Beechenbrook | Page 3

their own dainty feet,?Whose wants swarthy handmaids stand ready to meet,?Whose fingers decline the light kerchief to hem,--?What aid in this struggle is hoped for from them?
Yet see! how they haste from their bowers of ease,?Their dormant capacities fired,--to seize?Every feminine weapon their skill can command,--?To labor with head, and with heart, and with hand.?They stitch the rough jacket, they shape the coarse shirt, Unheeding though delicate fingers be hurt;?They bind the strong haversack, knit the grey glove,?Nor falter nor pause in their service of love.
When ever were people subdued, overthrown,?With women to cheer them on, brave as our own??With maidens and mothers at work on their knees,?When ever were soldiers as fearless as these?
June's flower-wreathed sceptre is dropped with a sigh,?And forth like an empress steps stately July:?She sits all unveiled, amidst sunshine and balms,?As Zenobia sat in her City of Palms!
Not yet has the martial horizon grown dun,?Not yet has the terrible conflict begun:?But the tumult of legions,--the rush and the roar,?Break over our borders, like waves on the shore.?Along the Potomac, the confident foe?Stands marshalled for onset,--prepared, at a blow,?To vanquish the daring rebellion, and fling?Utter ruin at once on the arrogant thing!
How sovran the silence that broods o'er the sky,?And ushers the twenty-first morn of July;?--Date, written in fire on history's scroll,--?--Date, drawn in deep blood-lines on many a soul!
There is quiet at Beechenbrook: Alice's brow?Is wearing a Sabbath tranquility now,?As softly she reads from the page on her knee,--?"Thou wilt keep him in peace who is stayed upon Thee!"?When Sophy bursts breathlessly into the room,--?"Oh! mother! we hear it,--we hear it!.., the boom?Of the fast and the fierce cannonading!--it shook?The ground till it trembled, along by the brook."
One instant the listener sways in her seat,--?The paralysed heart has forgotten to beat;?The next, with the speed and the frenzy of fear,?She gains the green hillock, and pauses to hear.
Again and again the reverberant sound?Is fearfully felt in the tremulous ground;?Again and again on their senses it thrills,?Like thunderous echoes astray in the hills.
On tip-toe,--the summer wind lifting his hair,?With nostril expanded, and scenting the air?Like a mettled young war-horse that tosses his mane,?And frettingly champs at the bit and the rein,--?Stands eager, exultant, a twelve-year-old boy,?His face all aflame with a rapturous joy.
"That's music for heroes in battle array!?Oh, mother! I feel like a Roman to-day!?The Romans I read of in Plutarch;--Yes, men?Thought it noble to die for their liberties then!?And I've wondered if soldiers were ever so bold,?So gallant and brave, as those heroes of old.?--There!--listen!--that volley peals out the reply;?They prove it is sweet for their country to die:?How grand it must be! what a pride! what a joy!?--And _I_ can do nothing: I'm only a boy!"
The fervid hand drops as he ceases to speak,?And the eloquent crimson fades out on his cheek.
"Oh, Beverly!--brother! It never would do!?Who comforts mamma, and who helps her like you??She sends to the battle her darlingest one,--?She could not give both of them,--husband and son;?If she lose you, what's left her in life to enjoy??--Oh, no! I am glad you are only a boy."?And Sophy looks up with her tenderest air,?And kisses the fingers that toy with her hair.
For her, who all silent and motionless stands,?And over her heart locks her quivering hands,?With white lips apart, and with eyes that dilate,?As if the low thunder were sounding her fate,--?What racking suspenses, what agonies stir,?What spectres these echoes are rousing for her!
Brave-natur'd, yet quaking,--high-souled, yet so pale,-- Is it thus that the wife of a soldier should quail,?And shudder and shrink at the boom of a gun,?As only a faint-hearted girl should have done??Ah! wait until custom has blunted the keen,?Cutting edge of that sound, and no woman, I ween,?Will hear it with pulses more equal, more free?From feminine terrors and weakness, than she.
The sun sinks serenely; a lingering look?He flings at the mists that steal over the brook,?Like nuns that come forth in the twilight to pray,?Till their blushes are seen through their mantles of grey.
The gay-hearted children, but lightly oppressed,?Find perfect relief on their pillow of rest:?For Alice, no bless'd forgetfulness comes;--?The wail of the bugles,--the roll of the drums,--?The musket's sharp crack,--the artillery's roar,--?The flashing of bayonets dripping with gore,--?The moans of the dying,--the horror, the dread,?The ghastliness gathering over the dead,--?Oh! these are the visions of anguish and pain,--?The phantoms of terror that troop through her brain!
She pauses again and again on the floor,?Which the moonlight has brightened so mockingly o'er;?She wrings her cold hands with a groan of despair;?--"Oh, God! have compassion!--my darling is there!"
All placidly, dewily, freshly, the dawn?Comes stealing in pulseless tranquility on:?More freely she breathes, in its balminess, though?The forehead it kisses is pallid with woe.
Through the long summer sunshine the Cottage is stirred By passers, who brokenly fling them a