in a room where some one is lying dead;
but he made no answer to what I said.
We lifted him up to his saddle again,
and through the mire and the mist and the rain
carried him back to the silent camp,
and laid him as if asleep on his bed;
and I saw by the light of the surgeon’s lamp
two white roses upon his cheeks,
and one, just over his heart, blood red!
And I saw in a vision how far and fleet
that fatal bullet went speeding forth,
till it reached a town in the distant North,
till it reached a house in a sunny street,
till it reached a heart that ceased to beat
without a murmur, without a cry;
and a bell was tolled in that far-off town,
for one who had passed from cross to crown,
and the neighbors wondered that she should die.
King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn1
Witlaf, a king of the Saxons,
ere yet his last he breathed,
to the merry monks of Croyland
his drinking-horn bequeathed,—
that, whenever they sat at their revels,
and drank from the golden bowl,
they might remember the donor,
and breathe a prayer for his soul.
So sat they once at Christmas,
and bade the goblet pass;
in their beards the red wine glistened
like dew-drops in the grass.
They drank to the soul of Witlaf,
they drank to Christ the Lord,
and to each of the Twelve Apostles,
who had preached his holy word.
They drank to the Saints and Martyrs
of the dismal days of yore,
and as soon as the horn was empty
they remembered one Saint more.
And the reader droned from the pulpit
like the murmur of many bees,
the legend of good Saint Guthlac,
and Saint Basil’s homilies;
till the great bells of the convent,
from their prison in the tower,
Guthlac and Bartholomaeus,
proclaimed the midnight hour.
And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney,
and the Abbot bowed his head,
and the flamelets flapped and flickered,
but the Abbot was stark and dead.
Yet still in his pallid fingers
he clutched the golden bowl,
in which, like a pearl dissolving,
had sunk and dissolved his soul.
But not for this their revels
the jovial monks forbore,
for they cried, “Fill high the goblet!
We must drink to one Saint more!”
Nature1
As a fond mother, when the day is o’er,
leads by the hand her little child to bed,
half willing, half reluctant to be led,
and leave his broken playthings on the floor,
still gazing at them through the open door,
nor wholly reassured and comforted
by promises of others in their stead,
which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
so Nature deals with us, and takes away
our playthings one by one, and by the hand
leads us to rest so gently, that we go
scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
being too full of sleep to understand
how far the unknown transcends the what we know.
The Beleaguered City1
I have read, in some old marvelous tale,
some legend strange and vague,
that a midnight host of specters pale
beleaguered the walls of Prague.
Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream
with the wan moon overhead,
there stood as in an awful dream,
the army of the dead.
White as a sea-fog, landward bound,
the spectral camp was seen,
and, with a sorrowful deep sound,
the river flowed between.
No other voice nor sound was there,
nor drum, nor sentry’s pace;
the mist like banners clasped the air,
as clouds with clouds embrace.
But, when the old cathedral bell
proclaimed the morning prayer,
the white pavilions rose and fell
on the alarmed air.
Down the broad valley fast and far
the troubled army fled;
up rose the glorious morning star,
the ghastly host was dead.
I have read, in the marvelous heart of man
that strange and mystic scroll,
that an army of phantoms vast and wan
beleaguer the human soul.
Encamped beside Life’s rushing stream,
in Fancy’s misty light,
gigantic shapes and shadows gleam,
portentous through the night.
Upon its midnight battle-ground
the spectral camp is seen,
and with sorrowful deep sound
flows the River of Life between.
No other voice, nor sound is there,
in the army of the grave;
no other challenge breaks the air,
but the rushing of Life’s wave.
And, when the solemn and deep church-bell
entreats the soul to pray,
the midnight phantoms feel the spell,
the shadows sweep away.
Down the broad Vale of Tears afar,
the spectral camp is fled;
faith shineth as a morning star,
our ghastly fears are dead.
The Fire of Drift-Wood1
We sat within the farm-house old,
whose windows, looking o’er the bay,
gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,
an easy entrance, night and day.
Not far away we saw the port,—
the strange, old-fashioned, silent town,—
the lighthouse—the dismantled fort,—
the wooden houses, quaint and brown.
We sat and talked until the night,
descending, filled the little room;
our faces faded from the sight,—
our voices only broke the gloom.
We spake of many a vanished scene,
of what we once had thought and said,
of what had been, and might have been,
and who was changed, and who was dead;
and all that fills the hearts of friends,
when first they feel, with secret pain,
their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
and never can be one again
the first slight swerving of the heart,
that words are powerless to express,
and leave it still unsaid in part,
or say it in too great excess.
The very tones in which we spake
had something strange, I could but mark;
the leaves of memory seemed to make
a mournful rustling in the dark.
Oft died the words upon our lips,
as suddenly, from out the fire
built of the wreck of stranded ships,
the flames would leap and then expire.
And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
we thought of wrecks upon the main,—
of ships dismasted, that were hailed
and sent no answer back again.
