The Battlefield At Night

When on war's wounded falls the final sleep, How beautiful shall silence be to those On whom till then the sounds of carnage close And tramping billows of the conflict sweep! A camp unsentineled that host shall keep, Nor countersign reveal its friends and foes; And In that zone of death shall be repose More kind than love, and than the dark more deep. But now unceasing thunders tread the night, 'Mid flamings and cessations of the light. And the faint sense delays ere death to hark The bellowing of guns against the sky, And, as the decimating cannon cry, The mangled horses screaming in the dark.