In the hallowed stillness of your bridal eve, ere the guests have all assembled, lift up to yours the pale face, love's perfect image, and you shall see that vision to which God our Father vouchsafes no equal this side the jasper throne--you shall see the ineffable eyes of innocence entrusting to you, unworthy, oh! so unworthy, her destiny through time and eternity. Inhale the perfume of her breath and hair, that puts the violets of the wood to shame; press your first kiss (for now she is all your own), your first kiss upon the trembling petals of her lips, and you shall hear, with ears you knew not that you had, the silver chiming of your wedding bells far, far up in heaven. GEORGE W. BAGBY June Fifth THE WOMEN OF THE SOUTH Instead of superficial adornments and supine action, the intellectual sympathies and interests of these women were large, and they undertook with wise and just guidance, the management of households and farms and servants, leaving the men free for war and civil government. These noble and resolute women were the mothers of the Gracchi, of the men who built up the greatness of the Union and accomplished the unexampled achievements of the Confederacy. J. L. M. CURRY June Sixth To the brave all homage render, Weep ye skies of June! With a radiance pure and tender, Shine, oh saddened moon! Dead upon the field of glory, Hero fit for song and story, Lies our bold dragoon. JOHN R. THOMPSON _Turner Ashby killed in Shenandoah Valley Campaign, 1862_ _Patrick Henry dies, 1799_ June Seventh Peace to the dead! though peace is not In the regal dome or the pauper cot; Peace to the dead! there's peace, we trust, With the pale dreamers in the dust. JAMES RYDER RANDALL _Monument created, 1910, to the memory of Confederate officers who perished from starvation and exposure at Johnson's Island_ June Eighth Aurora faints in the fulgent fire Of the Monarch of Morning's bright embrace And the summer day climbs higher and higher Up the cerulean space; The pearl-tints fade from the radiant grain, And the sportive breeze of the ocean dies, And soon in the noontide's soundless rain The fields seem graced by a million eyes; Each grain with a glance from its lidded fold As bright as a gnome's in his mine of gold, While the slumb'rous glamour of beam and heat Glides over and under the windless wheat. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE _Stonewall Jackson turns upon Fremont at Cross Keys, 1862_ June Ninth He sleeps--what need to question now If he were wrong or right? He knows ere this whose cause was just In God the Father's sight. He wields no warlike weapons now, Returns no foeman's thrust,-- Who but a coward would revile An honest soldier's dust?