lif. 
 
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 Cruk^^^' 
 
GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND 
 
POEMS 
 
 -OF- 
 
 The Delaware Peninsula 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND 
 ("Gath") 
 
 author of 
 "The Entailed Hat" 
 ''Tales of the Chesapeake," Etc. 
 

 Author 
 JUL t6 Igt? 
 
J0H0 5P0pms mg Matiitx I|ab mr rtai 
 Kn tl|f Parsonage 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface. 
 
 Proem: The Tuning Fork. 
 
 NEW CASTLE COUNTY 
 
 Page 
 
 At Calniar 11 
 
 In Finnland 12 
 
 Swedes and Finns 14 
 
 Wilmington 17 
 
 Old Swedes Church 20 
 
 The Wheelers 22 
 
 Depot Lunch 24 
 
 John McKinley 25 
 
 Allen McLane's Troop 27 
 
 Marcus Hook 28 
 
 BuUy Rising 31 
 
 Newport 32 
 
 New Castle 34 
 
 Du Pont dc Nemours 36 
 
 Lost Latitude 37 
 
 Bad at Newark 40 
 
 Iron Hill 42 
 
 The Tangent Stone 44 
 
 Ralph 45 
 
 Rachel 46 
 
 Cinderell 47 
 
 Red Lion Camp 49 
 
 The Old Canal 52 
 
 Buck Bridge 56 
 
 Pallas and Venus 57 
 
 Old Steamboats 58 
 
 Swede Cantico 60 
 
 Adam King 61 
 
 The Book Hater 62 
 
 Bayard's Rooster 63 
 
5 
 
 „ ^, 65 
 
 Beehive • 
 
 Delaware College Address— 1868 ^ 
 
 The Saw Horse 
 
 Houseless Lawn 
 
 Delaware River 
 
 Curtis' Mill 
 
 78 
 Arnold Naudain 
 
 „ „ 80 
 
 Barge Song 
 
 Queen Mag 
 
 82 
 Elm Corbin 
 
 KENT COUNTY 
 
 Corner Fireplace 
 
 112 
 
 Dover 
 
 f . 116 
 
 Joan of Arc 
 
 Judge's Last Tune 
 
 Bombay Hook Light 
 
 The Pole Well ^^^ 
 
 123 
 At Leipsic 
 
 194 
 
 Haslet's March 
 
 126 
 Constitution Hymn 
 
 127 
 At Judge White's 
 
 129 
 Smyrna Tavern 
 
 ^ , ^. 130 
 
 Delaware rine 
 
 132 
 Duck Creek Legend 
 
 Dick ''' 
 
 Creek Mother 
 
 ^ „ , 135 
 
 The Peach 
 
 Last Peach 
 
 Phoebe Bird 
 
 139 
 Flatwoods 
 
 140 
 State Stave 
 
 SUSSEX COUNTY 
 
 The Terrapin 
 
 144 
 Georgetown 
 
 Dagsworthy's Tooth 
 
 147 
 Rosa Gerry 
 
 ^, , . , 148 
 
 Kedge Anchor 
 
 „ ,, ^ 149 
 
 Bell Crane 
 
 „, T I, ' 151 
 
 St. John's 
 
 Seaford Sisters 
 
6 
 
 Whippoorwill 153 
 
 Alfred Torbert 155 
 
 Breakwater Light 156 
 
 Vote Buyer 157 
 
 Gumboro 159 
 
 Raising the Flag 160 
 
 Lewes: Tri-Centennial Address 161 
 
 Shingle Billet 163 
 
 Zwaanendael 164 
 
 Second Mother 166 
 
 Cannon and Hicks 167 
 
 Indian Corn 168 
 
 Alien Music 171 
 
 EASTERN SHORE 
 
 Sassafras River 173 
 
 The Peninsula 176 
 
 Eastville Records 178 
 
 Drummondtown 199 
 
 Pocomoke 179 
 
 Parsonag Circus 183 
 
 Prodigal's Dream 184 
 
 Jane Sewell 185 
 
 Circuit Riding 187 
 
 The Circuit Preacher 189 
 
 The Bay Ferry 191 
 
 Tories' Hymn 196 
 
 Old Kent 194 
 
 Bill of Life 198 
 
 Queen Christine 102 
 
 Hermann of Bohemia Manor 89 
 
 Barrett's Chapel 138 
 
PREFACE 
 
 GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND IN DELAWARE. 
 
