Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DAISY SWAIN, THE FLOWER OF SHENANDOAH; A TALE OF THE REBELLION: 6, by JOHN M. DAGNALL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DAISY SWAIN, THE FLOWER OF SHENANDOAH; A TALE OF THE REBELLION: 6, by                    
First Line: Down beside her senseless mother daisy
Last Line: Death freed reuben from his clanking chains.
Subject(s): American Civil War; Beauty; Death; Love; Soldiers; United States - History; Women; Dead, The


Down beside her senseless mother Daisy
Knelt, and loudly called to Heaven for justice;
Pour'd forth in fervent pray'r that mercy yet
Divine might smooth the captives' way -- vain hope.
Bitterly, all that long and dreary night,
She wept her father's and her lover's hapless fates;
And when the next day serenely dawn'd,
It brought unto her mind no smiling light,
For, joyless all the live-long day, she thought
Of them o'erwhelm'd by tyranny:
Knelt, with her heart o'ercharged with woe, and pray'd
The right'ous soon would triumph o'er and sink,
To fathomless depths, their stern oppressors down;
Hop'd that they'd by divine vengeance be pursued;
That the wrath of Heaven would upon them
Hurl its thunderbolts and doom their overthrow;
Wish'd her aged father would again be
Free as the rolling cloud, enjoying once more
The blessings of liberty; and that the wind
From heaven, unconfined, would soon play round
Her lover's brow, to dare again the foe,
Till vict'ry crown'd his arms, and conquest, with
Renown, his freedom brought. For she knew her
Athol's noble heart was far too valiant
To shrink from treason-tainted foes; aye scorn'd
At danger; could hear taunts and wear his chains
In fetter's realms like a Christian martyr.

But such hopes her mother's mind relief denied:
Soon reason fled her fever'd brain; for when
By her injurious foes borne down, faint she
Lay outstretch'd, pale nigh breathless, upon
A bed of anguish.

Many nights Daisy
Watch'd with glistening eye around her couch;
And heard, in her mother's stifling moans, death,
In fullness of glee, with bony hands twang'd
At her heart-strings, the solemn tones which tell
Where the broken in spirit shall go. Yes,
The tale is told: hopeless of recovery
Was her state; for soon her weaken'd lungs closed
Their spongy cells against the air of life.
A sigh, a gasp, a rattle in her throat:
Her fitful struggles ceased, and all was still.
Her spirit fled its earthly confinement,
And soared far beyond life's narrow bounds.

If ever innocence knew distress 'twas when
Daisy, bending o'er her dying parent,
Heard her last breath, and felt her heart was reft
Of life's warm beat. In her deep despair she
Trembling knelt beside her deceased mother;
And from her weeping eyes she pour'd upon
Her cold remains many fond, filial tears.
Then she raised her sorrowing head on high,
And cried aloud: "To thee, Great God above, let
My imploring voice ascend. O Lord of
Mercy! hear my prayer. Thou hast the power
To raise or quell the storm. The struggling worm
Thou canst protect. Then, O Lord of Hosts! deign
To dispel the black'ning gloom which now o'ershades
The future of a helpless orphan just
Deprived of fond maternal care. Her voice
That once impressed celestial precepts on
My heart, is hush'd in death. Nor does my father
Hear his suppliant child beseeching Thy
Benign protection: for, far from me, alas!
He has been cruelly torn, and futile have,
I fear, his claims for mercy been; unfelt
On apathetic hearts his pleading soft:
Still hearing naught but insults vile, has sank
Beneath oppression's weight; and p'rhaps his soul
Has from its earthly cell been disencumber'd,
And upward wing'd its way to heaven for peace,
Leaving me an orphan here forlorn, the sole
Survivor of the wreck."

Too true, alas!
Was her prediction: for, unhappily,
In mouldy dungeon vilely smear'd with
Damps infectious, her father, hopeless, sleepless,
Many midnight hours, quickly pined beneath
His darksome prison roof; and while he droop'd
And lonely breath'd, despairing of each daylight's dawn,
He thought that safe, secure, tho' far away,
All whom he loved remain'd in sunshine bright.

He saw his white-washed cot, and the tall trees
Which rose above it proudly, tinted with
The beam. Heard the gurgling brook meand'ring
Past; and fancied, in its twirling eddies,
That he saw the trout disport: his daughter,
Too, quite fair; serene as mild mid-noon in
Mayday, sitting on its green bank twining
A wreath of flow'rets gay with which to crown
Her lover's honored brow, in token of
The laurel he might wear.

But yet, he knew,
The Fed'ral then with circling arms did not
Her slender bosom twine, as, like himself, he pined
In dungeon deep, in sad captivity,
Inly mourning the loss of her whom his soul
Loved best on earth.

Then forebodings sad soon
Banish'd from his mind the remember'd joys
That thronged upon his soul. He feared and wept
To think that both his wife and child suffer'd:
Yet still at intervals he felt consolement
In the thought that they unshared his woes. Hoped
And prayed that no dire ills hung o'er their heads,
And that his wife and lovely daughter solely
Mourn'd his loss of fondness. This 'twas that cheer'd
Him; for a degree of bliss he felt in
His heart that he might see them soon again.
'Twas but a mock'ry of joy, as forced was
The glow; ghastly the smile; his haggard cheeks
And hollow eyes that hope destroyed. For, fast
He sank: and, on the self-same night his wife's
Christian spirit fled into eternity,
Death freed Reuben from his clanking chains.





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