Mary A. Denison

To Mrs. Lincoln

Mary A. Denison (1826–1911) distinguished herself among those who mourned Lincoln in verse by addressing her poem to the grief-stricken First Lady. A prolific writer of fiction and journalistic sketches under her own name and the pennames Clara Vance and N. I. Edson, Denison published Edna Etheril, the Boston Seamstress, the first of her sixty novels, in 1847. Largely forgotten for most of the twentieth century, she has recently received favorable attention for her antislavery novel Old Hepsy (1858), a tragic story of miscegenation, incest, and murder stemming from an illicit affair between a white woman and a mixed-race man.

 

If it be any joy to know

That a whole nation mourns thy woe;

That clasped hands and bowed down head

Bear witness for the mighty dead;

That he was loved as ne’er before

A chief in peace or chief in war;

Take this one drop of balm—and less

By that thy draught of bitterness!

If it be any joy to feel

That thine is now the nation’s weal;

That every home would gladly be

A shelter, and a shrine for thee;

That every heart throbs high to make

Some sacrifice for his dear sake:

Take this one thought of comfort,—less

May be thy draught of bitterness.

If it be any joy to see

One glimpse of thy high destiny,

As she who wore a martyr’s love—

And wears an angel’s now, above—

As she who felt the throbs that swelled

That heart, by hearts of millions knelled:

Take this sweet sympathy—and less

By that thy draught of bitterness!

Oh! wife of our dear patriot—see—

Our land sheds tear for tear with thee;

Yet, widow of the nation! God

Speaks to thee, through the broken sod;

“I am thy God— thou yet shall see

It was not death, but victory!

And even now my love shall bless

And drain thy cup of bitterness.”