 The author of these Delaware poems and Tales of the Chesapeake 
 and the novel, "The Entailed Hat," Delaware compositions, was 
 born at Georgetown, Sussex county, January 30, 1841, of parents from 
 Worcester county, Md. His father, Rev. Stephen Townsend, was a 
 traveling Methodist pastor and had previously been a carpenter and 
 builder at Snow Hill, and preacher at that place, at Cambridge and at 
 Princess Anne. 
 
 A few weeks after his birth the poet-author was removed to Salis- 
 bury, Md., for two years, and then to Delaware City, where he lived 
 till the spring of 1845, when his father was sent to Port Deposit, Md., for 
 one year and for another year to Columbia, Pa., and then back to the Dela- 
 ware, at Marcus Hook, for two years. The next removal was to Ches- 
 tertown, Md., for two years; then two years more to Newark, Del., 
 which he left in 1853-4, for Philadelphia, at the age of 12 or 13, never 
 to reside on the Peninsula any more. 
 
 But his father had farms in New Castle county and on Bohemia 
 River, Md., and near Kenton, Del., to which Alfred was sent in summer 
 to board, as late as 1857-8. His knowledge of rural and youthful things 
 was therefore mainly Peninsular, though he was educated and became 
 a journalist in Philadelphia, New York and Washington, till, in 1876, 
 he repented of having left literature so long and revisited Delaware to 
 find some themes that he could use for tales and books. 
 
 At intervals he made this quest a labor of love, using all his jour- 
 nalistic diligence to run down graveyards, court records, aged wit- 
 nesses and localities, and collecting a library to inform his mind. So 
 well did he lay up these lessons that in 1911, at the age of 71, while 
 sick in the hospitals, he wrote, without any references, most of the poems 
 in this book, for immediate publication. Here, it will be seen from 
 
such pieces as "At Calmar," "In Finn-land" and "Queen Cinristine," 
 that his clues were back in Delaware, rooted in his youth. 
 
 He also appreciated the stimulation of invitations from Delaware 
 societies to recite and make addresses in Philadelphia and New York, 
 at Delaware College, Georgetown and Drawyers' Church. The con- 
 tinuous sale of "Ttie Entailed Hat" further drew his self-respect to the 
 region of his fathers, where his male ancestry was revealed, in 1686, as 
 interpreters for the Eastern Shore Indians before Lord Baltimore's 
 Council at St. Mary's. There was also a surmise that his mother, 
 Mary Milbourne, was of the collateral stock of Jacob Milbourne, the 
 political martyr of New York, which removed to the colonial Potomac. 
 Rev. Dr. Stephen Townsend was born in Nassawadox, an arm of the 
 Pocomoke River, nearly at the place where John Townsend entertained 
 the Indian commissioners. Alfred was the second of three sons; the 
 eldest was killed in battle in Nicaragua; the youngest. Dr. Ralph Mil- 
 bourne Townsend, is buried in Wilmington and Brandy wine cemetery. 
 Mr. Townsend wrote several novels on the Western Shore of Mary- 
 land, of which only one, "Katy of Catoctin,"has been published. 
 
OVERTURE 
 
 THE TUNING FORK. 
 
 In Meeting houses all week shut, 
 More naked than a negro hut, 
 I spent my Sundays, three times o'er, 
 Dreaming the world outside the door. 
 And twixt my nods appearing good, 
 Spite of the hard knots in the wood; 
 Standing for hymns that had no song, 
 Kneeling to prayers, oh, how long I 
 Hearing of preaching always dull 
 And learning nothing beautiful 
 Except that one bald-headed stork 
 Who woke me with a Tuning Fork. 
 
 He struck it on the pew-back near 
 
 And put it tingling to his ear, 
 
 And from it caught some wizard sign 
 
 As if it was the devil's tine, 
 
 Then back he threw his neck and head 
 
 And raised a roar would wake the dead. 
 
 What it did give him, like a witch, 
 
 I did not grasp — they called it pitch — 
 
 But Pitch was also in the pit 
 
 Where wicked souls were wicks they lit. 
 
 And forks to flames fed sinners stark 
 
 With wails not like a Tuning Fork. 
 
10 
 
 Long would I marvel, close would mark 
 
 The magic in that Tuning Fork — 
 
 The only miracle in hand 
 
 My little mind could understand. 
 
 I heard, without, the pine trees moan, 
 
 The horses neigh, the cold crow crone, 
 
 The sleigh bells jingled by the hoof, 
 
 The swallows in the open roof. 
 
 And from my ear vibrations were 
 
 Melodious of that chorister. 
 
 And waves of music like a lark 
 
 Swept through me from the Tuning Fork. 
 
