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Warren's Address to the American Soldiers

(Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775)

 
Stand! the ground's your own, my braves!
Will ye give it up to slaves?
Will ye look for greener graves?
Hope ye mercy still?
What's the mercy despots feel?
Hear it in that battle peal!
Read it on yon bristling steel!
Ask it—ye who will.
 
 
Fear ye foes who kill for hire?
Will ye to your homes retire?
Look behind you! They're afire!
And, before you, see
Who have done it! From the vale
On they come! and will ye quail?
Leaden rain and iron hail
Let their welcome be!
 
 
In the God of battles trust!
Die we may—and die we must;
But, O where can dust to dust
Be consigned so well,
As where Heaven its dews shall shed
On the martyred patriot's bed,
And the rocks shall raise their head,
Of his deeds to tell!
 

John Pierpont.

Mad River

IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

 
Traveler
Why dost thou wildly rush and roar,
Mad River, O Mad River?
Wilt thou not pause and cease to pour
Thy hurrying, headlong waters o'er
This rocky shelf forever?
 
 
What secret trouble stirs thy breast?
Why all this fret and flurry?
Dost thou not know that what is best
In this too restless world is rest
From overwork and worry?
 
 
The River
What wouldst thou in these mountains seek,
O stranger from the city?
Is it perhaps some foolish freak
Of thine, to put the words I speak
Into a plaintive ditty?
 
 
Traveler
Yes; I would learn of thee thy song,
With all its flowing numbers,
And in a voice as fresh and strong
As thine is, sing it all day long,
And hear it in my slumbers.
 
 
The River
A brooklet nameless and unknown
Was I at first, resembling
A little child, that all alone
Comes venturing down the stairs of stone,
Irresolute and trembling.
 
 
Later, by wayward fancies led,
For the wide world I panted;
Out of the forest dark and dread
Across the open fields I fled,
Like one pursued and haunted.
 
 
I tossed my arms, I sang aloud,
My voice exultant blending
With thunder from the passing cloud,
The wind, the forest bent and bowed,
The rush of rain descending.
 
 
I heard the distant ocean call,
Imploring and entreating;
Drawn onward, o'er this rocky wall
I plunged, and the loud waterfall
Made answer to the greeting.
 
 
And now, beset with many ills,
A toilsome life I follow;
Compelled to carry from the hills
These logs to the impatient mills
Below there in the hollow.
 
 
Yet something ever cheers and charms
The rudeness of my labors;
Daily I water with these arms
The cattle of a hundred farms,
And have the birds for neighbors.
 
 
Men call me Mad, and well they may,
When, full of rage and trouble,
I burst my banks of sand and clay,
And sweep their wooden bridge away,
Like withered reeds or stubble.
 
 
Now go and write thy little rhyme,
As of thine own creating.
Thou seest the day is past its prime;
I can no longer waste my time;
The mills are tired of waiting.
 

Henry W. Longfellow.

When Papa Was a Boy

 
When papa was a little boy you really couldn't find
In all the country round about a child so quick to mind.
His mother never called but once, and he was always there;
He never made the baby cry or pulled his sister's hair.
He never slid down banisters or made the slightest noise,
And never in his life was known to fight with other boys.
He always rose at six o'clock and went to bed at eight,
And never lay abed till noon; and never sat up late.
 
 
He finished Latin, French and Greek when he was ten year old,
And knew the Spanish alphabet as soon as he was told.
He never, never thought of play until his work was done,
He labored hard from break of day until the set of sun.
He never scraped his muddy shoes upon the parlor floor,
And never answered, back his ma, and never banged the door.
"But, truly, I could never see," said little Dick Molloy,
"How he could never do these things and really be a boy."
 

E.A. Brininstool.

Which Shall It Be?

 
"Which shall it be? which shall it be?"
I looked at John,—John looked at me,
(Dear, patient John, who loves me yet
As well as though my locks were jet.)
And when I found that I must speak,
My voice seemed strangely low and weak;
"Tell me again what Robert said";
And then I listening bent my head.
"This is his letter:
'I will give
A house and land while you shall live,
If, in return, from out your seven,
One child to me for aye is given.'"
 
 
I looked at John's old garments worn,
I thought of all that John had borne
Of poverty, and work, and care,
Which I, though willing, could not share;
Of seven hungry mouths to feed,
Of seven little children's need,
And then of this.
"Come John," said I,
"We'll choose among them as they lie
Asleep"; so walking hand in hand,
Dear John and I surveyed our band.
 
