Edward William Thomson: Verses about Sorrow

PRINCESS but yesterday, to-day
You are to us so very near
By human sorrow, that away
All forms and titles disappear;
Your mourning glooms the winter day,

Sunshiny clear although it show,
And all its glittering white array
Seems for our grief a shroud of woe.

Our bells ring out, and in the air
So long vibrate with mournful tone

That English bells seem answering there,
The sound from far-off belfries blown;
They toll together here as there,
For yours and you and theirs and ours,
And what if now her spirit were

Rejoiced by all the swooning towers?

LANDLORD, take a double fee, and let the banquet slide,
Send the viands, send the wine to cheer the poor outside,
Turn the glasses upside down, leave the room alight,
Let the flower-strown tables stand glittering all the night.

Everybody’s friend is gone, hushed his gentle mirth,

Sweeter-hearted comrade soul none shall know on earth,
Burly body, manly mind, upright lifted head,
Viking eyes and smiling lips—Dr. Drummond’s dead!

For the Club, for the feast, and for the busy street
Primal natural airs he brought, oh, so fresh and sweet,

Brattling rivers, gleaming lakes, wild-flower forest floors,
To heal the City’s weary heart with balms of out-of-doors.

But where the campfire-litten boughs swing swaying overhead,
And wondering wolf and lynx shrill wild the boding of their dread,
And strangely through the moony night the hooting owlets roam,

His tones would yearn in gladsome talk about the doors of Home.

In sympathy with every pain of all who bear the yoke,
There was a natural piety in all he wrote and spoke,
He warmed with Irish pride in deeds defying Might’s strong host,
Yet ever shared the Saxon sense for ruling at the roast.


He bore the poet’s shifting heart that puts itself in place
Of every humble kindly soul it knows of every race,

He felt their sorrow as their joy, but chose the strain to cheer
And help the differing breeds to share one patriot feeling here.

There was no better loyalist than this whose humors played

In pleasant human wise to serve the State two races made—
O Landlord, turn the glasses down, and leave the room alight,
And let the flower-sweet silence tell his shade our grief to-night.

IF ancient England nobly sing,
We hearken to the song.
Her words ten million echoes bring
To urge the strain along;
It rallies farm and market-square,

If so the note be true,—
But what if every verse declare
But one inspired Yahoo?

Fifty thousand horse and foot
Trail back from Table Bay

In shame to recollect the toot
To which they sailed away;
Five times fifty thousand more
The fight could barely save,
With aid from every British shore

To quell the burgher brave.

Through forests dim, o’er myriad lakes,
Where sea-wide prairies swell,
It seemed our hearts were like to break;
What time the Shame befell

Of “I regret I must report
Surrendering the Nek,”
And “Guns all captured,” “No support,”
Death dogging kop and trek.

From stroke of axe, from herded ranch,

From league-long furrows black,
We sent our children stark and staunch
To tread the battle track;
All bound by grace on England’s part
To help her hoe the row,

But never hatred in their heart
Against the hero foe.

Majuba Hill! Oh, yes, we grieve
Full sorely at the name,
But what hyena can conceive

We would revenge the blame?
Ye braves who stormed a mountain crest
To fight with five to one,
By God, praise thunders in the breast
To think such deed was done!

And is it England’s voice declares
That yielded men whose souls
Confronted all that valor dares
Must lack the freeman’s polls?
Must lack the balm that soothed away

Canadian memories sore,
And drew to England’s battle day
As friends the foes of yore?

Now bear the strain to London town,
Oh, winds of England’s main,

And tell the heirs of old renown
We lilt their old refrain:
“Full measure heaped and running o’er
Of every freeman’s right
Subdues the heart of heroes more

Than all the storms of fight.”

IT touches the heart of “Our Mother”
with happiness queerly regretful
To muse on all they who instinctively
bring her their innermost grief,
For reasons she never can fathom

they come, as if wholly forgetful
Of fear to repose their confessions
with Our Town’s fount of relief.

What crucified faces of maidens
despairing in love’s desolation

Have streamed with the weeping they’ve hidden
from all, except Mother alone!
What stormy-heart fighters came wildly
lamenting their souls’ tribulation
At hearing the weaklings they’d vanquished

from terrible silences groan!

