Beechenbrook | Page 3

the national soul:--
"The right of self-government, crown of our
pride,--
Right, bought with the sacredest blood,--is denied!
Shall we
tamely resign what our enemy craves?
No! martyrs we may_ be!--we
_cannot be slaves!"
Fair women who naught but indulgence have
seen,
Who never have learned what denial could mean,--
Who deign not to clipper 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