Your brightness cannot mislead me so;
And I sing of my love in the rising light,--
So much the more by a night, by a night.

Both at the year's sweet dawn and close,
When the moon is filling, or fading away,
Every day, as it comes and goes,
And every hour of every day,
My little song I repeat and repeat,--
So much the more by an hour, my sweet!

OUR SOLDIERS.

We entered gayly on our great contest. At the first sound from Sumter,
enthusiasm blazed high and bright. Bells rang out, flags waved, the
people rose as one man to cheer on our troops, and the practical
American nation, surveying itself with astonishment, pronounced
itself--finger on pulse--enthusiastic; and though, in the light of the
present steadily burning determination, it has been the fashion gently
to smile at that quick upspringing blaze, and at the times when it was
gravely noted how the privates of our army took daily baths and wore
Colt's revolvers, and pet regiments succumbed under showers of
Havelocks, in contrast with the grim official reports of to-day, I
cannot but think that enthusiasm healthful, and in itself a lesson, if
only that it proves beyond question that our patriotism was not simply a
dweller on the American tongue, but a thing of the American heart, so
vitalizing us, so woven every day into the most minute ramifications of
our living, so inner and recognized a part of our thinking, that there
have been found some to doubt its existence, just as we half forget the
gracious air, because no labored gasps, in place of our sure and even
breathing, ever by any chance announce to us that somewhere there have
been error and confusion in its vast workings.

Bitterer texts were ready all too soon. When we heard how one had
fallen, bayoneted at the guns, and another was struck, charging on the
foe, and a third had died after long lingering in hospital,--when we saw
our brave boys, whom we had sent out with huzzas, coming back to us with
the blood and grime of battle upon them, maimed, ghastly, dying,
dead,--we knew that we, whom God had hitherto so blessed that we were
compelled to look into the annals of other nations for misery and
strife, had now commenced a record of our own. Henceforth there was for
us a new literature, new grooves of thought, new interests. By all the
love of father, brother, husband, and children, we must learn more of
this tragic and tender lore; and our soldiers have been