater than all treachery had been. Forgive, forgive! I go,--in meeting, leave thee; but be glad for me,--whether I sleep or whether I wake, know that a great curse will have fallen from me. Swathe my memory in thy love. Kiss me again, child! Rock me a little; stoop lower, and croon those old mountain-songs that once you sang when the sunshine soaked the sward and your hair was crowned with blue morning-glories. Ah, your song drowns in tears! Yet you do not wish me to live, Lenore? O love, I can do nothing but die! The sunlight fades from the hills, the air wavers and glimmers, and day is dim. Thy face is mistier than a vision of angels. There are faint, strange voices in my ear, swift rustlings, far harmonics;--has sense become so attenuated that I hear the blood in my failing pulses? Lenore, love, lower. Thy lips to mine, and breathe my life away. Twice would I die to save thee! --Anselmo! man! where art thou? Come back ere I fall,--strength flares up like a dying flame. _Never tell her why I betrayed Italy!_ --Closer, dear love, closer! What old murmurs do I hear? "The night is spread for thee, The heavens are wide, And the dark earth's mystery"-- So,--in thy arms,--from thee to God! O love, forever--kiss--forgive!--Lift me, that I confront eternity and Christ! AFTER "TAPS." Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! As I lay with my blanket on, By the dim fire-light, in the moonlit night, When the skirmishing fight was done. The measured beat of the sentry's feet, With the jingling scabbard's ring! Tramp! Tramp! in my meadow-camp By the Shenandoah's spring. The moonlight seems to shed cold beams On a row of pale gravestones: Give the bugle breath, and that image of Death Will fly from the reveille's tones. By each tented roof, a charger's hoof Makes the frosty hill-side ring: Give the bugle breath, and a spirit of Death To each horse's girth will spring. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! The sentry, before my tent, Guards, in gloom, his chief, for whom Its shelter to-night is lent. I am not there. On the hill-side bare I think of the ghost within; Of the brave who died at my sword-hand side, To-day, 'mid the horrible din Of shot and shell and the infantry yell, As we charged with the sabre drawn. To my heart I said, "Who shall be the dead In _my_ tent, at another dawn?" I thought of a blossoming almond-tree, The stateliest tree that I know; Of a golden bowl; of a parted soul; And a lamp that is burning low. Oh, thoughts that kill! I thought of the hill In the far-off Jura chain; Of the two, the three, o'er the wide salt sea, Whose hearts would break with pain; Of my pride and joy,--my eldest boy; Of my darling, the second--in years; Of _Willie_, whose face, with its pure, mild grace, Melts memory into tears;