midnight
Oh , see , see ! Ah , death in life ! what does she see ? As by the glare of a bursting midnight shell all the empty gossip of two years justified -- made real -- in one flash of staring view . With a long moan the beholder cast her arms aloft and sank in a heap , not knowing that the act had caught Hilary 's eye , but willingly aware that her voice had perished in a roar of artillery from the farther brink of the ravine , in a crackle and fall of tree-tops , and in the `` rebel yell '' and charge . Next morning , in a fog , the blue holders of a new line of rifle-pits close under the top of a bluff talked up to the grays in a trench on its crest . Gross was the banter , but at mention of `` ladies '' it purified .