bymn

FOR THE INAUGURATION OF THE STATUE OF GOVERNOR ANDREW,
HINGHAM, OCTOBER 7, 1875.

BEHOLD the shape our eyes have known!
It lives once more in changeless stone;
So looked in mortal face and form
Our guide through peril's deadly storm.
But hushed the beating heart we knew,
That heart so tender, brave, and true,
Firm as the rooted mountain rock,
Pure as the quarry's whitest block!
Not his beneath the blood-red star
To win the soldier's envied scar;
Unarmed he battled for the right,
In Duty's never-ending fight.
Unconquered will, unslumbering eye,
Faith such as bids the martyr die,

The prophet's glance, the master's hand
To mould the work his foresight planned,
These were his gifts; what Heaven had lent
For justice, mercy, truth, he spent,
First to avenge the traitorous blow,
And first to lift the vanquished foe.

Lo, thus he stood; in danger's strait
The pilot of the Pilgrim State!
Too large his fame for her alone,—
A nation claims him as her own!

A Memorial Tribute.

READ AT THE MEETING HELD AT MUSIC HALL, FEBRUARY 8, 1876,

IN MEMORY OF DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE.

In autumn's chill declining day, | What prayers have reached the

Ere winter's killing frost,

The message came; so passed

sapphire throne, By silent fingers spelt, For him who first through depths unknown

His doubtful pathway felt, Who sought the slumbering sense that lay

Close shut with bolt and bar, And showed awakening thought the ray

Of reason's morning star! Where'er he moved, his shadowy form

The sightless orbs would seek, And smiles of welcome light and

warm

The lips that could not speak. Nolaboured line, no sculptor'sart, Such hallowed memory needs; His tablet is the human heart, His record loving deeds.

III.

No trustier service claimed the The rest that earth denied is

wreath

For Sparta's bravest son;
No truer soldier sleeps beneath
The mound of Marathon;

Yet not for him the warrior's
grave

In front of angry foes;
To lift, to shield, to help, to save,

The holier task he chose.

He touched the eyelids of the blind,

And lo! the veil withdrawn, As o'er the midnight of the mind,

He led the light of dawn. He asked not whence the fountains roll

No traveller's foot has found, But mapped the desert of the soul Untracked by sight or sound.

thine,

Ah, is it rest? we ask, Or, traced by knowledge more divine,

Some larger, nobler task?
Had but those boundless fields'
of blue

One darkened sphere like this;
But what has heaven for thee to do
In realms of perfect bliss?
No cloud to lift, no mind to clear,
No rugged path to smooth,
No struggling soul to help and
cheer,

No mortal grief to soothe!
Enough; is there a world of love,
No more we ask to know;
The hand will guide thy ways
above

That shaped thy task below.

Joseph Warren, M.D.

TRAINED in the holy art whose lifted shield
Wards off the darts a never-slumbering foe,
By hearth and wayside lurking, waits to throw,
Oppression taught his helpful arm to wield

The slayer's weapon: on the murderous field
The fiery bolt he challenged laid him low,
Seeking its noblest victim. Even so
The charter of a nation must be sealed!
The bealer's brow the hero's honours crowned,
From lowliest duty called to loftiest deed.
Living, the oak-leaf wreath his temples bound;
Dying, the conqueror's laurel was his meed,
Last on the broken ramparts' turf to bleed
Where Freedom's victory in defeat was found.
June 11, 1876.

Grandmother's Story of Bunkerbill Battle.

AS SHE SAW IT FROM THE BELFRY.

'Tis like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembers All the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's souls; ""

When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story,
To you the words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals.
I had heard the muskets' rattle of the April running battle;
Lord Percy's hunted soldiers, I can see their red coats still;
But a deadly chill comes o'er me, as the day looms up before me,
When a thousand men lay bleeding on the slopes of Bunker's Hill.
'Twas a peaceful summer's morning, when the first thing gave us
warning

Was the booming of the cannon from the river and the shore :
"Child," says grandma, "what's the matter, what is all this noise
and clatter?

Have those scalping Indian devils come to murder us once more?"
Poor old soul! my sides were shaking in the midst of all my quaking,
To hear her talk of Indians when the guns began to roar :
She had seen the burning village, and the slaughter and the pillage,
When the Mohawks killed her father with their bullets through
his door.

Then I said, "Now, dear old granny, don't you fret and worry any,
For I'll soon come back and tell you whether this is work or play;
There can't be mischief in it, so I won't be gone a minute"-
For a minute then I started. I was gone the livelong day.

