And oft, with a sort of bewildered amaze, On her face he would fasten the wistfullest gaze: --"You are kind, but a hospital nurse cannot be Like Alice,--my tenderest Alice,--to me. Oh! I know there's at Beechenbrook, many a tear, As she asks all the day,--'Will he never be here?'" But Nature, kind healer! brings sovereignest balm, And strokes the wild pulses with coolness and calm; The conflict so equal, so stubborn, is past, And life gains the hardly-won battle at last. How sweet through the long convalescence to lie, And from the low window, gaze out at the sky, And float, as the zephyrs so tranquilly do, Aloft in the depths of ineffable blue:-- In painless, delicious half consciousness brood,-- No duties to cumber, no claims to intrude,-- Receptive as childhood, from trouble as free, And feel it is bliss enough simply, to be! For Alice,--what pencil can picture her joy,-- So perfect, so thankful, so free from annoy, As her lips press the lotus-bound chalice, and drain That exquisite blessedness born out of pain! Oh! not in her maidenhood, blushing and sweet, When Douglass first poured out his love at her feet; And not when a shrinking and beautiful bride, With worshipping fondness she clung to his side; And not in those holiest moments of life, When first she was held to his heart, as his wife; And never in motherhood's earliest bliss, Had she tasted a happiness rounded like this! And Douglass, safe sheltered from war's rude alarms, Finds Eden's lost precincts again in her arms: He hears afar off, in the distance, the roar And the lash of the billows that break on the shore Of his isle of enchantment,--his haven of rest,-- And rapturous languor steals over his breast. He bathes in the sunlight of Alice's smiles; He wraps himself round with love's magical wiles: His sweet iterations pall not on her ear,-- "_I love you--I love you!_"--she never can hear That cadence too often; its musical roll Wakes ever an echoed reply in her soul. --Do visions of trial, of warning, of woe, Loom dark in the future of doubt? Do they know They are hiving, of honied remembrance, a store To live on, when summer and sunshine are o'er? Do they feel that their island of beauty at last Must be rent by the tempest,--be swept by the blast? Do they dream that afar, on the wild, wintry main, Their love-freighted bark must be driven again? --Bless God for the wisdom that curtains so tight To-morrow's enjoyments or griefs from our sight! Bless God for the ignorance, darkness and doubt, That girdle so kindly our future about!