Give me water, give air, give me light! Oh, as life in my heart ebbs away, I pine through the dim, chilly night, I long for the sun's kindly ray! Even I, a poor little Arbutus! I was plucked from my beautiful earth, And my soul it then quitted its form; What since has my life e'er been worth? Ah, would I had never been born! Thus I sigh, a poor little Arbutus! Now to man in my anguish I cry: Ah, but what for a sigh does he care? To heaven I now raise my eye, And mourn in my futile despair! Even I, a poor, dying Arbutus! Ah, a life for a life--it is just! But a life for a nothing, oh, cruel! Still low must I languish in dust? And is there for me no renewal? Ah, for me, poor, broken Arbutus! Into elements now I resolve, Yet to life I still cling with each breath; As slowly away I dissolve, Life's sweeter as closer to death! Unto me, but a little Arbutus! Too precocious the life which I bore, Which I drew sweetly in with each breath! The fulness of life did no more Than ripen a fruitage for death, Within me, a too early Arbutus! THE THIRD YEAR OF THE WAR. Few persons, at the beginning of this unhappy war, anticipated its prolongation to the present day. The projected rebellion was so daring and sudden in its appearance, so utterly causeless and reckless in its pretexts and objects, that an astounded people could scarcely believe it to be serious in its character and destined to give them any real and protracted trouble. The rebels themselves fed the credulity of their deluded victims with the promise of a peaceful separation, or, at the worst, of a short and triumphant contest, to be speedily followed by a career of boundless prosperity, expansion, greatness, and glory. And, on our part, when we came at length to understand that war was inevitable, we were scarcely less sanguine in our anticipation of easy victory and of the instant restoration of that noble Government, which the domestic enemy, with the most wicked ambition, sought to overthrow and utterly destroy. Confidently and even boastingly, we contrasted our strength with the weakness of the insurrection; we numbered our men in comparison with those of the rebellious States, proud of the favorable result; and we weighed the means of the adversary with our own, in such scales as our sanguine hopes and extravagant ideas served only too well to impose upon us.