What saints who had failed of the halo,
because their stiff features retarded
The flow of affection from children
they loved, though with signals confused,

Would open, for Mother’s eyes only,
mysterious portals that guarded
Their yearning for all the caresses
their hickory manners refused.

When parents, grown aged, and basking

long years in the Town’s veneration,
Shrank bitter and dumb, at the blow of
an archangel son in disgrace,
How he knelt in despair with Our Mother,
and rose with the transfiguration

Of that which is God, or just mother,
that shines in her triumphant face.

Yet Mother is given to blaming
her nature for cold-hearted dealing;—
“Dear souls, how they pour out their troubles

to me, whose responses are wood!
Though I strive to console them, my sayings
seem void, to myself, of all feeling,
For I never can find an expression
to make my heart half understood.”


“And I never can love them enough
in their sadness, however I’m trying
To soften the life in my heart
till it break with their anguishing tears,
For it’s flooded with gladness to feel them

so helped by the balm of the crying,—
And, oh, what a shame I’m made happy
through sorrows they’ll carry for years.”

SHALL we to great Deliverers be blind
If they within our sight have daily wrought?
Must we forever cast our gaze behind,
Praising the past immortals of our kind,
And to our present heroes grudging aught?

Shall we lament that now no Hercules
Clubs down oppressors, and the people frees?
We, who have seen one valiant soul alone
Fronting the banded pirates of the State,
Renewing millions in a hope long flown,

Rousing his Nation to a heart elate.

There was no man bent faithful to his work
In all the Land but deemed this man his friend;
No woman did her natural duties shirk
But felt his scorn within her conscience irk;


No losel knave but longed to see an end
Of him who, Samson strong, smote every foe
That, guileful, gathered gain from public woe.
This man gave such example in high seat
That nevermore a President dares gaze

Gently on those who shivered while his feet
Trod in the righteous ruthlessness which slays.

Sought ye the Lord’s anointed mid the Kings
Enthroned in pomp barbaric and outworn,
Entinselled, millinered, bedizened things

Pranked out as butterflies of peacocked wings,
Or gaudy poppies in the useful corn?
Go seek mid them who do, like him, oppose
Their strength in equal fight with equal foes
Where Worth can summon Friendship to its side,

Can help the piteous Weak, can smite the Base,
Can spurn the flauntings of a gewgaw pride,
Effeminate Pleasure’s cunning lures deride,
And, Godlike laboring, animate the Race.

Let cynic drollards fling the easy jeer

At him who by mysterious Fate’s uplift
Received anointment true, when chose to steer,
Watchful, enduring, staunch from year to year,
The Ship of Freedom’s Hope from anxious drift.
He is no paragon of virtues mild,

No meek Academy’s precisian child;
Hot indignation gives him tones that ring
As steely mallet battering iron thing,—
But, oh, his strokes befit a Man of men!
And long may we desire his like again.

Go to the lions—safe thou shalt return—
No martyr soul in thee confronts their frown—
’T is for thy homebound ship that we shall yearn;
Ephesian beasts may then again discern
God’s hammer smashing their defences down.

WHEN the years grew worse, and the tribe longed sore
For a kinsman bred to the white man's lore,
To the Mission School they sent forth me
From the hunting life and the skin tepee.

In the Mission School eight years I wrought
Till my heart grew strange to its boyhood's thought,
Then the white men sent me forth from their ways
To the Blackfoot lodge and the roving days.

'He tells of their God,' said the Chiefs when I spake,
'But naught of the magic our foemen make,
'T is a Blackfoot heart with a white man's fear,
And all skill forgot that could help him here.'

For the Mission Priest had bent my will
From the art to steal and the mind to kill,
Then out from the life I had learned sent me
To the hungry plain and the dim tepee.

When the moon of March was great and round,
No meat for my father's teeth I found;
When the moon of March was curved and thin,
No meat for his life could my hunting win.

Wide went the tracks of my snowshoe mesh,
Deep was the white, and it still fell fresh
Far in the foothills, far on the plain,
Where I searched for the elk and the grouse in vain.

In the Lodge lay my father, grim in the smoke,
His eyes pierced mine as the gray dawn broke,
He gnawed on the edge of the buffalo hide,
And I must be accurst if my father died.

