"Qui vive!" The sentry's musket rings,
The channelled bayonet gleams;
High o'er him, like a raven's wings
The broad tricoloured banner flings
Its shadow, rustling as it swings
Pale in the moonlight beams;
Pass on! while steel-clad sentries keep
Their vigil o'er the monarch's sleep,
Thy bare unguarded breast
Asks not the unbroken, bristling zone
That girds yon sceptred trembler's throne ;-
Pass on, and take thy rest!
"Qui vive!" How oft the midnight air
That startling cry has borne!
How oft the evening breeze has fanned
The banner of this haughty land,
O'er mountain snow and desert sand,
Ere yet its folds were torn!
Through Jena's carnage flying red,
Or tossing o'er Marengo's dead,
Or curling on the towers
Where Austria's eagle quivers yet,
And suns the ruffled plumage, wet
With battle's crimson showers!
"Qui vive!" And is the sentry's cry,—
The sleepless soldier's hand,-
Are these the painted folds that fly
And lift their emblems, printed high
On morning mist and sunset sky—
The guardians of a land?
No! If the patriot's pulses sleep,
How vain the watch that hirelings keep,
The idle flag that waves,
When Conquest with his iron heel,
Treads down the standards and the steel
That belt the soil of slaves!
THE piping of our slender, peaceful reeds
Whispers uncared for while the trumpets bray;
Song is thin air; our hearts' exulting play
Beats time but to the tread of marching deeds,
Following the mighty van that Freedom leads,
Her glorious standard flaming to the day!
The crimsoned pavement where a hero bleeds
Breathes nobler lessons than the poet's lay.
Strong arms, broad breasts, brave hearts, are better worth
Than strains that sing the ravished echoes dumb.
Hark! 'tis the loud reverberating drum
Rolls o'er the prairied West, the rock-bound North :
The myriad-handed Future stretches forth
Its shadowy palms. Behold, we come,—we come!
Turn o'er these idle leaves. Such toys as these
Were not unsought for, as, in languid dreams,
We lay beside our lotus-feeding streams,
And nursed our fancies in forgetful ease.
It matters little if they pall or please,
Dropping untimely, while the sudden gleams
Glare from the mustering clouds whose blackness seems
Too swollen to hold its lightning from the trees.
Yet, in some lull of passion, when at last
These calm revolving moons that come and go-
Turning our months to years, they creep so slow-
Have brought us rest, the not unwelcome past
May flutter to thee through these leaflets, cast
On the wild winds that all around us blow.
May 1, 1861.
I.—1849-1856.
Agnes.
PART FIRST.-THE KNIGHT.
THE tale I tell is gospel true,
As all the bookmen know,
And pilgrims who have strayed to view
The wrecks still left to show,
The old, old story,-fair, and young,
And fond,—and not too wise,-
That matrons tell, with sharpened tongue,
To maids with downcast eyes.
Ah! maidens err and matrons warn
Beneath the coldest sky;
Love lurks amid the tasselled corn
As in the bearded rye !
But who would dream our sober sires
Had learned the old world's ways,
And warmed their hearths with lawless fires
In Shirley's homespun days?
'Tis like some poet's pictured trance
His idle rhymes recite,-
This old New-England-born romance
Of Agnes and the Knight;
Yet, known to all the country round,
Their home is standing still,
Between Wachuset's lonely mound
And Shawmut's threefold hill.
-One hour we rumble on the rail,
One half-hour guide the rein,
We reach at last, o'er hill and dale,
The village on the plain.
With blackening wall and mossy roof,
With stained and warping floor,
A stately mansion stands aloof
And bars its haughty door.
This lowlier portal may be tried,
That breaks the gable wall;
And lo! with arches opening wide,
Sir Harry Frankland's hall!
'Twas in the second George's day
They sought the forest shade,
The knotted trunks they cleared away,
The massive beams they laid,
They piled the rock-hewn chimney tall,
They smoothed the terraced ground,
They reared the marble-pillared wall
That fenced the mansion round.
Far stretched beyond the village bound
The Master's broad domain;
With page and valet, horse and hound,
He kept a goodly train.
And, all the midland county through,
The ploughman stopped to gaze
Whene'er his chariot swept in view
Behind the shining bays,
With mute obeisance, grave and slow,
Repaid by nod polite,-
For such the way with high and low
Till after Concord fight.
Nor less to courtly circles known
That graced the three-hilled town With far-off splendours of the Throne, And glimmerings from the Crown;
Wise Phipps, who held the seals of state
For Shirley over sea;
Brave Knowles, whose press-gang moved of late The King Street mob's decree;
And judges grave, and colonels grand,
Fair dames and stately men,
The mighty people of the land,
The "World" of there and then.
'Twas strange no Chloe's "beauteous Form,"
And "Eyes' cœlestial Blew,"
This Strephon of the West could warm,
No Nymph his Heart subdue!
Perchance he wooed as gallants use,
Whom fleeting loves enchain,
But still unfettered, free to choose,
Would brook no bridle-rein.
He saw the fairest of the fair,
But smiled alike on all;
No band his roving foot might snare,
Nor ring his hand enthral.
WHY seeks the knight that rocky cape
Beyond the Bay of Lynn ?
What chance his wayward course may shape
To reach its village inn?
No story tells; whate'er we guess,
The past lies deaf and still,
But Fate, who rules to blight or bless,
Can lead us where she will.
Make way! Sir Harry's coach and four,
And liveried grooms that ride!
They cross the ferry, touch the shore
On Winnisimmet's side.
They hear the wash on Chelsea Beach,―
The level marsh they pass,
Where miles on miles the desert reach
Is rough with bitter grass.
The shining horses foam and pant,
And now the smells begin
Of fishy Swampscot, salt Nahant,
And leather-scented Lynn.
Next, on their left, the slender spires,
And glittering vanes, that crown
The home of Salem's frugal sires,
The old, witch-haunted town.
So onward, o'er the rugged way
That runs through rocks and sand,
Showered by the tempest-driven spray,
From bays on either hand,
That shut between their outstretched arms
The crews of Marblehead,
The lords of ocean's watery farms,
Who plough the waves for bread.
At last the ancient inn appears,
The spreading elm below,
Whose flapping sign these fifty years
Has seesawed to and fro.
How fair the azure fields in sight
Before the low-browed inn!
The tumbling billows fringe with light
The crescent shore of Lynn ;
Nahant thrusts outward through the waves
Her arm of yellow sand,
And breaks the roaring surge that braves
The gauntlet on her hand;
With eddying whirl the waters lock
Yon treeless mound forlorn,
The sharp-winged sea-fowl's breeding-rock, That fronts the Spouting Horn;
Then free the white-sailed shallops glide,
And wide the ocean smiles,
Till, shoreward bent, his streams divide
The two bare Misery Isles.
|