The title of this month's book intrigued me, so I was pleasantly surprised to find its source in a poem written by Mary Patterson (as she was at the time) during the American Civil War. Mary had received word that her "lost" son Georgy Glover, who was now almost seventeen years old, was alive and well. He had enlisted in 1861. A fellow soldier, David Hall, "wrote letters home for illiterate soldiers like Georgy who couldn't write themselves", and tracked down Georgy's relieved mother - Mary Patterson.
Mary's poem - written not long after hearing about her son's whereabouts - was titled "The Heart's Unrest". Our book quotes its first verse (page 52):
O give me wings and the flight of a dove
Unfasten these fetters of clay
And sing me the song of a seraph's love
While the spirit is passing away
I gaze on the beautiful orbs of night
Hung out on the boundless blue
And long to inhabit a world more bright
And say to this false one Adieu
How aptly named is this book in the light of Mary Baker Eddy's later discoveries, the seeds of which were being sown even in this period, as evidenced by her healing an infant with inflamed eyes (page 49). In the meantime, by 1865, her world would appear to be growing rather darker, as she would lose several people close to her.
Julie Swannell
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