作曲 : Traditional Song
"ALL quiet along the Potomac to-night!"
Except here and there a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing! a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost, only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death rattle.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night!
"ALL quiet along the Potomac to-night!"
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;
And their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
And the light of the camp-fires are gleaming.
There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And he thinks of the two on the low trundle-bed,
Far away in the cot on the mountain.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night!
His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep,
And their mother—"may Heaven defend her!"
The moon seems to shine as brightly as then—
That night when the love, yet unspoken,
Leaped up to his lips, and when low, murmured vows
Were pledged to be ever unbroken.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night!
Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to his breast
As if to keep down the heart's swelling.
He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree,
And his footstep is lagging and weary;
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night!
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle: "Ha! Mary, good-by!"
And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing.
"All quiet along the Potomac to-night!"
No sound save the rush of the river,
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead,
The picket's off duty forever!
All quiet along the Potomac to-night!
All quiet along the Potomac to-night!