 I knew no other instrument. 
 But through the wide world as I went 
 Tunes, rhythms, songs my life bewitch: 
 I struck the note that gave the pitch. 
 I took the key and found the line — 
 Music is worship most divine 1 
 Go ye to Heaven, whom harps await, 
 But let me tune outside the gate, 
 Where Nature strikes the key for me 
 With all her temples Melody, 
 And with her winged pinions shod, 
 I raise the hymn that soars to God. 
 
11 
 
 N^m fflastb ffinuntg 
 
 AT CALMAR. 
 
 From Stockholm unto Lubeck bound, 
 
 One morn I stepped me down 
 Where Calmar's castle stood aloof 
 
 From Calmar's ancient town. 
 The sun in that high latitude 
 
 Stood high above the deep, 
 And all of Calmar's Swedish brood 
 
 Were past their midnight sleep. 
 
 And through the slumbering town I walked 
 
 Unhalted, o'er and o'er. 
 As Hamlet's ghostly father stalked 
 
 The leads of Elsinore; 
 By Calmar ran the Danish line 
 
 When Sweden shook her grip 
 And Swedish Calmar o'er the brine 
 
 Dispatched The Key, her ship. 
 
 The Key the new world's gates rolled back 
 
 And Swedish soldiers bare, 
 To settle next to Accomac 
 
 And claim the Delaware. 
 In that three hundred years but one 
 
 Came back his tryst to keep, 
 And found beneath the midnight sun 
 
 Old Calmar dead in sleep. 
 
12 
 
 It/s bells the hours unheeded struck, 
 
 No sound its hostels move, 
 The pilgrim to his birthright met 
 
 No witness to his love; 
 Ah! few awake to prove or see, 
 
 Or memories high to keep. 
 We touch the chord of history 
 
 And find the world asleep. 
 
 IN FINN-LAND. 
 
 I always heard at Marcus Hook 
 
 That Finns — a race of freak — 
 Had settled from the Rip- Rap Kills 
 
 Far down as Naaman's Creek. 
 These Finns, I thought, were fisher folk — 
 
 A kind of frites or ginns — 
 And only fit to wear the yoke 
 
 Of Swedes, as "Swedes and Finns." 
 
 So when I sailed from Stockholm^^port 
 
 To rocky Finland's shores, 
 And opposite the ruined fort 
 
 Stepped off at Helsingtors, 
 The Finns, their scows moored to the mole. 
 
 Just as they used to look. 
 Stooped o'er their fish, as dull of soul 
 
 As they at Marcus Hook. 
 
 But just beyond a statue stood, 
 
 And eagle glances cast; 
 A poet of the Finnish tongue 
 
 Was writing of the past. 
 
13 
 
 For eighty years a conquered state 
 
 War's trophies only sins — 
 The lyre had struck a sweeter fate: 
 
 The Fine Arts of the Finns. 
 
 And grouped around the fur-clad bard 
 
 High edifices stood, 
 And flashed inland a boulevard 
 
 Like Paris to the wood; 
 Voiture, kiosk, crowds moved along, 
 
 A capitol we see. 
 And answering to the poet's song, 
 
 A University. 
 
 Red granite masses scarce more old 
 
 Than Finns their rock field crop, 
 Whose date and route no Moses told 
 
 To seek the globe's cold top; 
 The Russian navies boast their deeds. 
 
 Their Lutheran kirks stand free. 
 And holding customs of the Swedes, 
 
 Their hearts have liberty. 
 
 On polished Finland granite rides — 
 
 Where once the Finns had sway — 
 Above his Cincinnati guides 
 
 In Philadelphia, 
 Great Washington, in phantom shroud, 
 
 High statued, strides the lists, 
 Like Odin in the Baltic cloud 
 
 Or Finland's frigidmists. 
 
 Infinite islets mask the land 
 
 Through which, by Finnish homes. 
 Upon the Gulf of Finland stands 
 
 St. Petersburg's Greek domes; 
 But not for beauty and for joy 
 
 That Tartar mart begins. 
 To rival with its martial cloy 
 
 The city of the Finns. 
 
14 
 
 SWEDES AND FINNS. 
 
 Who turn the capes of De La Warr 
 And sail within the shifting bar 
 
 Know not, perchance, what round them look: 
 Quaint feudal namesakes, lost or gray, 
 And quainter people passed away, 
 Which to recall would be a day 
 
 Spent over many a mouldy book. 
 
 Soft be the meadows far within 
 The sandy beaches, low and thin. 
 
 With frequent fens and creeks between; 
 No mountain backs the inland lift, 
 The sandy islands blow and shift. 
 And shining white, broad inlets rift 
 
 The mighty marshes, gold and green. 
 
