Beechenbrook | Page 7

lull of the Winter is over; and Spring
Comes back, as delicious
and buoyant a thing,
As airy, and fairy, and lightsome, and bland,


As if not a sorrow was dark'ning the land;--
So little has Nature of
passion or part
In the woes and the throes of humanity's heart.
The wild tide of battle runs red,--dashes high,
And blots out the
splendour of earth and of sky;
The blue air is heavy, and sulph'rous,
and dun,
And the breeze on its wings bears the boom of the gun.
In
faster and fiercer and deadlier shocks,
The thunderous billows are
hurled on the rocks;
And our Valley becomes, amid Spring's softest
breath,
The valley, alas! of the shadow of death.
The crash of the
onset,--the plunge and the roll,
Reach down to the depth of each
patriot's soul;
It quivers--for since it is human, it must;
But never a
tremor of doubt or distrust,
Once blanches the cheek, or is wrung
from the mouth,
Or lurks in the eye of the sons of the South.
What need for dismay? Let the live surges roar,
And leap in their fury,
our fastnesses o'er,
And threaten our beautiful Valley to fill
With
rapine and ruin more terrible still:
What fear we?--See Jackson! his
sword in his hand,
Like the stern rocks around him, immovable
stand,--
The wisdom, the skill and the strength that he boasts,

Sought ever from him who is Leader of Hosts:
--He speaks in the
name of his God:--lo! the tide,--
The red sea of battle, is seen to
divide;
The pathway of victory cleaves the dark flood;--
And the
foe is o'erwhelmed in a deluge of blood!
The spirit of Alice no longer
is bowed
By the troubles, and tumults, and terrors, that crowd
So
closely around her:--the willow's lithe form
Bends meekly to meet the
wild rush of the storm.
Yet pale as Cassandra, unconscious of joy,
With visions of Greeks at
the gates of her Troy,
All day she has waited and watched on the
lawn,
Till the purple and gold of the sunset are gone;
For the battle
draws near her:--few leagues intervene
Her home and that Valley of
slaughter, between.
The tidings and rumors come thick and come fast,
As riders fly hotly

and breathlessly past;
They tell of the onslaught,--the headlong attack

Of the foe with a quadruple force at his back:
They boast how they
hurl themselves,--shiver and fall
Before their stout rampart, the
valiant "Stonewall."
At length, with the gradual fading of day,--
The tokens of battle are
floated away:
The booming no longer makes sullen the air,
And the
silence of night seems as holy as prayer.
Gray shadows still linger the beeches among,
And scarce has the
earliest matin been sung,
Ere Alice with Beverly pale at her side,

Yet firm as his mother, is ready to ride.
With sympathy, womanly, tender, divine,--
With lint and with
bandage, with bread and with wine,-- She hastes to the battle-field,
eager to bear
Relief to the wounded and perishing there:
To breathe,
like an angel of mercy, the breath
Of peace over brows that are
fainting in death.
She dares not to stir with a question, her woe,
One word,--and the
bitter-brimm'd heart would o'erflow: But speechless, and moveless, and
stony of eye,
Scarce conscious of aught in the earth or the sky,
In a
swoon of the heart, all her senses have reeled,--
But she prays for
endurance,--for here is the field.
The flight and pursuit, so harassing,
so hot,
Have drifted all combatants far from the spot:
And through
the sparse woodlands, and over the plain,
Lie gorily scattered, the
wounded and slain.
Oh! the sickness,--the shudder,--the quailing of
fear,
As it leaps to her lips,--"What if Douglass be here!"
Yet she frames not a question; her spirit can bear
Oh! anything,--all
things, but hopeless despair:
Does her darling lie stretched on the
slope of yon hill? Let her doubt--let her hug the suspense, if she will!
She watches each ambulance-burden with dread;
She loots in the
faces of dying and dead:
And hour after hour, with steady control,


She bends to her task all the strength of her soul;
She comforts the
wounded with pity's sweet care,
And the spirit that's passing, she
speeds with her prayer.
She starts as she hears, from her stout-hearted boy,
A wild
exclamation, half doubt and half joy:--
"Oh! Surgeon!--some brandy! he's fainting!--Ah! now
The colour
comes back to his cheek and his brow:--
He breathes again--speaks
again--listen!--you are
'An orderly'--is it?--'of Colonel Dunbar?'
'He
fought like a lion!' (I knew it!) and passed
Untouched through the
battle, 'unhurt to the last?'
--My father is safe,--mother!--safe!--what a
joy!
And here is Macpherson,--our barefooted boy!"
Poor Alice!--her grief has been tearless and dumb,
But the pressure
once lifted, her senses succumb:
Too quick the revulsion,--too glad
the surprise,--
The mists of unconsciousness curtain her eyes:
'Tis
only a moment they suffer eclipse,
And words of thanksgiving soon
thrill on her lips.
To Beechenbrook's quiet, with tenderest care,
They hasten the
wounded, wan soldier to bear;
And never hung mother more patiently
o'er
The couch of the child, her own bosom that bore,
Than Alice
above the lone orphan, who lay
Submissively breathing his spirit
away.
He knows that existence is ebbing; his brain
Is