It Were Better To Be A Soldier's

After A Debauch Of Thunder-shower, The Weather Takes The Pledge And Signs It With A Rainbow.

We Knew It Would Rain, For The Poplars Showed The White Of Their Leaves, The Amber Grain Shrunk In The Wind,-and The Lightning Now Is Tangled In Tremulous Skeins Of Rain.

Sorrow Itself Is Not So Hard To Bear As The Thought Of Sorrow Coming. Airy Ghosts, That Work No Harm, Do Terrify Us More Than Men In Steel With Bloody Purposes. Death Is Not Dreadful; 'tis The Dread Of Death— We Die Whene'er We Think Of It!

Great Thoughts In Crude, Unshapely Verse Set Forth Lose Half Their Preciousness, And Ever Must, Unless The Diamond With Its Own Rich Dust Be Cut And Polished, It Seems Little Worth.

It Was Pleasant To Me To Get A Letter From You The Other Day. Perhaps I Should Have Found It Pleasanter If I Had Been Able To Decipher It. I Don't Think That I Mastered Anything Beyond The Date (which I Knew) And The Signature (which I Guessed At). There's A Singular And A Perpetual Charm In A Letter Of Yours; It Never Grows Old, It Never Loses Its Novelty. Other Letters Are Read And Thrown Away And Forgotten, But Yours Are Kept Forever - Unread. One Of Them Will Last A Reasonable Man A Lifetime.