Open the envelope quickly;
Oh this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is signed.
Oh a strange hand writes for our dear son—oh stricken mother’s soul!
All swims before her eyes—flashes with black—she catches the main words only;
Sentences broken—gunshot wound in the breast—cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, 20
At present low, but will soon be better.
Ah! now the single figure to me
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,