He spoke with wail: 'In the famine year
When my father starved as I starve here,
Was my heart like the squaw's who has fear to slay
'Mongst the herds of the white man far away?'

From the Mission School they sent forth me
To the gaunt, wild life of the dark tepee;


With the fear to steal, and the dread to kill,
And the love of Christ they had bent my will.

But my father gnawed on the buffalo hide,–
Toward the sunrise trod my snowshoe stride,
Straight to the white man's herd it led,
Till the sun sank down at my back in red.

Next dawn was bleak when I slew the steer,
I ate of the raw, and it gave me cheer;
So I set my feet in the track once more,
With my father's life in the meat I bore.

Far strode the herder, fast on my trail;
Noon was high when I heard his hail;
I fled in fear, but my feet moved slow,
For the load I shouldered sank them low.

Then I heard no sound but the creak and clack
Of his snowshoes treading my snowshoe track,
And I saw never help in plain or sky
Save that he should die or my father die.

The Mission Priest had broke my will
With the curse on him who blood would spill,
But my father starved in the black tepee,
And the cry of his starving shrieked to me.

The white world reeled to its cloudy rim,
The plain reeled red as I knelt by him,–
Oh, the spot in the snow, how it pulsed and grew,
How it cried from the mid-white up to the blue!

For the Mission Priest had sent forth me
To the wants and deeds of the wild tepee,
Yet the fear of God's strong curse fulfilled,
Cried with the blood that would not be stilled.

They found me not while the year was green
And the rose blew sweet where the stain had been,
They found me not when the fall-flowers flare,
But the red in the snow was ever there.

To the Jail I fled from the safe tepee,
And the Mission Priest will send forth me,


A Blackfoot soul cleansed white from stain–
Yet never the red spot fades from the plain.

It glares in my eyes when sunbeams fall
Through the iron grate of my stone-gray wall,
And I see, through starlight, foxes go
To track and to taste of the ruddy snow.

SHROUDED on Shiloh field in night and rain,
This body rested from the first’s day’s fight;
Fallen face down, both hands on rifle clutched,
A Shape of sprawling members, blank of thought
As was the April mud in which it lay.


Comrade, you deem that I shall surely lie
Torpid, forgetful, nevermore to march
After the flush of morning pales in day;
But I remember how I rose again
From Shiloh field to march three mighty years,

Until mine eyes beheld in Richmond streets
Our Father Abraham, homely conqueror,
So Son-of-Manlike, fashioned mild and meek,
Averse from triumph, close to common men,
Chief of a Nation mercifully strong.


In boyhood many a time I’d seen his face,
Knew well the accents of his voice serene,
Loved the kind twinkle of his sad-eyed smile,
Yet never once beheld him save with awe,
For that mysterious sense of unity

With the External Fortitude, which flowed
As from his gaze into my yearning heart.

The peace our Father’s four years’ Calvary wrought
Has bustled through his huge two-oceaned land
How busily since Shiloh’s blood-drenched field

Gave up from death this body men called me.—
Oh, paths of peace were, truly, pleasant ways!
The kindliest Nation earth has ever known
Gave to their veterans grateful preference
In every labor, mart, and council hall,


Which nobleness shall a thousand fold be paid
By soldier hearts in every future Age.

Myself was one whom Fortune favored much,
Children and children’s children, troops of friends
Have cheered this firelit chamber silken hung

Where now I rest me easy at the last,
In confidence that Shiloh’s miracle
Of Vision and of Song did true forecast
Repose in bliss surpassing mortal dream.

The night outside is black as Shiloh’s night,

Save for electric-litten streaks of rain;
My dripping eaves declare November’s shower
Falling as fast as early April’s did
When first this time-worn body grew aware
Of Death’s reluctant yielding to the Soul.


Utter oblivion could not be from Sleep
While battle roared, and dreaded evening fell,
And sullen foemen kept the plain unsearched,
And rain tempestuous stormed to midnight’s gloom.

Oh, let me talk! I’ve seldom told the tale,

And I care nothing if my strength be strained.
Our generation ever held that Strength
Was given only that it might be tried.
What matters it if so my term of hours
Ere second resurrection be forestalled?


