Ebenezer Eastman, of Gilmanton, is dead;--
At least they had him buried full fifty years ago;--
The gray White Mountain granite they set above his head,
With some graven words upon it, to let the neighbors know
Precisely what it was that made the grasses grow
So wondrous rank and strong: How they rippled in the wind,
As if nobody ever died, nobody ever sinned!
To that old Bible name of his what eloquence was lent
When its owner marched to battle,--not a ration, not a tent,
Nor a promise nor a sign of a Continental cent!
Ho, Ebenezer Eastman! We’ll call the roll again,--
Ho, dead and gone Lieutenant of the old-time Minute-Men!
Plowing land for turnips, with awkward Buck and Bright,
Was stout Lieutenant Eastman, one lovely day in June;
He “hawed” them to the left and he “geed” them to the right,
And they slowly came about in the lazy summer noon,
He humming to himself the fragment of a tune,
Which he would croon at night to the baby-boy who lay
In basswood trough becradled first, a week ago that day!
* * * * *
All at a flying gallop a rider swings in sight,
Pulls up beside the fallow and gives the view-halloo,--
His horse’s flanks are black, but his neck is foamy white:--
“Turn out, Lieutenant Eastman! There’s something else to do!
The redcoats are a-swarming! Your summer plowing’s through!”
No other word--away! And the rattling of the hoofs
Was like the rain from traveling clouds along the cabin roofs.
The plowman turned his cattle out; he saddled up the bay,
And he rallied out the wilderness upon that summer day,
And the Minute-Men of Gilmanton to Boston marched away.
About the mother? Well, she watched beside the cabin door,
And rocked the baby’s basswood boat upon the puncheon floor.
Days grew long in Gilmanton, and weeds among the corn;
The quoiting ground was grassy, and louder rang the rill;
The wrestling match was over,--the smithy was forlorn,--
The spiders in the empty door had swung their webs at will,--
The champions had gone to Bunker’s smoky Hill,
To try the quaint old-fashioned “lock” they practiced on the Green,
And such a game of tough “square hold” the world has seldom seen!
About the father? Only this;--he fought in Stark’s brigade,
On Charlestown Neck, that dusty day. A splendid mark he made;
He never flinched a single inch when British cannon played,
But foddered up an old rail fence with Massachusetts hay,
Stood out the battle at the rack, and stoutly blazed away!
Lo, through the smoky glory, that human flower-deluce,
The gray-eyed Mary Butler, Lieutenant Eastman’s wife!
Her pallid cheek and brow like a holy flag of truce,
Her heart as sweet and red as a rose’s inner life,
No murmur on her lips, nor sign of any strife.
Four days before the fight. Has the little woman heard
From anybody Boston way? Nobody--not a word!
Then up rose Mary Butler, and set her wheel at rest;
She swept the puncheon floor, she washed the cottage pride,--
The cottage pride of three weeks old, and dressed him in his best,--
She wound the clock that told the time her mother was a bride,
And porringer and spoon she deftly laid aside;
She strung a clean white apron across the window panes,
And swung the kettle from the crane, for fear of rusting rains;
Then tossed her saddle on the bay and donned her linen gown,
And took the baby on before,--no looking round or down!
Full seventy miles to Cambridge town! Bring out your civic crown!
I think ’twill fit that brow of hers who sadly smiled and said:
“We’ll _know_ about your father, boy, and who is hurt or dead!”
The maple woods that round her stand so solemn in the calm,
Up and down are swaying slowly, like a singing-master’s palm,
All together beating time,--not a soul to sing a psalm!
“There’s been a dreadful battle!”--that’s what the neighbors said,
“But when or where we cannot tell, nor who is hurt or dead.”
Rugged maples broke their ranks to let the rider by,
Fell in behind her noiseless as falls the stealthy dew;
Such heavy folds of starless dark in double shadow lie,
The slender bridle path she treads can only just show through,
And buried in the leafy miles was all the world she knew.
By muffled drum of partridge and jaunty jay-bird’s fife,
That mother made her lonely march,--that Continental wife.
She never drew the bridle rein till forty miles were done,
And on her ended journey shone the second setting sun,
And round the Bay, like battle clock, tolled out the evening-gun.
Talk not of pomps and tournaments! If only you had seen
The royal ride from Gilmanton, the halt at Cambridge Green!
Dust-bedimmed and weary, with a look as though she smiled,
She melted through the haze of the summer’s smoky gold!
Some master’s faded picture of Madonna and the Child,
Born full a thousand years ago, and never growing old!
She heard old Putnam’s kennel growl, the bells of Charlestown tolled;
She saw the golden day turn gray within an ashen shroud,
That showed the scarlet regulars like lightning through a cloud.
Forth from the furnace and the fire Lieutenant Eastman came,--
The smell of powder in his clothes and fragrance in his fame,--
And met her bravely waiting there, who bore his boy and name!--
She from the howling wilderness--he from the hell of men,
The little woman called the roll; he called it back again!
Then lightly to the pillion the gray-eyed wife he swung,
A bundle on the saddlebow all tenderly he placed,
And, lost amid the leafy calms where cannon never rung,
Away they rode to Gilmanton, her arm around his waist,
No general’s sash of crimson silk so rarely could have graced!
Ah, Mary Butler cannot die, whatever sextons say,
While yet life’s azure pulses keep their old heroic play.
* * * * *
A million men have lingered long, a million men have died,
Who never saw a deed so grand as Mary Butler’s ride!