 Yon Jersey spit is Jutland quite. 
 That tapers downward to the light 
 
 Which never burned for Captain Mey; 
 Hindlopen is a Friesland ghost. 
 To thrill the cruising Dutchman most. 
 Who wonders if it be the coast 
 
 Of Zuyder, whence he sailed away. 
 
 Beyond the beaches level lie 
 The fertile farm-lands to the sky; 
 
 To shallow lakes the streams expand; 
 The twilights they outshine the stars. 
 So streaked is heaven with golden bars; 
 The nights are beautiful as Thor's, 
 
 Seen in the pleasant Swedish land. 
 
15 
 
 And up the rivers as we ride, 
 Borne on the slow and equal tide, 
 
 So high we look down on the flocks — 
 ^^ By many a |oo^ and dyke we slip, ^^ 
 
 By many a sober-sided ship, 
 By many a willowy islet's strip. 
 
 Set round with emerald splatterdocks. 
 
 Through lilies and through cat-tails creep 
 The oozy creeks, by tdes made deep. 
 
 And all the marshes round about 
 Are populous with birds that sing. 
 Atop the reeds all day they swing. 
 So fat at last they scarce can cling, 
 
 And at the gunner nod and flout. 
 
 Is it a Summer land of Thor ? 
 A new Batavia, mistless ? Or 
 
 is it that dream, half manifest. 
 Which made the King Gustavus burn, 
 To hear his faithful Oxenstiern, 
 For fair Christina's dowry, yearn 
 
 To plant an empire in the West ? 
 
 Yea, with the Kaiser at his feet. 
 From Leipsic's fight this King of Sleet 
 
 Turned his high face, so sanguine fair, 
 Across the seas by Swedes untried; 
 And with a soldier's thrill of pride, 
 He saw his royal banner ride 
 
 The sluices of the Delaware. 
 
 Still be their hamlets unlorsook 
 
 From Maurice Cove to Maerty's Hook, 
 
 From Pennypack to Tinicum; 
 Still stands their kirk at Wicaco; 
 To Uplandt School the urchins go; 
 And in Christina's graveyard grow 
 
 Their ivies round the porches dumb. 
 
16 
 
 Here for the otter set his trap 
 The Dalecarlian, and the Lapp 
 
 Chafed for his reindeer and his fur, 
 The tough Finn cast his nets for $had; 
 Dreamed of his peaks the Norway lad, 
 And thinking of his sweet heart sad, 
 
 He pined for Fatherland and her. 
 
 The conquering Saxon overtook 
 
 And swallowed quite this Gothic brook, 
 
 As breaks the North Sea o'er the dunes, 
 As Gothland abbeys crack to frost; 
 To Papist wiles the Queen was lost; 
 And by the English epic crost 
 
 Faint grew these Scandinavian runes. 
 
 No more we hear their pleasant speech, 
 But in the red-leafed groves of peach 
 
 How many a Jersey swain, belike, 
 The while he shakes the velvet fruit 
 On the green melons at his foot. 
 Says, "Into Lutzen's tough pursuit 
 
 My fathers bore the Swedish pike I" 
 
 Or, where the ripened plains of grain. 
 Blow twixt deep gullies, worn by rain, 
 
 How many a rustic reaps, aware 
 His fathers' graves were old before 
 The Quaker landed on their shore, 
 And from the papist Baltimore 
 
 They saved the banks of Delaware. 
 
 Their old names, writ in English ways, 
 In English prayers their Swedish praise. 
 
 The early tale is vague indeed; 
 They do no more their pastors draw 
 From the pure schools of Upsala, 
 But keep the stature, tall and braw, 
 
 And florid visage of the Swede. 
 
17 
 
 Not wholly is their race forgot 
 In graver Dutch or Huguenot; 
 
 The simplest, sweetest of our broods, 
 The softest river of our clime 
 Their valor, hallowed for all time, 
 And conquered, like a quiet rhyme 
 
 Their memory lulls our solitudes. 
 
 We hear it where the bean vine opes 
 Its pods upon the cantaloupes, 
 And on the sweet potato hills; 
 It murmurs in the files of maize, 
 And where the striped heifers graze 
 Along the brinks of brackish bays, 
 And by the willow planted rills. 
 
 It sayeth: "See I on every hand. 
 In frequent fiord and pasture land. 
 
 In long gray lakes the mills that spin. 
 These pastoral plains as pleasant are, 
 And innocent of crime or war. 
 As lighted by the Northern Star, 
 
 The Kingdom of the Swede and Finn ! 
 
 WILMINGTON. 
 