First did this body dimly sense its form
As something vaguely unified in Space;
Powerless, motionless, unaware of aught
Save merely numbness, while a smothering nose
And mumbling lips and tongue mechanical

Strove for they knew not what, which was to breathe—
Strove as by instinct uncontrolled of Mind,
Which nowise ordered hands enormous-like
To fumble baffled till they slowly learned
The fast-clutched rifle which bewildered them

Was such a thing as fingers could let go.

Then, to restore the breath, the forearms come
Beneath the brow, and raised the face from mud;
Yet all was numbness, but for tiny blows
Patting behind the neck, and prankily

Creeping at random down the cheeks and hair.
I did not guess them pellets of cold rain
Until a stab came up as from the ground
Into my wounded breast. Then Mind awoke
To wetness, night, and all the agonies

That dogged resolution rose to bear.

Shocked Memory cried, That stroke one instant past
Was shrapnel shell! The reasoning power replied,
It laid the body dead on Shiloh field.
Then staunch the Soul, I live—and God is here.

Visions came lightning-quick, clear, unconfused,—
The City tumult in my childish ears,
Our tremulous Church at Sumter’s bulletin,
Me naked in the cold recruiting room
Stripped to the hurrying Doctor’s callous test;—

All the innumerable recollections flashed
On to that battle-moment when my chum
Charging beside me on red Shiloh field
Gasped out, “Oh, John,” clutched horribly his throat,
Frowned on his bloodied hands, stared wild at me

Who, in that moment, felt the stroke, and fell.

Was Harry nigh? I groped in puddled grass
Seeking his comrade corpse, and sought in vain.
The wound might not have killed him! Could I turn,
And so gain ground to search a little more?

Yes—but the agony! Yet turn I did,
And, groping farther, felt a little bush.
It seemed more friendly to the finger hold
Than emptiness, or muddy earth, or grass;
So there I lay, face up, in absolute night

Whose stillness deepened with the lessening rain.

How long, O Lord, how long the darkness held!
Despite the feverish wound my body chilled,
And oft my desperate fingers strove to loose
The soaking blanket roll which trenched my back

As if it lay diagonal on a ridge.

It may be true that slight delirium touched
My brain that night, for when a little wind
Came rustling through the bushes of the plain,
And drizzling ceased, how clearly my closed eyes

Could see within the house where I was born!

There sister voices conned their lesson books,
And Mother’s dress was trailing on the stair
As she were coming up to comfort me,
While in my heart an expectation flowed


Of some inexplicable joy anear,
Angelic, shining-robed, austerely fair.

With that I opened wondering eyes—and Lo
The heavenly host of stars o’er Shiloh field!

And oh the glory of them, and the peace,


The promise, the ethereal hope renewed!
Up rose my soul, supreme past bodily grief,
To rest enraptured as of Heaven assured.

In that blest trance my gaze became intent
On beams I deemed at first a rising moon,


Until mine eyes conceived the luminous space
Haloed a tall and human-seeming Form,
Of countenance uplifted unto God,
And palms breast-clasped as if entreating Him.

In vain my straining sight sought certainty

Whose was the sorrowing figure which I dreamed
To wear a visage as if Christ were come
In pity for the carnage of that plain.

It seemed that nigh that Presence rose a voice
Most heavenly pure of note, and manlike strong;

“When I can read my title clear,” it sang
Triumphantly, “To mansions in the skies,”
Lifting the hymn in exultation high
Till other voices took it—wounded men
Lying, like me, in pain and close to death;

Myself chimed in, while all about me rang
The soldier chanting of that prostrate host,
Northern and Southern, one united choir
Solemnly glad in Man’s supernal dream.*

Comrade, when that high service of great song


Died down, there was no semblance of a moon!
And if indeed one rode the April sky
That wonder-night, I never yet have learned.

But I do know most surely this strange thing,—
That when, in Richmond, Father Abraham,

After three years grassed newly Shiloh plain,
Beheld my veteran men relieve his guard,
I saw the triumph in my countenance
Did grieve afresh his sad and infinite eyes
Which gazed with gentle meaning into mine

The while his silent lips seemed fashioning
For me alone, “Remember Shiloh Choir.”

Then clear I knew his brooding tenderness
Bewailed our vanquished brethren, waked from years
Of dreadful dream he was their enemy;


The exultation vanished from my heart,
A choking pity took me in the throat,
And forth I rushed to join the ranks of Blue
Fighting, as saviours, flames in Richmond Town,
The while his kindly look seemed blessing me.


