I read last night of a Grand Review In Washington’s chiefest avenue-- Two hundred thousand men in blue, I think they said was the number-- Till I seemed to hear their tramping feet The bugle blast and the drum’s quick beat, The clatter of hoofs in the stoney street, The cheers of the people who came to greet, And the thousand details that to repeat Would only my verse encumber,-- Till I fell in a revery, sad and sweet, And then to a fitful slumber. When, lo! in a vision I seemed to stand In the lonely capitol. On each hand Far stretched the portico; dim and grand, Its columns ranged, like a martial band Of sheeted spectres whom some command Had called to a last reviewing. And the streets of the city were white and bare, No footfall echoed across the square; But out of the misty midnight air I heard in the distance a trumpet blare, And the wandering night winds seemed to bear The sound of a far tattooing. Then I held my breath with fear and dread; For into the square with a brazen tread, There rode a figure whose stately head O’erlooked the review that morning, That never bowed from its firm-set seat When the living column passed its feet, Yet now rode steadily up the street To the phantom bugle’s warning. Till it reached the capitol square and wheeled And there in the moonlight stood revealed A well known form that in state and field Had led our patriot sires; Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp, Afar through the river’s fog and damp, That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp, Nor wasted bivouac fires. And I saw a phantom army come, With never a sound of fife or drum, But keeping time to a throbbing hum Of wailing and lamentation; The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill, Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, The men whose wasted figures fill The patriot graves of the nation. And there came the nameless dead--the men Who perished in fever-swamp and fen, The slowly-starved of the prison-pen; And marching beside the others, Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow’s fight, With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright; I thought, perhaps ’twas the pale moonlight-- They looked as white as their brothers! And so all night marched the Nation’s dead, With never a banner above them spread, Nor a badge, nor a motto brandished; No mark--save the bare uncovered head Of the silent bronze Reviewer; With never an arch save the vaulted sky; With never a flower save those that lie On the distant graves--for love could buy No gift that was purer or truer.