his verse:

Much of the time he sleeps, or half sleeps.... I often come and
sit by him in perfect silence; he will breathe for ten minutes as
softly and evenly as a young babe asleep. Poor youth, so
handsome, athletic, with profuse beautiful shining hair. One time
as I sat looking at him while he lay asleep, he suddenly, without
the least start awaken'd, open'd his eyes, gave me a long steady
look, turning his face very slightly to gaze easier--one long,
clear, silent look--a slight sigh--then turn'd back and went into
his doze again. Little he knew, poor death-stricken boy, the
heart of the stranger that hover'd near.

The western star, Venus, in the earlier hours of evening has
never been so large, so clear; it seems as if it told something,
as if it held rapport indulgent with humanity, with us Americans.
The sky dark blue, the transparent night, the planets, the
moderate west wind, the elastic temperature, the miracle of that
great star, and the young and swelling moon swimming in the west,
suffused the soul. Then I heard slow and clear the deliberate
notes of a bugle come up out of the silence ... firm and
faithful, floating along, rising, falling leisurely, with here
and there a long-drawn note.... sounding tattoo.

"A steady rain, dark and thick and warm," he writes again, two days after
Gettysburg. "The cavalry camp is a ceaseless field of observation to me.
This forenoon there stood the horses, tether'd together, dripping,
steaming, chewing their hay. The men emerge from their tents, dripping
also. The fires are half-quench'd." There is a poetic poise in this
brief, vivid statement, apart from its bare economy of means. It is the