Margaret Junkin Preston
VIII.
“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!”
© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
You may find this and other poems here.
Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem works because it stays close to the emotional reality of wartime separation rather than trying to dress it up. It reads like a private letter from a wife to her husband at the front, and the tone keeps shifting between reassurance, confession, and the sharp edges of loss. Instead of presenting war in heroic terms, the poem focuses on what it does to the home and the relationships that are supposed to feel permanent. That contrast carries the weight of the piece.
The opening section leans on shared memories and the old certainty that love was enough to hold two people steady. The speaker talks about the confidence they once had, the easy belief that nothing could unsettle them. That confidence is exposed for what it was: something people tend to say only when nothing has tested it. The poem makes this point without preaching. The difference between comfort and hardship explains itself.
Once the letter shifts to the husband’s current situation—the hunger, the cold, the fatigue—the poem questions whether love can really be enough when the physical world collapses around a person. The voice isn’t accusing; it’s honest about how distance changes the strength of feelings. The wife wants to know whether the connection still holds for him the way it holds for her. This uncertainty feels more believable than declarations of unbreakable devotion.
The turn to religious faith expands the emotional space. She isn’t abandoning the marriage bond; she’s admitting that there are limits to human support during war. The reference to divine comfort is not written as a dramatic revelation but as something they need because the world around them has stopped being dependable. It is practical faith rather than ornamental.
The strongest passage concerns the destruction of their home. The description is direct and unembellished, and because of that, the shock lands harder. She tries to plead for mercy, appealing to the attackers’ own family ties, and the poem shows how little that matters in a war that treats people and property as obstacles. The refusal she receives is blunt, and her helpless anger feels grounded in real experience. The burning house becomes more than property; it is the loss of a life they built together and assumed would always be there to return to.
Even as she insists she doesn’t regret her “quota” to the war, the grief shows up immediately afterward. The poem lists the small details that made the house meaningful—porches, windows, rooms, vines, trees—and none of these details are grand. They’re ordinary, which is exactly why they matter. This part of the poem is not nostalgia for luxury; it’s the mourning of routine, privacy, and shared history. That is a kind of wartime loss often left out of battlefield-centered writing.
The closing sections focus on endurance. She emphasizes her children’s resilience and keeps reminding herself that she still belongs somewhere, even while displaced. The final lines turn the fact of being a wife into a point of stability rather than a sentimental flourish. It’s less about romantic triumph and more about clinging to the one identity that hasn’t been destroyed by war.
Overall, the poem is not a battlefield narrative but a reminder that the war’s damage spreads far past soldiers and campaigns. It shows how domestic life becomes fragile, how memory turns into a burden, and how people try to hold onto one clear truth when everything else is burned away.