TWO

MUSIC IN CAMP.

VO armies covered hill and plain, Where Rappahannock's waters Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain Of battle's recent slaughters.

The summer clouds lay pitched like tents
In meads of heavenly azure;

And each dread gun of the elements
Slept in its high embrasure.

The breeze so softly blew, it made
No forest leaf to quiver,

And the smoke of the random cannonade

Rolled slowly from the river.

And now where circling hills looked down
With cannon grimly planted,
O'er listless camp and silent town
The golden sunset slanted.

When on the fervid air there came

A strain, now rich, now tender,

The music seemed itself aflame
With day's departing splendor.

A Federal band, which eve and morn
Played measures brave and nimble,
Had just struck up with flute and horn
And lively clash of cymbal.

Down flocked the soldiers to the banks,
Till, margined by its pebbles,

One wooded shore was blue with "Yanks,"

And one was gray with

Rebels."

Then all was still; and then the band
With movement light and tricksy,
Made stream and forest, hill and strand,
Reverberate with "Dixie."

The conscious stream, with burnished glow,
Went proudly o'er its pebbles,
But thrilled throughout its deepest flow
With yelling of the Rebels.

Again a pause, and then again

The trumpet pealed sonorous,

And "Yankee Doodle" was the strain
To which the shore gave chorus.

The laughing ripple shoreward flew
To kiss the shining pebbles-

Loud shrieked the swarming Boys in Blue
Defiance to the Rebels.

And yet once more the bugle sang

Above the stormy riot;

No shout upon the evening rang-
There reigned a holy quiet.

The sad, slow stream its noiseless flood
Poured o'er the glistening pebbles;

All silent now the Yankees stood,
All silent stood the Rebels:

No unresponsive soul had heard

That plaintive note's appealing, So deeply "Home, Sweet Home," had stirred The hidden founts of feeling.

Or blue or gray, the soldier sees,
As by the wand of fairy,

The cottage 'neath the live-oak trees,
The cabin by the prairie.

Or cold or warm, his native skies
Bend in their beauty o'er him:
Seen through the tear-mist in his eyes
His loved ones stand before him.

As fades the iris after rain

In April's tearful weather,
The vision vanished as the strain
And daylight died together.

But memory, waked by music's art,
Expressed in simplest numbers,
Subdued the sternest Yankee's heart-
Made light the Rebel's slumbers.

And fair the form of Music shines,
That bright, celestial creature,
Who still 'mid war's embattled lines
Gave this one touch of nature.

JOHN R. THOMPSON.

IT

THE MONTH OF APPLE BLOSSOMS.

T makes no difference that you have seen forty or fifty springs, each one is as new, every process as fresh, and the charm as fascinating as if you had never witnessed a single one. Nature works the same things without seeming repetition. There, for instance, is the apple-tree. Every year since our boyhood it has been doing the same thing; standing low to the ground, with a round and homely head, without an element of grandeur or poetry, except once a year. In the month of May, apple-trees go a-courting. Love is evermore father of poetry. And the month of May finds the orchard no longer a plain, sober business affair, but the gayest and most radiant frolicker of the year. We have seen human creatures whose ordinary life was dutiful and prosaic; but when some extraordinary excitement of grief, or, more likely, of deep love, had thoroughly mastered them, they broke forth into a richness of feeling, an inspiration of sentiment, that mounted up into the very kingdom of beauty, and for the transient hour they glowed with the very elements of poetry. And so to us seems an apple-tree. From June to May it is a homely, duty-performing, sober, matter-of-fact tree. But May seems to stir up a love heat in its veins.

The old round-topped, crooked-trunked, and ungainly boughed fellow drops all world-ways and takes to itself a new idea of life. Those little stubbed spurs, that all the year had seemed like rheumatic fingers, or thumbs and fingers, stiffened and stubbed by work, now are transformed. Forth put they a little head of buds, which a few rains and days of encouraging warmth.

solicit to a cluster of blossoms. At first rosy and pink, then opening purely white. And now, where is your old, homely tree? All its crookedness is hidden by the sheets of blossoms. The whole top is changed to a royal dome. The literal, fruit-bearing tree is transfigured, and glows with raiment whiter and purer than any white linen. It is a marvel and a glory! What if you have seen it before, ten thousand times over? An apple-tree in full blossom is like a message, sent fresh from heaven to earth, of purity and beauty! We walk around it reverently and admiringly. We are never tired of looking at its profusion. Homely as it ordinarily is, yet now it speaks of the munificence of God better than any other tree.

The very glory of God seems resting upon it! It is a little inverted hemisphere, like that above it, and it daily mimics with bud and bloom the stars that nightly blossom out into the darkness above it. Though its hour of glory is short, into it is concentrated a magnifi cence which puts all the more stately trees into the background. If men will not admire, insects and birds will!

There, on the very topmost twig, that rises and falls with willowy motion, sits that ridiculous but sweet-singing bobolink, singing, as a Roman-candle fizzes, showers of sparkling notes. If you stand at noon under the tree, you are in a very bee-hive. The tree is musical. The blossoms seem, for a wonder, to have a voice. The odor is not a rank atmosphere of sweet. Like the cups from which it is poured, it is delicate and modest. You feel as if there were a timidity in it, that asked your sympathy and yielded to solicitation. You do not take it whether you will or not, but, though it is abundant,