'Tis midnight! The sentry's muffled tread
Is heard within these walls:

As silent as the living dead
He makes his regular calls.

I try to sleep, but all in vain;
I try to close—I weep,

I hear that muffled tread again—
The sentries on me peep.

I hear a voice so clear and plain—
It calls to me aloud—

It calls to me again, again;
That voice comes from a shroud.

Hist! Hist! vile heart, be still! No fear,
My angel sister's voice I hear!

It speaks to me in accents clear
And bids me shun a vile career.

She bids me meet her once again
And live in Heaven's fairest clime.

Nor shall her pleading be in vain—
Resolved, I'll do no crime.

Oh, could I feel her warm embrace
As when, in days of old,

I gazed into her angeled face—
It gave happiness untold.

Oh, let me live my boyhood days
As in the time gone by!

And let me consecrate her ways
When for this boy she'd cry.

But, hist! again the muffled tread
Comes gliding, silent as the dead,

Along the beat within these walls—
Hark! Hark! again dear sister calls.