I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city's ancient legend into this_:--
Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,
And loathed to see them overtaxed; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought
Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!"
She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode
About the hall, among his dogs, alone,
His beard a foot before him, and his hair
A yard behind. She told him of their tears,
And prayed him, "If they pay this tax, they starve."
Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,
"You would not let your little finger ache
For such as _these_?"--"But I would die," said she.
He laughed, and swore by Peter and by Paul:
Then filliped at the diamond in her ear;
"O ay, ay, ay, you talk!"--"Alas!" she said,
"But prove me what it is I would not do."
And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,
He answered, "Ride you naked through the town,
And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in scorn,
He parted, with great strides among his dogs.
So left alone, the passions of her mind,
As winds from all the compass shift and blow,
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people: therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing; but that all
Should keep within, door shut, and window barred.
Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She lingered, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,
And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reached
The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt
In purple blazoned with armorial gold.
Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listened round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.
The little wide-mouthed heads upon the spout
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur
Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot
Light horrors through her pulses: the blind walls
Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she
Not less through all bore up, till, last, she saw
The white-flowered elder-thicket from the field
Gleam through the Gothic archways in the wall.
Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity:
And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,
The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger-hole in fear,
Peeped--but his eyes, before they had their will,
Were shrivelled into darkness in his head,
And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait
On noble deeds, cancelled a sense misused;
And she, that knew not, passed: and all at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers,
One after one: but even then she gained
Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crowned,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away,
And built herself an everlasting name.
_Alfred Tennyson._
"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX."
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Dueffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"
At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray.
And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.
By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
We'll remember at Aix,"--for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
So we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
And "Gallop," gasped Joris, for "Aix is in sight!"
"How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.
Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.
And all I remember is, friends flocking round
As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground,
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.
_Robert Browning._
THE LANDLORD'S TALE.
PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.
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 sombre 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 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 sombre 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.
_H. W. Longfellow._
SHERIDAN'S RIDE.
Up from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
And wider still those billows of war
Thundered along the horizon's bar;
And louder yet into Winchester rolled
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
Making the blood of the listener cold,
As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
But there is a road from Winchester town,
A good broad highway leading down;
And there, through the flush of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night,
Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight,
As if he knew the terrible need;
He stretched away with his utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.
Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South,
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth;
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.
Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind,
And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace fire,
Swept on, with his wild eye full of ire.
But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire;
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.
The first that the general saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops,
What was done? what to do? a glance told him both,
Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,
He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
By the flash of his eye, and the red nostril's play,
He seemed to the whole great army to say,
"I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester down, to save the day!"
Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!
Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man!
And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky,
The American soldiers' Temple of Fame;
There with the glorious general's name,
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright,
"Here is the steed that saved the day,
By carrying Sheridan into the fight,
From Winchester, twenty miles away!"
_Thomas Buchanan Read._
KEARNY AT SEVEN PINES.
So that soldierly legend is still on its journey,--
That story of Kearny who knew not to yield!
'Twas the day when with Jameson, fierce Berry, and Birney,
Against twenty thousand he rallied the field.
Where the red volleys poured, where the clamor rose highest,
Where the dead lay in clumps through the dwarf oak and pine;
Where the aim from the thicket was surest and nighest,--
No charge like Phil Kearny's along the whole line.
When the battle went ill, and the bravest were solemn,
Near the dark Seven Pines, where we still held our ground,
He rode down the length of the withering column,
And his heart at our war-cry leapt up with a bound;
He snuffed, like his charger, the wind of the powder,--
His sword waved us on, and we answered the sign:
Loud our cheers as we rushed, but his laugh rang the louder,
"There's the devil's own fun, boys, along the whole line!"
How he strode his brown steed! How we saw his blade brighten
In the one hand still left,--and the reins in his teeth!
He laughed like a boy when the holidays heighten,
But a soldier's glance shot from his visor beneath.
Up came the reserves to the mellay infernal,
Asking where to go in,--through the clearing or pine?
"Oh, anywhere! Forward! 'Tis all the same, Colonel:
You'll find lovely fighting along the whole line!"
Oh, evil the black shroud of night at Chantilly,
That hid him from sight of his brave men and tried!
Foul, foul sped the bullet that clipped the white lily,
The flower of our knighthood, the whole army's pride!