Now in the contemplation of his eyes
I lie content as stretched on Shiloh field,
Dreaming triumphant, waiting for the dawn.

There it broke fair, till shattering musketry
And cheers of charging Blue right onward swept

So far, it seemed that utter silence fell,
And I lay waiting very peacefully,
As now, for friendly hands to bear me home.

ALREADY Appomattox day
Seemed to our hearts an age away,
Although the April-blossomed trees
Were droning with the very bees
That bumbled round the conference

Where Lee resigned his long defence,
And Grant’s new gentleness subdued
The iron Southern fortitude.

From smouldering leaves the smoky smell
Wreathed round Virginian fields a spell

Of homely aromatic haze,
So like New Hampshire springtime days
About the slopes of Moosilauke
It numbed my homesick heart to talk,
And when the bobolinks trilled “Rejoice!”

My comrade could not trust his voice.

We were two cavalrymen assigned
To safeguard Pinckney womankind,
Whose darkies rambled Lord knows where
In some persuasion that they were

Thenceforth, in ease, at public charge
To live as gentlemen at large—
A purpose which, they’d heard, the war
Was made by “Massa Linkum” for.

The pillared mansion, battle-wrecked,

Yet stood with ivied front erect,
Its mossy gables, shell-fire-torn,
Were still in lordliness upborne
Above the neighboring barns, well stored
With war-time’s rich tobacco hoard;

But on the place, for food, was naught
Save what our commissary brought
To keep the planter’s folk alive
Till Colonel Pinckney might arrive
Paroled from northward, if his head

Lay not among the prisoner dead.

We’d captured him ten days before,
When Richard Ewell’s veteran corps,
Half-naked, starving, fought amain
To save their dwindling wagon-train.

Since they were weak and we were strong,
The battle was not overlong.
Again I see the prisoners stare
Exultant at the orange glare
Of sunlit flame they saw aspire

Up from the train they gave to fire.
They’d shred apart their hero flags
To share the silk as heart-worn rags.
The trampled field was strewn about
With wreckage of the closing rout—

Their dead, their wounded, rifles broke,
Their mules and horses slain in yoke;
Their torn-up records, widely spread,
Fluttered around the muddy dead—
So bitter did their hearts condemn

To ruin all we took with them.

Ten days before! The war was past,
The Union saved, Peace come at last,
And Father Abraham’s words of balm
Gentling the war-worn States to calm.

Of all the miracles he wrought
That was the sweetest. Men who’d fought
So long they’d learned to think in hate,
And savor blood when bread they ate,
And hear their buried comrades wail,

How long, O Lord, doth wrong prevail?
List’ning alike, in blue or gray,
Felt war’s wild passions soothed away.

By homely touches in the air
That morning was so sweet and rare

That Father Abraham’s soul serene
Seemed brooding over all the scene;
And when we found the plough, I guess
We were so tired of idleness
Our farmer fingers yearned to hold

The handles, and to sense the mould
Turning the earth behind the knife.

Jim gladdened as with freshened life;—
“Say, John,” said he, “I’m feeling beat
To know what these good folks will eat

When you and I are gone. Next fall
They’re sure to have no crop at all.
All their tobacco’s confiscate
By Washington—and what a state
Of poverty they’re bound to see!

Say, buddy, what if you and me
Just hitch our cavalry horses now
Up to this blamed Virginia plough,
And run some furrows through the field?
With commissary seed they’d yield


A reasonable crop of corn.”
“They will,” said I, “as sure’s you’re born!”

Quickly we rigged, with rope and straps
And saddle leathers—well, perhaps
The Yankiest harness ever planned

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To haul a plough through farming land.
It made us kind of happy, too,
Feeling like Father Abraham knew.

The Pinckney place stood on a rise,
And when we’d turned an end, our eyes

Would see the mansion war had wrecked,—
Such desolation! I suspect
The women’s hearts were mourning sore;
But not one tear we saw—they bore
Composed the fortune fate had sent—


But, O dear Lord, how still they went!
I’ve seen such quiet in a shroud,
Inscrutably resigned and proud.

Yet, when we’d worked an hour or two,
And plain was what we meant to do,

Mother and daughters came kind-eyed,—
“Soldiers—my soldier husband’s pride
Will be to thank you well—till then
We call you friendly, helpful men—”
It seemed she stopped for fear of tears.