 
First to the cradle lightly stepped,
Where Lilian, the baby, slept;
Her damp curls lay, like gold alight,
A glory 'gainst the pillow white;
Softly her father stooped to lay
His rough hand down in loving way,
When dream or whisper made her stir,
And huskily he said, "Not her."
We stooped beside the trundle-bed,
And one long ray of lamp-light shed
Athwart the boyish faces there,
In sleep so pitiful and fair.
I saw on Jamie's rough red cheek
A tear undried; ere John could speak,
"He's but a baby too," said I,
And kissed him as we hurried by.
Pale, patient Robby's angel face
Still in his sleep bore suffering's trace;
"No, for a thousand crowns not him,"
He whispered, while our eyes were dim.
Poor Dick! sad Dick! our wayward son,
Turbulent, reckless, idle one,—
Could he be spared? "Nay, He who gave
Bids us befriend him to the grave;
Only a mother's heart can be
Patient enough for such as he;
And so," said John, "I would not dare
To send him from her bedside prayer."
Then stole we softly up above,
And knelt by Mary, child of love;
"Perhaps for her 'twould better be,"
I said to John. Quite silently
He lifted up a curl, that lay
Across her cheek in wilful way,
And shook his head; "Nay, love, not thee";
The while my heart beat audibly.
Only one more, our eldest lad,
Trusty and truthful, good and glad,—
So like his father: "No, John, no;
I cannot, will not, let him go!"
 
 
And so we wrote, in courteous way,
We could not give one child away;
And afterward toil lighter seemed,
Thinking of that of which we dreamed;
Happy, in truth, that not one face
We missed from its accustomed place;
Thankful to work for all the seven,
Trusting then to One in heaven.
 

Ethel Lynn Beers.

The Battle of Bunker's Hill

 
It was a starry night in June, the air was soft and still,
When the "minute-men" from Cambridge came, and gathered on the hill;
Beneath us lay the sleeping town, around us frowned the fleet,
But the pulse of freemen, not of slaves, within our bosoms beat;
And every heart rose high with hope, as fearlessly we said,
"We will be numbered with the free, or numbered with the dead!"
 
 
"Bring out the line to mark the trench, and stretch it on the sward!"
The trench is marked, the tools are brought, we utter not a word,
But stack our guns, then fall to work with mattock and with spade,
A thousand men with sinewy arms, and not a sound is made;
So still were we, the stars beneath, that scarce a whisper fell;
We heard the red-coat's musket click, and heard him cry, "All's well!"
 
 
See how the morn, is breaking; the red is in the sky!
The mist is creeping from the stream that floats in silence by;
The "Lively's" hall looms through the fog, and they our works have spied,
For the ruddy flash and round-shot part in thunder from her side;
And the "Falcon" and the "Cerberus" make every bosom thrill,
With gun and shell, and drum and bell, and boatswain's whistle shrill;
But deep and wider grows the trench, as spade and mattock ply,
For we have to cope with fearful odds, and the time is drawing nigh!
 
 
Up with the pine-tree banner! Our gallant Prescott stands
Amid the plunging shells and shot, and plants it with his hands;
Up with the shout! for Putnam comes upon his reeking bay,
With bloody spur and foaming bit, in haste to join the fray.
But thou whose soul is glowing in the summer of thy years,
Unvanquishable Warren, thou, the youngest of thy peers,
Wert born and bred, and shaped and made, to act a patriot's part,
And dear to us thy presence is as heart's blood to the heart!
 
 
Hark! from the town a trumpet! The barges at the wharf
Are crowded with the living freight; and now they're pushing off;
With clash and glitter, trump and drum, in all its bright array,
Behold the splendid sacrifice move slowly o'er the bay!
And still and still the barges fill, and still across the deep,
Like thunder clouds along the sky, the hostile transports sweep.
 
 
And now they're forming at the Point; and now the lines advance:
We see beneath the sultry sun their polished bayonets glance;
We hear anear the throbbing drum, the bugle-challenge ring;
Quick bursts and loud the flashing cloud, and rolls from wing to wing;
But on the height our bulwark stands, tremendous in its gloom,—
As sullen as a tropic sky, and silent as a tomb.
 
 
And so we waited till we saw, at scarce ten rifles' length,
The old vindictive Saxon spite, in all its stubborn strength;
When sudden, flash on flash, around the jagged rampart burst
From every gun the livid light upon the foe accursed.
Then quailed a monarch's might before a free-born people's ire;
Then drank the sward the veteran's life, where swept the yeoman's fire.
 
