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MUSTERED OUT.
Where the blessèd winter sunshine close beside my pallet falls,
While I watch its golden glory steal across the white-washed walls,
While I hear amid the silence Christmas chime and Christmas shout,—
      I am lying,
      Faint and dying,
    Waiting to be mustered out.

'T is the time, I well remember, when I hoped once more to stand
Safe within the charmèd circle of the joyous household band,
Grim, perhaps, with warlike scarring; proud, perhaps, of warlike fame;—
      Vain my dreaming,—
      Yet in seeming
    I can think it just the same.