Beechenbrook | Page 9

have never quailed
Before the battle-shock,

Whose maddest fury beats and breaks
Like foam against the rock.
Ye've borne the deadly brunt of war,
Through storm, and cold, and
heat,
Yet never have ye turned your backs
Nor fled before defeat.
Behind you lie your cheerful homes,
And all of sweet or fair,--
The
only remnants earth has left
Of Eden-life, are there.

Ye know that many a once bright cheek
Consuming care, makes wan;

Ye know the old, dear happiness
That blest your hearths,--is gone.
Ye see your comrades smitten down,--
The young, the good, the
brave,--
Ye feel, the turf ye tread to-day,
May be to-morrow's
grave.
Yet not a murmur meets the ear,
Nor discontent has sway,
And not
a sullen brow is seen,
Through all the camp to-day.
No Greek, in Greece's palmiest days,
His javelin ever threw,

Impelled by more heroic zeal,
Or nobler aim than you.
No mailed warrior ever bore
Aloft his shining lance,
More proudly
through the tales that fire
The page of old romance.
Oh! soldiers!--well ye bear your part;
The world awards its praise:

Be sure,--this grandest tourney o'er,--
'Twill crown you with its bays!
But there's sublimer work than even
To free your native sod;
--Ye
may be loyal to your land,
Yet traitors to your God!
No Moslem heaven for him who falls,
A bribed requital doles;
And
while ye save your country,--ye,
Alas! may lose your souls!
No glorious deeds can urge their claim,--
No merits, entrance win,--

The pierced hand of Christ alone,
Must freely let you in.
Oh! sirs!--there lurks a fiercer foe,
Than this that treads your soil,

Who springs from unseen ambuscades,
To drag you as his spoil.
He drugs the heedless conscience, till,
No wary watch it keeps,
And
parleys with the treacherous heart,
While fast the warder sleeps.
He captive leads the wavering will
With specious words, and fair,


And enters the beleaguered soul,
And rules, a conqueror there.
Will ye who fling defiance forth,
Against a temporal foe,
And
rather die, than stoop to wear
The chains that gall you so,--
Will ye succumb beneath a power,
That grasps at full control,
And
binds its helpless victims down
In servitude of soul?
Nay,--act like brave men, as ye are,--
Nor let the despot, sin,
Wrest
those immortal rights away,
Which Christ has died to win.
For Heaven--best home--true fatherland,
Bear toil, reproach and loss,

Your highest honor,--holiest name,--
The soldiers of the Cross!
VIII.
"My Douglass! my darling!--there once was a time,
When we to each
other confessed the sublime
And perfect sufficiency love could
bestow,
On the hearts that have learned its completeness to know; We
felt that we too had a well-spring of joy,
That earthly convulsions
could never destroy,--
A mossy, sealed fountain, so cool and so bright,

It could solace the soul, let it thirst as it might.
"'Tis easy, while happiness strews in our path,
The richest and
costliest blessings it hath,
'Tis easy to say that no sorrow, no pain,

Could utterly beggar our spirits again;
'Tis easy to sit in the sunshine,
and speak
Of the darkness and storm, with a smile on the cheek!
"As hungry and cold, and with weariness spent,
You droop in your
saddle, or crouch in your tent;
Can you feel that the love so entire, so
true,
The love that we dreamed of,--is all things to you?
That come
what there may,--desolation or loss,
The prick of the thorn, or the
weight of the cross--
You can bear it,--nor feel you are wholly bereft,

While the bosom that beats for you only, is left?
While the
birdlings are spared that have made it so blest, Can you look,

undismayed, on the wreck of the nest?
"There's a love that is tenderer, sweeter than this--
That is fuller of
comfort, and blessing, and bliss;
That never can fail us, whatever
befall--
Unchanging, unwearied, undying, through all:
We have
need of the support--the staff and the rod;--
Beloved! we'll lean on the
bosom of God!
"You guess what I fain would keep hidden:--you know,
Ere now, that
the trail of the insolent foe
Leaves ruin behind it, disastrous and dire,

And burns through our Valley, a pathway of fire.
--Our beautiful
home,--as I write it, I weep,
Our beautiful home is a smouldering
heap!
And blackened, and blasted, and grim, and forlorn,
Its
chimneys stand stark in the mists of the morn!
"I stood in my womanly helplessness, weak--
Though I felt a brave
color was kindling my cheek--
And I plead by the sacredest things of
their lives--
By the love that they bore to their children,--their wives,
By the homes left behind them, whose joys they had shared, By the
God that should judge them,--that mine should be spared.
"As well might I plead with the whirlwind to stay
As it crashingly
cuts through the forest its way!
I know that my eye flashed a
passionate ire,
As they scornfully flung me their answer of--fire!
"Why harrow your heart with the grief and the pain?
Why paint you
the picture that's scorching my brain?
Why speak of the night when I
stood on the lawn,
And watched the last flame die away in the dawn?

'Tis over,--that vision of terror,--of woe!
Its horrors I would not
recall;--let them go!
I am calm when I think what I suffered them