“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.
’T is 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.”...