Float out on the evening air,
There comes to me a vision
Of the girl with the golden hair.

Kindly she turns upon me.
Those lustrous, violet eyes,
And my heart with passionate yearnings
To meet her eagerly flies.

Nearer she comes, and yet nearer,
At the beck of the spirit's wand,
And I feel the gentle pressure
On my brow of her warm, white hand--

_Tr-r-r-rum-ti-tum-tum, tr-r-r-rum-ti-tum-tum!_
'Tis the warning voice of the rolling drum.
Through the awakened night air come
The stern command and the busy hum
Of hurried preparation.
'Tis no time now for idle strumming
Of light guitars: in that loud drumming
Is fearful meaning; the hour is coming
That for some of us will be the summing
Of all life's preparation.

Quick, quick, my boys: fall in! fall in!
Now is the hour when we begin
The battle with this monstrous sin.
Onward to victory!--or to win
A patriot's martyrdom!
Stay no longer to bandy words;
Trust we now to our gleaming swords;
For foul rebellion's dastardly hordes
A terrible hour has come.

By all that you love beneath the skies;
By the world of cherished memories;
By your hopes for the coming years;
By the tender light of your loved one's eyes;
By the warm, white hands you so highly prize;
By your mothers' parting tears,
Swear the horrible wrong to crush!
What though you fall in the battle's rush,
And the velvet leaves of the greensward blush
With your young life's crimson tide?
The angels look down with pitying love,
And your tale will be told in the record above:
'For his country's honor he died.'

The gentle strings of the light guitar,
Waking soft echoes from memory's chords,
And tender dreams of home--
The noise, and the pomp, and the glitter of war;
The furious charge, and the clashing swords;
The song of the rolling drum.

How many a young heart has, in these later days, been turned from soft
guitar-tones of idleness, to the brave, rattling measures of drum-life!
It will do good, this war of ours; and many a brave fellow will, in
after years, look back upon it as the school in which he first learned
to be a thoroughly practical and sensible MAN.

* * * * *

We are indebted to a gossiping and ever most welcome New Haven friend
for the following anecdote of one of the men