Beechenbrook - Vi Poem by Margaret Junkin Preston

The 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 lucid and calm, in the pauses of pain;
But his round boyish cheek with no weeping is wet,
And his smile is not touched with a shade of regret.

No murmur is uttered--no lingering sigh
Escapes him;--so young,--yet so willing to die!
His garment of flesh he has worn undefiled,
His faith is the beautiful faith of a child:
He knows that the Crucified hung on the tree,
That the pathway to bliss might be open and free:
He believes that the cup has been drained,--he can find
Not a drop of the wrath that had filled it,--behind.
If ever a doubt or misgiving assails,
His finger he puts on the print of the nails;
If sometimes there springs an emotion of fear,
He lays his cold hand on the mark of the spear!
He thinks of his darling, dead mother;--the light
Of the Heavenly City falls full on his sight:
And under the rows of the palms, by the brim
Of the river--he knows she is waiting for him.

But the present comes back;--and on Alice's ear,
Fall whispers like these, as she pauses to hear:

'Only a private;--and who will care
When I may pass away,--
Or how, or why I perish, or where
I mix with the common clay?
They will fill my empty place again,
With another as bold and brave;
And they'll blot me out, ere the Autumn rain
Has freshened my nameless grave.

Only a private:--it matters not,
That I did my duty well;
That all through a score of battles I fought,
And then, like a soldier, fell:
The country I died for,--never will heed
My unrequited claim;
And history cannot record the deed,
For she never has heard my name.

Only a private;--and yet I know,
When I heard the rallying call,
I was one of the very first to go,
And ... I'm one of the many who fall:
But, as here I lie, it is sweet to feel,
That my honor's without a stain;--
That I only fought for my Country's weal,
And not for glory or gain.

Only a private;--yet He who reads
Through the guises of the heart,
Looks not at the splendour of the deeds,
But the way we do our part;
And when He shall take us by the hand,
And our small service own,
There'll a glorious band of privates stand
As victors around the throne!'

The breath of the morning is heavy and chill,
And gloomily lower the mists on the hill:
The winds through the beeches are shivering low,
With a plaintive and sad _miserere_ of woe:
A quiet is over the Cottage,--a dread
Clouds the children's sweet faces,--Macpherson is dead!