Poem by Margaret Junkin Preston

Beechenbrook - 8

"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 for;
I grudge not the quota _I_ pay to the war!

"But, Douglass!--deep down in the core of my heart,
There's a throbbing, an aching, that will not depart;
For memory mourns, with a wail of despair,
The loss of her treasures,--the subtle, the rare,
Precious things over which she delighted to pore,
Which nothing,--ah! nothing, can ever restore!

"The rose-covered porch, where I sat as your bride--
The hearth, where at twilight I leaned at your side--
The low-cushioned window-seat, where I would lie,
With my head on your knee, and look out on the sky:--
The chamber all holy with love and with prayer,
The motherhood memories clustering there--
The vines that _your_ hand has delighted to train,
The trees that _you_ planted;--Oh! never again
Can love build us up such a bower of bliss;
Oh! never can home be as hallow'd as this!

"Thank God! there's a dwelling not builded with hands,
Whose pearly foundation, immovable stands;
There struggles, alarms, and disquietudes cease,
And the blissfulest balm of the spirit is--peace!
Small trial 'twill seem when our perils are past,
And we enter the house of our Father at last,--
Light trouble, that here, in the night of our stay,
The blast swept our wilderness lodging away!

"The children--dear hearts!--it is touching to see
My Beverly's beautiful kindness to me;
So buoyant his mein--so heroic--resigned--
The boy has the soul of his father, I find!
Not a childish complaint or regret have I heard,--
Not even from Archie, a petulant word:
Once only--a tear moistened Sophy's bright cheek:
'_Papa has no home now!_'--'twas all she could speak.

"A stranger I wander midst strangers; and yet
I never,--no, not for a moment forget
That my heart has a home,--just as real, as true,
And as warm as if Beechenbrook sheltered me too.
God grant that this refuge from sorrow and pain--
This blessedest haven of peace, may remain!
And, then, though disaster, still sharper, befall,
I think I can patiently bear with it all:
For the rarest, most exquisite bliss of my life
Is wrapped in a word, Douglass ... I am your wife!"

1. A Grave in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond (J.R.T.)
2. Virginia Capta
3. The Shade of the Trees
4. Calling the Angels in
5. Beechenbrook - 2

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