 
Then, staggered by the shot, he saw their serried columns reel,
And fall, as falls the bearded rye beneath the reaper's steel;
And then arose a mighty shout that might have waked the dead,—
"Hurrah! they run! the field is won! Hurrah! the foe is fled!"
And every man hath dropped his gun to clutch a neighbor's hand,
As his heart kept praying all the while for home and native land.
 
 
Thrice on that day we stood the shock of thrice a thousand foes,
And thrice that day within our lines the shout of victory rose;
And though our swift fire slackened then, and, reddening in the skies,
We saw from Charlestown's roofs and walls the flamy columns rise,
Yet while we had a cartridge left, we still maintained the fight,
Nor gained the foe one foot of ground upon that blood-stained height.
 
 
What though for us no laurels bloom, and o'er the nameless brave
No sculptured trophy, scroll, nor hatch records a warrior grave!
What though the day to us was lost!—upon that deathless page
The everlasting charter stands for every land and age!
 
 
For man hath broke his felon bonds, and cast them in the dust,
And claimed his heritage divine, and justified the trust;
While through his rifted prison-bars the hues of freedom pour,
O'er every nation, race and clime, on every sea and shore,
Such glories as the patriarch viewed, when, mid the darkest skies,
He saw above a ruined world the Bow of Promise rise.
 

F.S. Cozzens.

Health and Wealth

 
We squander health in search of wealth;
We scheme and toil and save;
Then squander wealth in search of health,
But only find a grave.
We live, and boast of what we own;
We die, and only get a stone.
 

The Heartening

 
It may be that the words I spoke
To cheer him on his way,
To him were vain, but I myself
Was braver all that day.
 

Winifred Webb.

Billy's Rose

 
Billy's dead, and gone to glory—so is Billy's sister Nell:
There's a tale I know about them, were I poet I would tell;
Soft it comes, with perfume laden, like a breath of country air
Wafted down the filthy alley, bringing fragrant odors there.
 
 
In that vile and filthy alley, long ago one winter's day,
Dying quick of want and fever, hapless, patient Billy lay,
While beside him sat his sister, in the garret's dismal gloom,
Cheering with her gentle presence Billy's pathway to the tomb.
 
 
Many a tale of elf and fairy did she tell the dying child,
Till his eyes lost half their anguish, and his worn, wan features smiled;
Tales herself had heard haphazard, caught amid the Babel roar,
Lisped about by tiny gossips playing round their mothers' door.
 
 
Then she felt his wasted fingers tighten feebly as she told
How beyond this dismal alley lay a land of shining gold,
Where, when all the pain was over,—where, when all the tears were shed,—
He would be a white-frocked angel, with a gold thing on his head.
 
 
Then she told some garbled story of a kind-eyed Saviour's love,
How He'd built for little children great big playgrounds up above,
Where they sang and played at hopscotch and at horses all the day,
And where beadles and policemen never frightened them away.
 
 
This was Nell's idea of heaven,—just a bit of what she'd heard,
With a little bit invented, and a little bit inferred.
But her brother lay and listened, and he seemed to understand,
For he closed his eyes and murmured he could see the promised land.
 
 
"Yes," he whispered, "I can see it, I can see it, sister Nell,
Oh, the children look so happy and they're all so strong and well;
I can see them there with Jesus—He is playing with them, too!
Let as run away and join them, if there's room for me and you."
 
 
She was eight, this little maiden, and her life had all been spent
In the garret and the alley, where they starved to pay the rent;
Where a drunken father's curses and a drunken mother's blows
Drove her forth into the gutter from the day's dawn to its close.
 
 
But she knew enough, this outcast, just to tell this sinking boy,
"You must die before you're able all the blessings to enjoy.
You must die," she whispered, "Billy, and I am not even ill;
But I'll come to you, dear brother,—yes, I promise that I will.
 
 
"You are dying, little brother, you are dying, oh, so fast;
I heard father say to mother that he knew you couldn't last.
They will put you in a coffin, then you'll wake and be up there,
While I'm left alone to suffer in this garret bleak and bare."
 
 
"Yes, I know it," answered Billy. "Ah, but, sister, I don't mind,
Gentle Jesus will not beat me; He's not cruel or unkind.
But I can't help thinking, Nelly, I should like to take away
Something, sister, that you gave me, I might look at every day.
 