 Where Swedes their fortress laid 
 
 And Dutch about them hovered. 
 There came a married maid 
 
 And beauty rediscovered; 
 "O, in a dream, my dear, 
 
 I saw this situation. 
 And dreamed our home was here 
 
 Upon this noble station 1" 
 
18 
 
 Right loving was her spouse — 
 
 A gentle, though a Quaker — 
 He pitched for her a house 
 
 And fenced an airy acre, 
 And where Altona span, 
 
 The meeting creeks conrin^ianding, 
 New Wilmington began — 
 
 A millsite and a landing. 
 
 The Friends of Chester drove 
 
 Down from their hills to settle 
 Within the bulrush cove 
 
 And forged the iron metal; 
 The smiths the sailors are, 
 
 The wheelwright vessels braces, 
 And down the Delaware 
 
 They sailed to foreign places. 
 
 Close by the waterfall 
 
 Refreshed the tidal rising, 
 The Old Swedes' graveyard wall 
 
 The shipyards are surprising; 
 Morocco vats increase; 
 
 Wars sent us exiles prouder; 
 And in the Quaker peace 
 
 They manufactured powder. 
 
 The ruling city sent 
 
 Its fever-fearing masses; 
 Young lawyers pitched their tent 
 
 Among our landed lassies; 
 Our creeks were battle meads. 
 
 But we were never vassal. 
 Though British stole our deeds 
 
 Away from old New Castle. 
 
 There where great Stuyvesant slipped 
 
 Accoutred (in the fables), 
 The pillory long tipped 
 
 That ancient bowery's gables; 
 
19 
 
 No county jail its gliosts 
 Disturbed our century's labor, 
 
 The fondled whipping-post 
 Conceded to our neighbor. 
 
 But slowly up the hills 
 
 Calm Wilmington was moving, 
 Like motion of her mills 
 
 The grist of growing proving. 
 Till Brandywine serene, 
 
 Flowed coal our blasts that feeded, 
 And lily-loved Christine 
 
 The iron highways speeded. 
 
 Back from the floody river, 
 
 As from the greater mart. 
 Our temperate pulses quiver 
 
 And beats our city's heart; 
 And from our workshop, winking, 
 
 Like strong thoughts from the brain. 
 Our engines speak our thinking. 
 
 Our navies ride the main. 
 
 Within the tangent's curve a 
 
 Head domes our State above 
 Born like his child, Minerva, 
 
 Within the skull of Jove, 
 And like a Hermes rising 
 
 The sea-laved hills upon, 
 Shines, bright and enterprising. 
 
 The light of Wilmington I 
 
20 
 
 OLD SWEDES' CHURCH. 
 (Wilmington.) 
 
 At the brink of the Century greatest — 
 
 Eighteenth in the swing of Time — 
 They built their church, the latest, 
 
 When Sweden was in her prime; 
 Like that in Stockholm city 
 
 That the great Gustavus requites, 
 Where, killed in Lutzen's pity. 
 
 He lies among his knights. 
 
 Wide arches the whitewashed portal 
 
 Beneath the steep-gabled roof, 
 Like the gate to the Life immortal 
 
 Where they enter, armor-proof, 
 The open cupola tinkles 
 
 The bell to the marshes' light. 
 As the priest of Luther sprinkles 
 
 The babes in the parents' sight. 
 
 When first the graves were gainer 
 
 The dead had been steel-clad men 
 Who had blended pikes with Baner 
 
 And conquered with Torstenssen; 
 The mad Charles Twelfth they followed 
 
 To beat the Russ and the Turk, 
 And Germany they hollowed 
 
 Like a mine-exploded work. 
 
 Christine, (not Christiana) 
 
 They named the river below 
 That wafted their jarl'ed hosanna 
 
 Almost to the Delaware's flow; 
 That wilful queen they knew her 
 
 Ere Latin her mind could wean, 
 And they kept their leal unto her 
 
 In their queenly fiord, Christeen. 
 
21 
 
 Far came the Goths in union 
 
 Within this graveyard gate 
 To take of the Lord's communion 
 
 From Hesselius' royal plate; 
 The Indian trappers listened 
 
 To Campanius in their tongue, 
 And Acrelius' Annals christened 
 
 With the English hymns they sung. 
 
 Nine pastors four times builded 
 
 A church where yet it stands; 
 Flashed far the vane they gilded 
 
 O'er the glebe and the rolling lands; 
 Let them who were lush be shriven I 
 
 Let them who were sober sleep ! 
 Let the giver's cup be forgiven 
 
 Where ivies and myrtles creep ! 
 
 Ere Nature's priests were ours 
 
 These pastors led Swedish men, 
 Ere Linneaus married the flowers 
 
 Or Scheele found us oxygen, 
 Or Swedenborg mysteries seven 
 
 Heard sung by his garden bird — 
 These preached of an Odin's heaven 
 
 And Thor in the thunder heard. 
 
