Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
'I'll write, if spared!' There was news of the fight;
But none of Giffen.--He did not write."

But Ticknor did not confine himself to war themes. He was a lover of
Nature; and its forms, and colors, and sounds--as seen in _April
Morning_, _Twilight_, _The Hills_, _Among the Birds_--appealed
to his sensitive nature. Shut out from literary centers and
literary companionship, he sang, like Burns, from the strong impulse
awakened by the presence of the heroic and the beautiful.


JOHN R. THOMPSON (1823-1873) has deserved well of the South both as
editor and author. He was born in Richmond, and educated at the
University of Virginia, where he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts
in 1845. Two years later he became editor of the _Southern Literary
Messenger_; and during the twelve years of his editorial management,
he not only maintained a high degree of literary excellence, but took
pains to lend encouragement to Southern letters. It is a misfortune to
our literature that his writings, particularly his poetry, have never
been collected.

The incidents of the Civil War called forth many a stirring lyric, the
best of which is his well-known _Music in Camp_:--

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