The windows, rattling in their frames,—
the ocean roaring up the beach,—
the gusty blast—the bickering flames,—
all mingled vaguely in our speech;
Until they made themselves a part
of fancies floating through the brain,—
; the long-lost ventures of the heart,
that send no answers back again.
O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!
they were indeed too much akin,—
the drift-wood fire without that burned,
the thoughts that burned and glowed within.
The Landlord’s Tale1
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
on the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
hardly a man is now alive
who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
by land or sea from the town to-night,
hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
of the North Church tower as a signal light,—
one, if by land, and two, if by sea;
and I on the opposite shore will be,
ready to ride and spread the alarm
through every Middlesex village and farm
for the country folk to be up and to arm,”
Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar
silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
just as the moon rose over the bay,
where swinging wide at her moorings lay
the Somerset, British man-of-war;
a phantom ship, with each mast and spar
across the moon like a prison bar,
and a huge black hulk, that was magnified
by its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,
wanders and watches with eager ears,
till in the silence around him he hears
the muster of men at the barrack door,
the sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
and the measured tread of the grenadiers,
marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
by the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
to the belfry-chamber overhead,
and startled the pigeons from their perch
on the somber rafters, that round him made
masses and moving shapes of shade,—
by the trembling ladder, steep and tall
to the highest window in the wall,
where he paused to listen and look down
a moment on the roofs of the town,
and the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
in their night-encampment on the hill,
wrapped in silence so deep and still
that he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
the watchful night-wind, as it went
creeping along from tent to tent
and seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
of the lonely belfry and the dead;
for suddenly all his thoughts are bent
on a shadowy something far away,
where the river widens to meet the bay,—
a line of black that bends and floats
on the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
on the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
now gazed at the landscape far and near,
then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
and turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
but mostly he watched with eager search
the belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
as it rose above the graves on the hill,
lonely and spectral and somber and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
a glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
but lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
a second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
a shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
and beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
that was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
the fate of a nation was riding that night;
and the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
and beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
and under the alders, that skirt its edge,
now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock
when he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
and the barking of the farmer’s dog,
and felt the damp of the river fog,
that rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
when he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
swim in the moonlight as he passed,
and the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
gaze at him with a spectral glare,
as if they already stood aghast
at the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
when he came to the bridge in Concord town.
he heard the bleating of the flock,
and the twitter of birds among the trees,
and felt the breath of the morning breeze
blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
who at the bridge would be first to fall,
who that day would be lying dead,
pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
how the British Regulars fired and fled,—
how the farmers gave them ball for ball,
from behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
chasing the red-coats down the lane,
then crossing the fields to emerge again
under the trees at the turn of the road,
and only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
and so through the night went his cry of alarm
to every Middlesex village and farm,—
a cry of defiance and not of fear,
a voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
and a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
through all our history, to the last,
in the hour of darkness and peril and need,
the people will waken and listen to hear
the hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
and the midnight message of Paul Revere.
The Phantom Ship1
In Mather’s Magnalia Christi,
of the old colonial time,
may be found in prose the legend
that is here set down in rhyme.
A ship sailed from New Haven,
and the keen and frosty airs,
that filled her sails in parting
were heavy with good men’s prayers.
“O Lord! If it be thy pleasure”—
thus prayed the old divine—
“To bury our friends in the ocean,
take them, for they are thine!”
But Master Lamberton muttered,
and under his breath said he,
“This ship is so crank and walty
I fear our grave she will be!”
And the ships that came from E
ngland
when the winter months were gone,
brought no tidings of this vessel!
Nor of Master Lamberton.
This put the people to praying
that the Lord would let them hear
what in his greater wisdom
he had done to friends so dear.
And at last our prayers were answered:
it was in the month of June
an hour before sunset
of a windy afternoon.
When, steadily steering landward,
a ship was seen below,
and they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
who sailed so long ago.
On she came with a cloud of canvas,
right against the wind that blew,
until the eye could distinguish
the faces of the crew.
Then fell her straining topmasts,
hanging tangled in the shrouds,
and her sails were loosened and lifted,
and blown away like clouds.
And the masts, with all their rigging,
fell slowly, one by one,
and the hulk dilated and vanished,
as a sea-mist in the sun!
And the people who saw thus marvel
each said unto his friend,
that this was the mould of their vessel,
and thus her tragic end.
And the pastor of the village
gave thanks to God in Prayer,
that, to Quiet their troubled spirits,
he had sent this Ship of Air.
The Potter’s Wheel1
Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round
without a pause, without a sound:
so spins the flying world away!
This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,
follows the motion of my hand;
far some must follow, and some command,
though all are made of clay!
Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
to something new, to something strange;
nothing that is can pause or stay;
the moon will wax, the moon will wane,
the mist and cloud will turn to rain,
the rain to mist and cloud again,
tomorrow be today.
Turn, turn, my wheel! All life is brief;
what now is bud wilt soon be leaf,
what now is leaf will soon decay;
The Giant Book of Poetry Page 12