As in their amber sweets the smothered bees,-- As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze, Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees.
Poets, like youngest children, never grow Out of their mother's fondness. Nature so Holds their soft hands, and will not let them go,
Till at the last they track with even feet Her rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses beat Twinned with her pulses, and their lips repeat
The secrets she has told them, as their own: Thus is the inmost soul of Nature known, And the rapt minstrel shares her awful throne!
O lover of her mountains and her woods, Her bridal chamber's leafy solitudes, Where Love himself with tremulous step intrudes,
Her snows fall harmless on thy sacred fire: Far be the day that claims thy sounding lyre To join the music of the angel choir!
Yet, since life's amplest measure must be filled, Since throbbing hearts must be forever stilled, And all must fade that evening sunsets gild,
Grant, Father, ere he close the mortal eyes That see a Nation's reeking sacrifice, Its smoke may vanish from these blackened skies!
Then, when his summons comes, since come it must, And, looking heavenward with unfaltering trust, He wraps his drapery round him for the dust,
His last fond glance will show him o'er his head The Northern fires beyond the zenith spread In lambent glory, blue and white and red,--
The Southern cross without its bleeding load, The milky way of peace all freshly strowed, And every white-throned star fixed in its lost abode!
CAMP SAXTON, near Beaufort, S.C. _December 11, 1862._
Haroun Alrashid, wandering in disguise through his imperial streets, scarcely happened upon a greater variety of groups than I, in my evening strolls among our own camp-fires.