No time for bodice-lacing or for looking-glass grimacing;
Down my hair went as I hurried, tumbling half-way to my heels:
God forbid your ever knowing, when there's blood around her

flowing,

How the lonely, helpless daughter of a quiet household feels!

In the street I heard a thumping; and I knew it was the stumping Of the Corporal, our old neighbour, on that wooden leg he wore, With a knot of women round him, it was lucky I had found him, So I followed with the others, and the Corporal marched before.

They were making for the steeple, -the old soldier and his people;
The pigeons circled round us as we climbed the creaking stair,
Just across the narrow river-Oh, so close it made me shiver!-
Stood a fortress on the hill-top that but yesterday was bare.
Not slow our eyes to find it; well we knew who stood behind it,
Though the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls
were dumb:

Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking wild upon each other,
And their lips were white with terror as they said, THE HOUR HAS
COME!

The morning slowly wasted, not a morsel had we tasted,

And our heads were almost splitting with the cannons' deafening thrill,

When a figure tall and stately round the rampart strode sedately; It was PRESCOTT, one since told me; he commanded on the hill. Every woman's heart grew bigger when we saw his manly figure, With the banyan buckled round it, standing up so straight and tall; Like a gentleman of leisure who is strolling out for pleasure, Through the storm of shells and cannon-shot he walked around the wall.

At eleven the streets were swarming, for the red-coats' ranks were forming;

At noon in marching order they were moving to the piers;

How the bayonets gleamed and glistened, as we looked far down, and listened

To the trampling and the drum-beat of the belted grenadiers !

At length the men have started, with a cheer (it seemed fainthearted),

In their scarlet regimentals, with their knapsacks on their backs, And the reddening, rippling water, as after a sea-fight's slaughter, Round the barges gliding onward blushed like blood along their tracks.

So they crossed to the other border, and again they formed in order;

And the boats came back for soldiers, came for soldiers, soldiers still:
The time seemed everlasting to us women faint and fasting,-
At last they're moving, marching, marching proudly up the hill.
We can see the bright steel glancing all along the lines advancing-
Now the front rank fires a volley-they have thrown away their
shot;

For behind their earthwork lying, all the balls above them flying,
Our people need not hurry, so they wait and answer not.

Then the Corporal, our old cripple (he would swear sometimes and tipple),

He had heard the bullets whistle (in the old French war) before,Calls out in words of jeering, just as if they all were hearing,And his wooden leg thumps fiercely on the dusty belfry floor :"Oh! fire away, ye villains, and earn King George's shillin's, But ye'll waste a ton of powder afore a 'rebel' falls;

You may bang the dirt and welcome, they're as safe as Dan'l

Malcolm

Ten foot beneath the gravestone that you've splintered with your balls!"

In the hush of expectation, in the awe and trepidation
Of the dread approaching moment, we are well-nigh breathless all;
Though the rotten bars are failing on the rickety belfry railing,
We are crowding up against them like the waves against a wall.
Just a glimpse (the air is clearer), they are nearer-nearer-nearer,
When a flash-a curling smoke-wreath-then a crash-the steeple
shakes-

The deadly truce is ended; the tempest's shroud is rended;
Like a morning mist it gathered, like a thunder-cloud it breaks!
Oh the sight our eyes discover as the blue-black smoke blows over!
The red-coats stretched in windrows as a mower rakes his hay;
Here a scarlet heap is lying, there a headlong crowd is flying
Like a billow that has broken and is shivered into spray.

Then we cried, "The troops are routed! they are beat- it can't be doubted!

God be thanked, the fight is over!"-Ah! the grim old soldier's smile!

"Tell us, tell us why you look so?" (we could hardly speak, we shook so),

"Are they beaten? Are they beaten? ARE they beaten?""Wait a while."

Oh the trembling and the terror! for too soon we saw our error: They are baffled, not defeated; we have driven them back in vain ; And the columns that were scattered, round the colours that were tattered,

Toward the sullen silent fortress turn their belted breasts again. All at once, as we are gazing, lo the roofs of Charlestown blazing ! They have fired the harmless village; in an hour it will be down! The Lord in heaven confound them, rain His fire and brimstone round them,—

The robbing, murdering red-coats, that would burn a peaceful town!

They are marching, stern and solemn; we can see each massive column

As they near the naked earth-mound with the slanting walls so steep.

Have our soldiers got faint-hearted, and in noiseless haste departed?

Are they panic-struck and helpless? Are they palsied or asleep?

Now the walls they're almost under! scarce a rod the foes asunder!

Not a firelock flashed against them! up the earthwork they will swarm!

But the words have scarce been spoken, when the ominous calm

is broken,

And a bellowing crash has emptied all the vengeance of the storm!