MAY MORNING, 1862.
Reject them not! they come
to plead for me;
When you are cold,
’tis winter in my heart;
Till you are kind, ‘sweet
May’ ’twill never be,
And if you smile,
summer will ne’er depart!
‘My heart is weary,—waiting
for the May,’
So sad
and weary; will you give it rest?
Not love, but rest:
it is not much to say:
‘Poor, tired
child! once more be thou my guest.’
Forgive my wild and wayward
words, forgive!
“We are
dying of our thirst—’my heart and
I!’
Without love’s sunshine,
who can care to live?
And when love
shines, oh I who can bear to die?
‘Ah! this love!’ ‘There is not much of it in life,’ says Heine; but that little alone makes life tolerable. Rest, perturbed spirit, rest! In another land, there is love enough for all.
CHIVALRY
By R. Wolcott; Tenth Regiment
Not long ago I happened to be one of a number of fair ladies and brave men assembled at what is called a ‘surprise-party.’ It was my fortune to be the attendant cavalier, for the time, of a damsel of romantic disposition, and, I fear, of somewhat impaired digestive powers. And she was lamenting, not boisterously, but in a subdued, conversational manner, that the good old days were gone, ‘the days of Chivalry,’ when my lady had her nice little boo-dwah (for the life of me, I didn’t know whether that was something nice to eat or to wear; but I have since learned that it is something French, and spelt, b-o-u-d-o-i-r,) and was waited upon by handsome pages, and took her airing on a dappled-gray palfrey, attended by trusty and obsequious grooms; when Sir Knight, followed by his sturdy henchmen, rode forth in gay and gaudy attire, with glittering helmet and cuirass, and entered the lists, and bravely fought for his fair lady’s fame. She spoke with fervid eloquence, and with a glibness that betrayed a very recent perusal of the tournament-scene in Ivanhoe. I was about to reply, and say something in behalf of modern chivalry; but just then a gentleman claimed her hand for a quadrille that was forming, and my remarks were cut short.
If my readers will bear with me, I will attempt to tell them what I was going to say to my romantic young friend. The days of chivalry are not gone. Let me remark that this assertion does not apply to the blatant, nigger-driving article that whilom flourished in Dixie, for that is about ‘played out,’ though they still rant and prate about the ’flower of chivalry.’ At Fort Lafayette, there is an herbarium of choice specimens (rather faded and seedy) of that curious ‘yarb;’ and at the old Alton Penitentiary, and at Camp Douglas, Chicago, there are collections, not so choice and a great deal more seedy. Though Simon—not he of other notoriety, but another man—Simon Bolivar