Lyrics All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight - Bobby Horton

All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight

All quiet along the Potomac, they say
Except now and then 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 tonight!»
All quiet along the Potomac tonight
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 for the rock to the fountain
And thinks of the two on the low trundle bed
Far away in the cot on the mountain
«All quiet along the Potomac tonight!»
His musket falls slack — his face dark and grim
Grows gentle with memories tender
As he mutters a pray’r for the children asleep
And their Mother — «may heaven defend her!»
The moon seems to shine as brightly as then —
That night when a love yet unspoken
Leap’d up to his lips and when low murmur’d vows
Were pledg’d to be ever unbroken
«All quiet along the Potomac tonight!»
Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eye
He dashes off tears that are welling
And gathers his gun closer up to its place
As if to keep down the heart-swelling
He passes the fountain, the blasted pine tree
The 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 tonight!»
Hark!
Was it the night wind that rustled the leaves
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looks like a rifle -- «Ah!
Mary, good-bye!»
And the lifeblood is ebbing and splashing
All quiet along the Potomac tonight
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 tonight!»