st strain;
To you the earliest bluebirds sing,
Till all your light stems thrill again.

The sparrow trills his wedding song
And trusts his tender brood to you;
Fair flowering vines, the summer long,
With clasp and kiss your beauty woo.

The sunshine drapes your limbs with light,
The rain braids diamonds in your hair,
The breeze makes love to you at night,--
Yet still you droop, and still despair.

Beneath your boughs, at fall of dew,
By lovers' lips is softly told
The tale that all the ages through
Has kept the world from growing old.

But still, though April's buds unfold,
Or Summer sets the earth aleaf,
Or Autumn pranks your robes with gold,
You sway and sigh in graceful grief.

Mourn on forever, unconsoled,
And keep your secret, faithful tree!
No heart in all the world can hold
A sweeter grace than constancy.

MY SECOND CAPTURE.

The Adjutant T---- and myself, not inexperienced in battles, though,
perhaps, like most Americans, infants in warfare, were captured in
September last, in the Valley of the Shenandoah, Nature's noble
art-gallery, on the west side of Opequan Creek, a stream that is a
picture at almost any point. In one of the gallant charges which our
eager cavalry, under General Sheridan, made before the great charge that
captured Winchester and the Valley, our regiment had the right, and
gained a fine position in the end. But two or three encounters were very
close. The sea of battle surged back and forth, tormented only, however,
by the mild breezes of a day like May; and as the waves of our army
withdrew from the ridge on which the enemy rested, to gain greater
impetus, my poor horse was shot under me, stranded, and left rolling
upon the ground, midway between friend and foe. The orderly, my
attendant, had another in the rear of the retreating column; but,
inasmuch as that was now swept by the swift-receding current far beyond
us, he could neither have me mounted nor command other present means
whereby to get me off. I reclined, like Adonis, upon a soft bed of
meadow-grass studded here and there with wild-flowers, an emerald velvet
with silver spangles,--but suffering, unlike him, from bruises, and with
my best soulless friend dead at my side. I was somewhat sprained by the
fall the dying beast had given me. The enemy was close at hand,
following with yells and chaotic eager