Longwood, A Love Story

Longwood

It stands there on a hill of the Mississippi

A partly builded masterpiece

Unfinished, but complete with time-

Flanked by woods garlanded with mosses,

With its many rooms, its many poticos,

Its central hall and rising dome,

At the end of the sunken roadway.

And long after cotton was King,

Long after slavary vanished,

I was deeply stirred by that

Wistful house in old Natchez.

Standing within its walls I envisaged

The slaves making brick,

The foreign workmen laboring .

The marbles arriving from Italy,-

And the architect reveling in his vision.

With fate brooding overall-

I imagined the master and the mistress there,

Briefly dreamed their dream

And witnessed their hopes turned to ashes-

Strange unfinished walls, unpainted timbers,

And soaring dome which play upon the emotions

As a master's hands upon the keyboard.

It is becuase Longwood holds the root and the bloom

The height and the depth, The joy and sorrow, hope and despair,

The life and death of a culture.

Author unknown-