 
"In the summer you remember how the mission took us out
To a great green lovely meadow, where we played and ran about,
And the van that took us halted by a sweet bright patch of land,
Where the fine red blossoms grew, dear, half as big as mother's hand.
 
 
"Nell, I asked the good kind teacher what they called such flowers as those,
And he told me, I remember, that the pretty name was rose.
I have never seen them since, dear—how I wish that I had one!
Just to keep and think of you, Nell, when I'm up beyond the sun."
 
 
Not a word said little Nelly; but at night, when Billy slept,
On she flung her scanty garments and then down the stairs she crept.
Through the silent streets of London she ran nimbly as a fawn,
Running on and running ever till the night had changed to dawn.
 
 
When the foggy sun had risen, and the mist had cleared away,
All around her, wrapped in snowdrift, there the open country lay.
She was tired, her limbs were frozen, and the roads had cut her feet,
But there came no flowery gardens her poor tearful eyes to greet.
 
 
She had traced the road by asking, she had learnt the way to go;
She had found the famous meadow—it was wrapped in cruel snow;
Not a buttercup or daisy, not a single verdant blade
Showed its head above its prison. Then she knelt her down and prayed;
 
 
With her eyes upcast to heaven, down she sank upon the ground,
And she prayed to God to tell her where the roses might be found.
Then the cold blast numbed her senses, and her sight grew strangely dim;
And a sudden, awful tremor seemed to seize her every limb.
 
 
"Oh, a rose!" she moaned, "good Jesus,—just a rose to take to Bill!"
And as she prayed a chariot came thundering down the hill;
And a lady sat there, toying with a red rose, rare and sweet;
As she passed she flung it from her, and it fell at Nelly's feet.
 
 
Just a word her lord had spoken caused her ladyship to fret,
And the rose had been his present, so she flung it in a pet;
But the poor, half-blinded Nelly thought it fallen from the skies,
And she murmured, "Thank you, Jesus!" as she clasped the dainty prize.
 
 
Lo! that night from but the alley did a child's soul pass away,
From dirt and sin and misery up to where God's children play.
Lo! that night a wild, fierce snowstorm burst in fury o'er the land,
And at morn they found Nell frozen, with the red rose in her hand.
 
 
Billy's dead, and gone to glory—so is Billy's sister Nell;
Am I bold to say this happened in the land where angels dwell,—
That the children met in heaven, after all their earthly woes,
And that Nelly kissed her brother, and said, "Billy, here's your rose"?
 

George R. Sims.

The Old Actor's Story

 
Mine is a wild, strange story,—the strangest you ever heard;
There are many who won't believe it, but it's gospel, every word;
It's the biggest drama of any in a long, adventurous life;
The scene was a ship, and the actors—were myself and my new-wed wife.
 
 
You musn't mind if I ramble, and lose the thread now and then;
I'm old, you know, and I wander—it's a way with old women and men,
For their lives lie all behind them, and their thoughts go far away,
And are tempted afield, like children lost on a summer day.
 
 
The years must be five-and-twenty that have passed since that awful night,
But I see it again this evening, I can never shut out the sight.
We were only a few weeks married, I and the wife, you know,
When we had an offer for Melbourne, and made up our minds to go.
 
 
We'd acted together in England, traveling up and down
With a strolling band of players, going from town to town;
We played the lovers together—we were leading lady and gent—
And at last we played in earnest, and straight to the church we went.
 
 
The parson gave us his blessing, and I gave Nellie the ring,
And swore that I'd love and cherish, and endow her with everything.
How we smiled at that part of the service when I said "I thee endow"!
But as to the "love and cherish," I meant to keep that vow.
 
 
We were only a couple of strollers; we had coin when the show was good,
When it wasn't we went without it, and we did the best we could.
We were happy, and loved each other, and laughed at the shifts we made,—
Where love makes plenty of sunshine, there poverty casts no shade.
 
 
Well, at last we got to London, and did pretty well for a bit;
Then the business dropped to nothing, and the manager took a flit,—
Stepped off one Sunday morning, forgetting the treasury call;
But our luck was in, and we managed right on our feet to fall.
 
 
We got an offer for Melbourne,—got it that very week.
Those were the days when thousands went over to fortune seek,
The days of the great gold fever, and a manager thought the spot
Good for a "spec," and took us as actors among his lot.
 
 
We hadn't a friend in England—we'd only ourselves to please—
And we jumped at the chance of trying our fortune across the seas.
We went on a sailing vessel, and the journey was long and rough;
We hadn't been out a fortnight before we had had enough.
 
