off the notes of military music and the distant marching of a
column; these notes and that tramp grew louder, till there swung
round the turning with a blaze of sound five hundred men in order.
They passed, and we were full of the scene and of the memories of
the world, when he said to me: "Do you know what is in your heart?
It is the music. And do you know the cause and Mover of that music?
It is the Nothingness inside the bugle; it is the hollow Nothingness
inside the Drum."

Then I thought of the poem where it says of the Army of the Republic:

The thunder of the limber and the rumble of a hundred of the guns.
And there hums as she comes the roll of her innumerable drums.

I knew him to be right.

From this first moment I determined to consider and to meditate upon
Nothing.

Many things have I discovered about Nothing, which have proved it--to
me at least--to be the warp or ground of all that is holiest. It is
of such fine gossamer that loveliness was spun, the mists under the
hills on an autumn morning are but gross reflections of it; moonshine
on lovers is earthy compared with it; song sung most charmingly and
stirring the dearest recollections is but a failure in the human
attempt to reach its embrace and be dissolved in it. It is out of
Nothing that are woven those fine poems of which we carry but vague
rhythms in the head:--and that Woman who is a shade, the_ Insaisissable,
_whom several have enshrined in melody--well, her Christian name, her
maiden name, and, as I personally believe, her married name as well,