For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

The photos gave me pause.

We killed each other well, we did.

On a somewhat related note, this is our National Poetry Month, and this is a brief note on a poem.

Christmas Bells was a Civil War poem before it was a Christmas Carol. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this poem on Christmas Day 1864 — subsequent to his 17 year old son’s surreptitious enlistment in the Union Army, and after his son suffered serious injury. The poem was published in 1865 and not set to music until 1872.