 
But use is a second nature, and we'd got not to mind a storm,
When misery came upon us,—came in a hideous form.
My poor little wife fell ailing, grew worse, and at last so bad
That the doctor said she was dying,—I thought 'twould have sent me mad,—
 
 
Dying where leagues of billows seemed to shriek for their prey,
And the nearest land was hundreds—aye, thousands—of miles away.
She raved one night in a fever, and the next lay still as death,
So still I'd to bend and listen for the faintest sign of breath.
 
 
She seemed in a sleep, and sleeping, with a smile on her thin, wan face,—
She passed away one morning, while I prayed to the throne of grace.
I knelt in the little cabin, and prayer after prayer I said,
Till the surgeon came and told me it was useless—my wife was dead!
 
 
Dead! I wouldn't believe it. They forced me away that night,
For I raved in my wild despairing, the shock sent me mad outright.
I was shut in the farthest cabin, and I beat my head on the side,
And all day long in my madness, "They've murdered her!" I cried.
 
 
They locked me away from my fellows,—put me in cruel chains,
It seems I had seized a weapon to beat out the surgeon's brains.
I cried in my wild, mad fury, that he was a devil sent
To gloat o'er the frenzied anguish with which my heart was rent.
 
 
I spent that night with the irons heavy upon my wrists,
And my wife lay dead quite near me. I beat with my fettered fists,
Beat at my prison panels, and then—O God!—and then
I heard the shrieks of women and the tramp of hurrying men.
 
 
I heard the cry, "Ship afire!" caught up by a hundred throats,
And over the roar the captain shouting to lower the boats;
Then cry upon cry, and curses, and the crackle of burning wood,
And the place grew hot as a furnace, I could feel it where I stood.
 
 
I beat at the door and shouted, but never a sound came back,
And the timbers above me started, till right through a yawning crack
I could see the flames shoot upward, seizing on mast and sail,
Fanned in their burning fury by the breath of the howling gale.
 
 
I dashed at the door in fury, shrieking, "I will not die!
Die in this burning prison!"—but I caught no answering cry.
Then, suddenly, right upon me, the flames crept up with a roar,
And their fiery tongues shot forward, cracking my prison door.
 
 
I was free—with the heavy iron door dragging me down to death;
I fought my way to the cabin, choked with the burning breath
Of the flames that danced around me like man-mocking fiends at play,
And then—O God! I can see it, and shall to my dying day.
 
 
There lay my Nell as they'd left her, dead in her berth that night;
The flames flung a smile on her features,—a horrible, lurid light.
God knows how I reached and touched her, but I found myself by her side;
I thought she was living a moment, I forgot that my Nell had died.
 
 
In the shock of those awful seconds reason came back to my brain;
I heard a sound as of breathing, and then a low cry of pain;
Oh, was there mercy in heaven? Was there a God in the skies?
The dead woman's lips were moving, the dead woman opened her eyes.
 
 
I cursed like a madman raving—I cried to her, "Nell! my Nell!"
They had left us alone and helpless, alone in that burning hell;
They had left us alone to perish—forgotten me living—and she
Had been left for the fire to bear her to heaven, instead of the sea.
 
 
I clutched at her, roused her shrieking, the stupor was on her still;
I seized her in spite of my fetters,—fear gave a giant's will.
God knows how I did it, but blindly I fought through the flames and the wreck
Up—up to the air, and brought her safe to the untouched deck.
 
 
We'd a moment of life together,—a moment of life, the time
For one last word to each other,—'twas a moment supreme, sublime.
From the trance we'd for death mistaken, the heat had brought her to life,
And I was fettered and helpless, so we lay there, husband and wife!
 
 
It was but a moment, but ages seemed to have passed away,
When a shout came over the water, and I looked, and lo, there lay,
Right away from the vessel, a boat that was standing by;
They had seen our forms on the vessel, as the flames lit up the sky.
 
 
I shouted a prayer to Heaven, then called to my wife, and she
Tore with new strength at my fetters—God helped her, and I was free;
Then over the burning bulwarks we leaped for one chance of life.
Did they save us? Well, here I am, sir, and yonder's my dear old wife.
 
 
We were out in the boat till daylight, when a great ship passing by
Took us on board, and at Melbourne landed us by and by.
We've played many parts in dramas since we went on that famous trip,
But ne'er such a scene together as we had on the burning ship!
 

George B. Sims.