The Bugle

O! wild, enchanting horn!
Whose music up the deep and dewy air
Swells to the clouds, and calls on Echo there,
Till a new melody is born —

Wake, wake again, the night
Is bending from her throne of beauty down,
With still stars burning on her azure crown,
Intense and eloquently bright.

Night, at its pulseless noon!
When the far voice of waters mourns in song,
And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long
Barks at the melancholy moon.

Hark! how it sweeps away,
Soaring and dying on the silent sky,
As if some sprite of sound went wandering by,
With lone halloo and roundelay!

Swell, swell in glory out!
Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart,
And my stirr'd spirit hears thee with a start
As boyhood's old remember'd shout.

O! have ye heard that peal,
From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements,
Or from the guarded field and warrior tents,
Like some near breath around you steal?

Or have ye in the roar
Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise,
Shriller than eagle's clamour, to the skies,
Where wings and tempests never soar?

Go, go — no other sound,
No music that of air or earth is born,
Can match the mighty music of that horn,
On midnight's fathomless profound!