She turned—they went—Oh, long the years
Gone by since that brave lady spoke—
And yet I hear the voice that broke.

We watched them climb the lilac hill,
Again the spring grew strangely still

Ere, far upon the turnpike road,
Across a clattering bridge, where flowed
Through sand the stream of Pinckney Run,
We heard the galloping of one
Who, hidden by the higher ground,

Pounded as fast as horse could pound.
Then—all again was still as death—
Till up the slope, with laboring breath,
A white steed rose—his rider gray
Spurring like mad his staggering way.


The man was old and tall and white,
His glooming eyes looked dead to light,
He rode with such a fateful air
I felt a coldness thrill my hair,
He rode as one hard hit rides out


In horror from some battle rout,
Bearing a cry for instant aid—
That aspect made my heart afraid. [Page 63]

The death-like rider drew no rein,
Nor seemed to note us on the plain,

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Nor seemed to know how weak in stride
His horse strove up the long hillside;
When down it lurched, on foot the man
Up through the fringing lilacs ran,
His left hand clutching empty air

As if his sabre still hung there.

’T was plain as day that human blast
Was Colonel Pinckney home at last,
And we were free, since ordered so
That with his coming we might go;


Yet on we ploughed—the sun swung high,
Quiet the earth and blue the sky—
Silent we wrought, as men who wait
Some half-imagined stroke of fate,
While through the trembling shine came knells


Tolling from far-off Lynchburg bells.

The solemn, thrilling sounds of gloom
Bore portents of tremendous doom,
On smoky zephyrs drifted by
Shadows of hosts in charging cry,


In fields where silence ruled profound
Growling musketry echoed round,
Pale phantom ranks did starkly pass
Invisible across the grass,
Flags ghosted wild in powder fume


Till, miracled in memory’s room,
Rang the old regiment’s rousing cheer
For Father Abraham, smiling queer.

’T was when we turned a furrow’s end
We saw a martial form descend

From Mansion Hill the lilac way,
Till in our field the veteran gray
Stood tall and straight as at parade,
And yet as one with soul dismayed.
That living emblem of the South

Faced us unblenching, though his mouth
So quivered with the spoken word
It seemed a tortured heart we heard;—
“Soldiers”—he eyed us nobly when
We stood to “attention”—“Soldiers—men,

For this good work my thanks are due—
But—men—O God—men, if you knew,
Your kindly hands had shunned the plough—
For hell comes up between us now!—
Oh, sweet was peace—but gone is peace—

185
Murder and hate have fresh release!—
The deed be on the assassin’s head!—
Men—Abraham Lincoln’s lying dead!”

He steadied then—he told us through
All of the tale that Lynchburg knew,

190
While dumbly raged my anguished heart
With woe from pity wrenched apart,
For, in the fresh red furrow, bled
’Twixt us and him the martyred dead.

That precious crimson ran so fast

195
It merged in tinge with battles past,—
Hatcher’s, Five Forks, The Wilderness,
The Bloody Angle’s maddened stress;
Down Cemetery Hill there poured
Torrents that stormed to Kelly’s Ford,

200
And twice Manassas flung its flood
To swell the four years’ tide of blood,
And Sumter blazed, and Ellsworth fell,
While memory flashed its gleams of hell.

The colonel’s staring eyes declared

205
In visions wild as ours he shared,
Until—dear Christ—with Thine was blent
The death-transfigured President. [Page 65]

Strange—strange—the crown of thorns he wore,
His outspread hands were piercèd sore,


And down his old black coat a tide
Flowed from the javelin-wounded side;
Yet ’t was his homely self there stood,
And gently smiled across the blood,
And changed the mystic stream to tears

That swept afar the angry years,
And flung me down as falls a child
Whose heart breaks out in weeping wild.



Yet in that field we ploughed no more,
We shunned the open Southern door,


We saddled up, we rode away,—
It’s that that troubles me to-day.

Full thirty years to dust were turned
Before my pondering soul had learned
The blended vision there was sent

In sign that our Belovèd meant;—
Children who wrought so mild my will,
Plough the long furrow kindly still,
’T is sweet the Father’s work to see
Done for the memory of me.