 Yet back to Valhalla sounded 
 
 Swede echoes to Odin and Thor; 
 The guns of Dahlgren expounded 
 
 And Ericsson's Monitor; 
 Swede men from the West came wheeling 
 
 To Freedom's communion 
 And the Swedes' old church was feeling 
 
 The life in our Union 1 
 
 A little State they gave us 
 
 In the world that was rising new — 
 The tactics of Gustavus 
 
 And the statecraft of Richelieu; 
 
22 
 
 If Sweden lost her bantling 
 
 Her purpose went not amiss — 
 
 She lost the stays and scantling, 
 But preserved the edifice. 
 
 Stand firm 1 old Gothic witness ! 
 
 As in Poltowa's day 
 And speak of the city's fitness 
 
 They planted long to stay ! 
 Speak of the Reformation 
 
 When the mind of Man went forth, 
 And the Swede revolved our Nation 
 
 Round the pole star in the North I 
 
 THE WHEELERS. 
 
 Oliver Evans, millwright meet. 
 Made the millstones grind the wheat; 
 Made the mills move fast with the meal, 
 Made, too early, the Automobile. 
 He was the first that glory won. 
 Mind and hand over Wilmington. 
 
 Robert Fulton taught the boat. 
 Fire-hearted, to throb and float; 
 Wheels of the watch and clock persuade 
 Him to think in the jeweler's trade; 
 So he thought till his dream reveals 
 All the universe needs are wheels. 
 
 Never Creation space could star 
 
 Till the orbits were circular. 
 
 Gravity out of its centre reels 
 
 Till the heavens and earth had wheels. 
 
 Ocean and blood are made up of spheres. 
 
 Iron melts into drops as it clears. 
 
23 
 
 O, how long were mankind to see 
 Roundness was sire of eternity! 
 Fiat to the Soul were the sea and land, 
 Revelation was in the Hand. 
 
 Guide me, Hand, to thy loving tryst 1 
 Round are my eyes and the bones in my wrist; 
 Round is my skull, where I get the clues, 
 As in a keyboard, of all the news. 
 
 When the great Greeks their myths forgot, 
 
 They stood up in the Chariot; 
 
 So, ball-bearing, the future man 
 
 Will stand on his curves in the final plan. 
 
 Traction, attraction, they are kin; 
 Billows roll on the sphere they win. 
 Man at the wheel, with intelligence shod, 
 Carries along the labors as God. 
 Fulton and Evans! Names to revere ! 
 What has transpired since ye were here ? 
 
 High as we rise the prospect runs 
 Into expanding horizons. 
 Bubbles the engine to motion shake, 
 Currents electrical messengers make. 
 World without end the nights reveal — 
 All the Universe is a wheel ! 
 
 This we learn from the Welch and Scot — 
 Fulton and Evans were sparks of Watt, 
 And their necessities crafts begun 
 In the bay heads about Wilmington. 
 Earth no periphery had to steer 
 Till it recovered our hemisphere. 
 
 Moses and Jesus, Mahoun and the rest 
 Knew not that spheredom was hid in the West. 
 Limping, the Earth skipped on hoofs, like Pan, , 
 
 Till turned its beautiful curves ihto Man. L*^l 
 
 Bow in the Heavens alarms the worm, ? 
 
 But is the Light's and the Raindrop's form. 
 
24 
 
 OLD DEPOT LUNCH. 
 
 "Next, Wilmington!" That name it blew 
 To passengers the whole train through; 
 For there we skipped from the low, lean cars. 
 And climbed high stools at the Depot bars; 
 We found lunch ready, and out we drew 
 A little cup custard and an oyster stew. 
 
 That custard was so soft and sweet. 
 
 It seemed just fit for a bird to eat; 
 
 That oyster stew, with its butter and milk. 
 
 It warmed our gullet like cocoon silk; 
 
 Right to us travelers an angel flew 
 
 With that little cup custard and the oyster stew. 
 
 That girl that never before I knew, 
 
 She smiled at me o'er her oyster stew; 
 
 That little cup custard lit my eye 
 
 To her oyster palate to smile reply; 
 
 We ate and we looked, with our eyes "goo-goo," 
 
 The little cup custard and the oyster stew. 
 
 And the locomotive shifted, too. 
 To get some custard and oyster stew; 
 Oh, how it wheezed till the tender poured 
 And the old conductor cried "Aboard 1" 
 The whistle surely the taste it blew 
 Of a little cup custard and an oyster stew. 
 
