| |
| STRIKE the harp! strike the harp! let the soft-toned lute | |
| Be still in these halls tonight; | |
| Its mellowing cadence shall now be mute;— | |
| And cease to breathe on that silvery flute;— | |
| It gives me no more delight; | 5 |
| For my soul is mad with ambition and care, | |
| And I cannot list to a plaintive air. | |
| |
| Strike the harp! strike the harp! let its swelling tones | |
| Rise full on the midnight damp; | |
| Strike the rage of the battle, the dying moans, | 10 |
| That mingle so wild with the frighten’d groans | |
| And shrieks of a slaughtering camp, | |
| And sound me the guns and the clash of arms | |
| And all the fierce horrors of war’s alarms. | |
| |
| I hear it—I see it—the warriors in strife | 15 |
| Are thick in the struggling fight; | |
| And madly they rush to the field where life | |
| Is thrown to the wind, but where glory is rife | |
| On its smoke and its bloody light. | |
| And he with the white plume is snatching the wreath | 20 |
| From the blackening brow of his foe in death. | |
| |
| See, he flies to the onset; again and again;— | |
| Hark! his shout o’er the fallen foe, | |
| Oh! God, he has shouted, and fought in vain, | |
| For, stretch’d by a mightier hand on the plain | 25 |
| He lies in his life-blood low;— | |
| His friends quail around him—“ye dastards fly not, | |
| But give me the brand that his hand has forgot.” | |
| |
| “Fly not, ye base cowards, come quick to the fight,” | |
| They turn to the battle again. | 30 |
| “Now strike home for vengeance—spare not in your might | |
| The faithless invaders”—they ’re routed in flight— | |
| The red earth is strown with the slain— | |
| List, list to the shrieking—’t is fainter—all ’s o’er— | |
| The harp-tone hath ceased and the battle ’s no more. | 35 |
| |
