Has he grown sick of his toils and his tasks?
Sighs the worn spirit for respite or ease?
Is it a moment's cool halt that he asks
Under the shade of the trees?
Is it the gurgle of waters whose flow
Ofttime has come to him, borne on the breeze,
Memory listens to, lapsing so low,
Under the shade of the trees?
Nay—though the rasp of the flesh was so sore,
Faith, that had yearnings far keener than these,
Saw the soft sheen of the Thitherward Shore
Under the shade of the trees;—
Caught the high psalms of ecstatic delight—
Heard the harps harping, like soundings of seas—
Watched earth's assoilèd ones walking in white
Under the shade of the trees.
Oh, was it strange he should pine for release,
Touched to the soul with such transports as these,—
He who so needed the balsam of peace,
Under the shade of the trees?
Yea, it was noblest for him—it was best
(Questioning naught of our Father's decrees),
There to pass over the river and rest
Under the shade of the trees!
Margaret Junkin Preston.
Lee waited only to rest his forces and then, for the second time, invaded Maryland, crossing the Shenandoah at Front Royal. On June 13, 1863, the army appeared before Winchester, scattered the Union force stationed there, and swept resistlessly down the Shenandoah Valley, raiding into Pennsylvania as far as Chambersburg.
THE BALLAD OF ISHMAEL DAY
[June, 1863]