“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!”

IX.