 They stop no more where we had such fun 
 On the old brick pavement at Wilmington, 
 Where everybody sat on a stool, 
 Like the senior class in a cooking school. 
 And down distilled all our tenders through 
 The little cup custard and the oyster stew. 
 
25 
 
 JOHNMcKINLY. 
 
 Waked at night by a heavy tread, 
 Soldiers were standing around his bed; 
 "You are the man for whom we are sent, 
 Of Delaware Rebels the President; 
 Come with us or we run you through; 
 Prisoner of war to the King are you 1" 
 
 Scarcely clothed and upon a run 
 Down to the river at Wilmington, 
 Elbows tied and a gag in his throat, 
 John McKinly boarded a boat; 
 Tide and night zephyrs sped him away 
 To the captured port— Philadelphia. 
 
 "You are the type that aye do and dare, 
 Calvinist Irish of Delaware; 
 Take the oath to the 'King and go." 
 John McKinly answered him: "No." 
 "Be our guest till the King allow!" 
 Bowed politely General Howe. 
 
 So, a prisoner within bounds, 
 Worse than a soldier held by wounds, 
 John McKinly wearily led 
 A year all bordered by royalist red, 
 Pointed out from barrack and tent: 
 "Little Delaware's President," 
 
 Till to New York they made him range. 
 Lacking a governor to exchange, 
 Where a lady, saddened and fair, 
 Bowed to the captive of Delaware; 
 "I am the wife of Franklin's son, 
 Jersey's governor; there is but one." 
 
-t 
 
 2€ 
 
 "There are three that their mothers mock; 
 Both the Howejb are of !eman stock ! 
 Shall I exchange with a scion of shame, 
 Match his taint with my State and name ?" 
 "Be as kind as the Lord above 
 Who forgave the Magdalen's love. 
 
 "Far in London my heart he won, 
 Loyal courtier and Franklin's son; 
 Not till he told me his father's rove 
 Did I pity the man and love. 
 Losing his father, too, in the strife, 
 I am his holiest tie — his wife ! 
 
 "From his palace they bore him far 
 Ere there was rupture or legal war; 
 O, Americans I why unkind ? 
 I am the prisoner left behind; 
 Governor, hear a poor widow's cry, 
 Give back my husband, or ere I die 1" 
 
 "I will repeat thy tender prayer 
 To the statesmen of Delaware; 
 They the Congress will ask to free 
 Governor Franklin in place of me," 
 "Haste, oh, haste ! for my grief is fate; 
 He may come when it is too late 1" 
 
 Long were Franklin and wife estranged; 
 He and McKinly hands exchanged; 
 "Franklin, my friend," said McKinly, low, 
 "Come to thy lady who loved thee so." 
 "O, my God I Is it as I fear ?" 
 Lady Franklin was on her bier. 
 
 iNote. — The brothers Howe were descended from the German mis- 
 tress of George L John Vining is quoted as tracing Governor William 
 Franklin to a German redemptioner mother. Lady Franklin has a tablet 
 in St. Paul's Church, New York, attributing her death to grief for her 
 captured husband.] 
 
27 
 
 ALLAN M'LANE'S TROOP. 
 
 Stand by to the whistle ! our bivouac's done; 
 We'll raid on the Schuylkill e'er twinkles the sun. 
 We'll drive in the pickets and tinder their grain — 
 Give way to the troopers of Allan McLane ! 
 
 The creeks they are many that run to the tide. 
 And each is a roadway to ride and to hide; 
 We know every ford e'er the city we gain, 
 Dark fights for the troopers of Allan McLane. 
 
 The foragers think they are safe in our realms, 
 But safer the sabres that topple their helms; 
 Attend to the whistle — we strike at the main 
 The flank and the van, shouting: "Allan McLane I" 
 
 How rages Sir William our sport to allow, 
 And gray grow the whiskers of Admiral Howe; 
 They thought Philadelphia tamely to rein, 
 But wild are the horsemen of Allan McLane. 
 
 Take note to our helmets of leather and brass; 
 Can you reckon our number as serried we pass ? 
 The fog and the snow are our guidons and skein, 
 "We're ambushed by tempests," says Allan McLane. 
 
 We're safe in the marsh where the muskrat can move, 
 We're hid in the quarry the foxes can prove, 
 Pulaski's horse scattered, Paoli breaks Wayne, 
 There's left mounted men only Allan McLane. 
 
 The Quakers take pay for their poultry and calves, 
 The Jerseyman trades for his fish and bivalves, 
 Like the Eagle the fish hawk that strikes with his gain. 
 We swoop on the prey, shouting "Allan McLane 1" 
 
 We swim o'er the river, we charge down the streets, 
 We draw the broadsides from the fort and the fleets; 
 The chevaux de frise opens wide as the plain 
 As we leap o'er its spikes, cheering Allan McLane. 
 
