THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN

From the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the tent-like span

Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the

headland of Cape Ann.

Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide glimmering down, And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient fishing-town.

Long has passed the summer morning, and its memory waxes old, When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant friend I strolled. Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind blows cool, And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy grave, Rantoul!

With the memory of that morning by the summer sea I blend

A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather penned,

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In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous things, Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid sings.

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of

From the graves of old traditions I part the blackberry-vines,

Wipe the moss from off the headstones, and retouch the faded lines.

Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran, The garrison-house stood watching on the gray rocks of Cape Ann;

On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade,

And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid.

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On his slow round walked the sentry, south and eastward looking forth O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white with breakers stretching north,— Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, jagged capes, with bush and tree, Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and gusty sea.

Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless shower of lead.

With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the phantoms fled; Once again, without a shadow on the sands the moonlight lay, And the white smoke curling through it drifted slowly down the bay!

"God preserve us!" said the captain; "never mortal foes were there; They have vanished with their leader, Prince and Power of the air! Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and prowess naught avail;

They who do the Devil's service wear their master's coat of mail!"

"Concerning ye Amphisbæna, as soon as I received your commands, I made diligent inquiry: he assures me yt had really two heads, one at each end; two mouths, two stings or tongues."-Rev. Christopher Toppan to Cotton Mather.

Far away in the twilight time

Of every people, in every clime,
Dragons and griffins and monsters dire,
Born of water, and air, and fire,
Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud
And ooze of the old Deucalion flood,
Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage,
Through dusk tradition and ballad age.
So from the childhood of Newbury town
And its time of fable the tale comes down
Of a terror which haunted bush and brake,
The Amphisbæna, the Double Snake!

Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,
Consider that strip of Christian earth
On the desolate shore of a sailless sea,
Full of terror and mystery,

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Half redeemed from the evil hold Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old,

Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew

When Time was young, and the world