Yet we dream that he still,--in that shadowy region,
Where the dead form their ranks at the wan drummer's sign,--
Rides on, as of old, down the length of his legion,
And the word still is Forward! along the whole line.
_Edmund Clarence Stedman._
THE RIDE OF COLLINS GRAVES.
AN INCIDENT OF THE FLOOD IN MASSACHUSETTS, ON MAY 16, 1874.
No song of a soldier riding down
To the raging fight from Winchester town;
No song of a time that shook the earth
With the nations' throe at a nation's birth;
But the song of a brave man, free from fear
As Sheridan's self, or Paul Revere;
Who risked what they risked, free from strife,
And its promise of glorious pay--his life!
The peaceful valley has waked and stirred,
And the answering echoes of life are heard:
The dew still clings to the trees and grass,
And the early toilers smiling pass,
As they glance aside at the white-walled homes,
Or up the valley, where merrily comes
The brook that sparkles in diamond rills
As the sun comes over the Hampshire hills.
What was it, that passed like an ominous breath--
Like a shiver of fear, or a touch of death?
What was it? The valley is peaceful still,
And the leaves are afire on top of the hill.
It was not a sound--nor a thing of sense--
But a pain, like the pang of the short suspense
That thrills the being of those who see
At their feet the gulf of Eternity!
The air of the valley has felt the chill:
The workers pause at the door of the mill;
The housewife, keen to the shivering air,
Arrests her foot on the cottage stair,
Instinctive taught by the mother-love,
And thinks of the sleeping ones above.
Why start the listeners? Why does the course
Of the mill-stream widen? Is it a horse--
Hark to the sound of his hoofs, they say--
That gallops so wildly Williamsburg way!
God! what was that, like a human shriek
From the winding valley? Will nobody speak?
Will nobody answer those women who cry
As the awful warnings thunder by?
Whence come they? Listen! And now they hear
The sound of the galloping horse-hoofs near;
They watch the trend of the vale, and see
The rider who thunders so menacingly,
With waving arms and warning scream
To the home-filled banks of the valley stream.
He draws no rein, but he shakes the street
With a shout and the ring of the galloping feet;
And this the cry he flings to the wind:
"To the hills for your lives! The flood is behind!"
He cries and is gone; but they know the worst--
The breast of the Williamsburg dam has burst!
The basin that nourished their happy homes
Is changed to a demon--It comes! it comes!
A monster in aspect, with shaggy front
Of shattered dwellings, to take the brunt
Of the homes they shatter--white-maned and hoarse,
The merciless Terror fills the course
Of the narrow valley, and rushing raves,
With Death on the first of its hissing waves,
Till cottage and street and crowded mill
Are crumbled and crushed.
But onward still,
In front of the roaring flood is heard
The galloping horse and the warning word.
Thank God! the brave man's life is spared!
From Williamsburg town he nobly dared
To race with the flood and take the road
In front of the terrible swath it mowed.
For miles it thundered and crashed behind,
But he looked ahead with a steadfast mind;
"They must be warned!" was all he said,
As away on his terrible ride he sped.
When heroes are called for, bring the crown
To this Yankee rider: send him down
On the stream of time with the Curtius old;
His deed as the Roman's was brave and bold,
And the tale can as noble a thrill awake,
For he offered his life for the people's sake.
_John Boyle O'Reilly._
A TALE OF PROVIDENCE.
The tall green tree its shadow cast
Upon Howe's army that southward passed
From Gordon's Ford to the Quaker town,
Intending in quarters to settle down
Till snows were gone, and spring again
Should easier make a new campaign.
Beyond the fences that lined the way,
The fields of Captain Richardson lay;
His woodland and meadows reached far and wide,
From the hills behind to the Schuylkill's side,
Across the stream, in the mountain gorge,
He could see the smoke of the valley forge.
The Captain had fought in the frontier war;
When the fight was done, bearing seam and scar,
He marched back home to tread once more
The same tame round he had trod before,
And turn his thoughts with sighs of regret
To his ploughshares, wishing them sword-blades yet.
He put the meadow in corn that year,
And swore till his blacks were white with fear.
He plowed, and planted, and married a wife,
But life grew weary with inward strife.
His blood was hot and his throbbing brain
Beat with the surf of some far main.
Should he sack a town, or rob the mail,
Or on the wide seas a pirate sail?
