How I have loved, in leisure hours, to turn aside from the stern duties of the field, or the dull monotony of the camp, to gallop under the great pines, or wind through pathless thickets and native parks of evergreen, feasting my very soul on their eternal freshness and glory! How I have loved to see 'Black Hawk' crush with his feet, and sink up to his fetlocks, in the tender and fairy-like mosses that drape the mountains! How I have delighted to weave the trailing evergreens into wreaths, trellises, and bowers in front of my white tent! And, alas! with hushed and solemn pride, I have planted the holly and the pine on the graves of my dead comrades, hoping they might live in all their wondrous beauty over the quiet mound, and keep green the memory of the brave forever! DYING IN THE HOSPITAL. I am dying, mother, dying, in the hospital alone; With a hundred faces round me, not a single one is known; And the human heart within me, like a fluttering, wounded dove, Hungers with a ceaseless yearning for one answering word of love. Oh, 'tis hard, 'tis hard, my mother, thus to linger day by day, Dying here, without the music of the battle's fierce array;-- Dying, far from home and kindred, robbed of all life's dearest ties, With the eager eyes out-gazing but to meet with stranger eyes. It were sweet to fall, my mother, with the battle raging round, And to leap from earth to heaven at a single patriot-bound; It were sweet to feel that glory would check the tears of woe-- That o'er hearts whose griefs were deepest a gush of pride would flow. But to lie at night, dear mother, and to list the warder's tread, As it falls upon my heart, I seem a prisoner with the dead; And I long to lose my sense of pain, to find a calm release, And to sink each vain, vain longing, in a silent sea of peace. Oh, could I see, dear mother, the dog that guards our door, It would make each life throb at my heart beat quicker than before; And the nursing of your own dear hands, the breath of our old hills, Would send a flood of fresh life back through all these draining rills. But it may not be, loved mother: I must die here, all alone; Where, a hundred faces round me, not a single one is known; With the human heart within me hungering, like a wounded dove, For the soft glance of my mother, and her dear home-words of love. Oh, the heart of man, loved mother, is as dauntless as a rock In a time of mortal danger--in the battle's deadly shock; But alone--alone and dying, how he craves affection's ties-- Craves a woman's strength in weakness, and the lovelight in her eyes! Oh, the dreams, the dreams, my mother, that have vanished from my sky, Like the misty mountain vapors that before the sunlight fly-- All the golden dreams of glory, with their rainbow tints of fame, That would link with deeds of valor my bright, my deathless name!