He pondered it over, concluding instead,
To buy three steeds in Arabia bred,
On Sopus, Fearnaught, or Scipio,
He felt his blood more evenly flow.
To his daughter Tacey, the coming days
Brought health, and beauty, and graceful ways.
He taught her to ride his fleetest steed
At a five-barred fence, or a ditch at need,
And the Captain's horses, his hounds, and his child
Were famous from sea to forests wild.
*....*....*....*
Master and man from home were gone,
And Fearnaught held the stables alone,
And Mistress Tacey her spirit showed
The morning the British came down the road.
She hid the silver, and drove the cows
To the island behind the willow boughs.
Was time too short? or did she forget
That Fearnaught stood in the stables yet?
Across the fields to the gate she ran,
And followed the path 'neath the grape-arbors' span;
On the doorstep she paused and turned to see
The head of the line beneath the green tree.
The last straggler passed, the night came on,
And then 'twas discovered that Fearnaught was gone;
Sometime, somehow, from his stall he was led,
Where an old gray horse was left in his stead,
And Tacey must prove to her father that she
Had been prepared for the emergency.
For the words he scattered on kind soil fell,
And Tacey had learned his maxim well
In the stories he read. She remembered the art
That concealed the fear in Esther's heart;
How the words of the woman Abigail
Appeased the king's wrath, the deed of Jael!
How Judith went from the city's gate
Across the plain as the day grew late,
To the tent of the great Assyrian;
The leader exalted with horse and man,
And brought back his head, said Tacey: "Of course,
A more difficult feat than to bring back a horse."
In the English camp the reveille drum
Told the sleeping troops that the dawn had come,
And the shadows abroad that with night were blent
At the drum's tap startled, crept under each tent
As Tacey stole from the sheltering wood
Across the wet grass where the horse pound stood.
Hark! was it the twitter of frightened bird,
Or was it the challenge of sentry she heard?
She entered unseen, but her footsteps she stayed
When the old gray horse in the wood still, neighed,
Half hid in the mist a shape loomed tall,
A steed that answered her well-known call.
With freedom beyond for the recompense
She sprang to his back, and leaped the fence;
Too late the alarm; but Tacey heard
As she sped away how the camp was stirred,
The stamping of horses, the shouts of men
And the bugle's impatient call again.
Loudly and fast on the Ridge Road beat
The regular fall of Fearnaught's feet,
On his broad, bare back his rider's seat
Was as firm as the tread of the steed so fleet;
Small need of saddle, or bridle rein,
He answered as well her touch on his mane.
On down the hill by the river shore,
Faster and faster she rode than before;
Her bonnet fell back, her head was bare,
And the river breeze that freed her hair
Dispersed the fog, and she heard the shout
Of the troopers behind when the sun came out.
The wheel at Van Deering's had dripped nearly dry,
In Sabbath-like stillness the morning passed by;
Then the clatter of hoofs came down the hill,
And the white old miller ran out from the mill.
But he only saw through the dust of the road
The last red-coat that faintly showed.
To Tacey the sky, and the trees, and the wind
Seemed all to rush toward her, and follow behind,
Her lips were set firm, and pale was her cheek
As she plunged down the hill and through the creek,
The tortoise shell comb that she lost that day
The Wissahickon carried away.
On the other side up the stony hill
The feet of Fearnaught went faster still,
But somewhat backward the troopers fell,
For the hill, and the pace, began to tell
On their horses worn with a long campaign
O'er rugged mountains, and weary plain.
The road was deserted, for when men fought
A secret path the traveler sought;
Two scared idlers in Levering's Inn
Fled to the woods at the coming din,
The watch dog ran to bark his delight,
But pursued and pursuers were out of sight.
Surely the distance between them increased,
And the shouts of the troopers had long since ceased,
One after another pulled his rein
And rode with great oaths to the camp again.
Oft a look backward Tacey sent
To the fading red of the regiment.
She heard the foremost horseman call;
She saw the horse stumble, the rider fall;
She patted her steed and checked his pace
And leisurely rode the rest of the race.
When the Seven-Stars' sign on the horizon showed
Behind not a trooper was on the road.
In vain had they shouted who followed in chase,
In vain their wild ride; so ended the race.
Though fifty strong voices may clamor and call,
If she hear not the strongest, she hears not them all;
Though fifty fleet horses go galloping fast,
One swifter than all shall be furthest at last.