28 
 
 Far off Perkiomen and Skippack we trail, 
 But the Brandywine flanks farther out in the vale; 
 We shall pester Bill Howe till we sunder his chain 
 On the Delaware River with Allan McLane. 
 
 The dark Wissahickon, Tacony we tread, 
 We flank around Darby and Germantown dead, 
 Our pistols are trained on the Anspacher's brain, 
 Like beaks of the gamecocks of Allan McLane. 
 
 The camps they turn out in the snow-drifted gorge, 
 The drums beat our welcome unto Valley Forge, 
 As, seeing the Hessian fish caught in our seine. 
 The flags on the tents dip to Allan McLane. 
 
 Stand by to the whistle 1 Mount 1 Squadrons awheel ! 
 How moonlight drinks health on the blades of our steel. 
 See, from the high comb, how the river-like grain 
 Stands up for the reapers of Allan McLane ! 
 
 MARCUS HOOK. 
 
 Above the Market stood the School 
 
 On pillars brick to have it cool, 
 
 A stair went steep, outside the stalls, 
 
 Where climbed the girls in hoods and shawls, 
 
 A market there was never told. 
 
 We played like calves they might have sold. 
 
 Some said a Fair of old forsook 
 
 The market school of Marcus Hook. 
 
 Still was a Fair beholden there: 
 
 The fishers' girls were always fair; 
 
 To learn their spells they swung their feet 
 
 Beneath the bench the boys to vex, 
 
 Their country shoulders bare to meet 
 
 The swaying freedom of their necks. 
 
29 
 
 We knew not what they sought to give. 
 But learned them quite intuitive; 
 No other lessons gave us dreams 
 Of what we could not understand, 
 Of pliant feet and fleshen gleams, 
 And captive forms in fairyland, 
 Like buds upon the balsam tree 
 Nature was sprouting puberty. 
 The book of life the only book 
 Our heads bore far from Marcus Hook. 
 
 In those bright days the girls wore curls 
 And mothers made for boys their caps, 
 We fought them if the bigger girls 
 Us little boys pulled in their laps; 
 But now that we have laps to give, 
 No such big girls appear to live. 
 To name our beaux would sorely vex 
 The independence of our sex. 
 Down in the market from the piers 
 "Puss in the corner" with the dears 
 We played, till called by bell to book, 
 And romped up stairs at Marcus Hook. 
 
 We fished the creek, for perch at will, 
 Through winding turns to Trainer's mill, 
 Dewberries black, blackberries red 
 Our vagrant luck when tired fed; 
 We saw the farmer and the sailor 
 Banners parade for General Taylor, 
 On his white horse in cannon's rattle. 
 As at Buena Vista battle. 
 
 Two stores the street at river stept — 
 Bunting's and Fithian's they kept, 
 The river sloops and schooners floated; 
 For Hook's best life, was ever boated; 
 The field they reaped of silver grain, 
 Shed shad to sparkle in the seine; 
 We salted these and packed them strong 
 
30 
 
 For breakfasts all the winter long. 
 
 O, what a time at new boat's launching 
 
 To slide down ways when slipped the stanching 
 
 And cheer the name the captain petted 
 
 The girl who knit his socks and netted; 
 
 She was his mate and crew and cook 
 
 Sailing all night off Marcus Hook. 
 
 Out on the flood the fishers' lights 
 Moved planet-like the mystic nights, 
 And when they vanished fishwives said 
 The ghost was come, the skipper dead. 
 
 Beyond the railway heights surveyed 
 The little port of ancient trade; 
 The daily steamboat to the mart, 
 The long wharf lined with wain and cart. 
 Well back the post road was deserted, 
 In times Colonial travel-girted; 
 As far old Chester was to go 
 As Wilmington or Swedesboro. 
 
 Sour marshes lined the river front 
 Except the headland of Claymont, 
 And only reed birds swarmed to look 
 At sylvan Penn's Dutch Marty's Hook; 
 As far away this sleepy nook 
 As county court from Marcus Hook. 
 The brimming river's life partook, 
 As from Hook creek, of Marcus Hook. 
 
31 
 
 BULLY RISING. 
 
 The Swedes and Dutch had neighbor forts 
 
 And lived in peace surprising, 
 Till Bully Rising looked for torts 
 
 His self-esteem arising — 
 Rising ! 
 Quoth he: "These Dutch do hold our ports, 
 
 Their style is worse than pizing, 
 I'll show some snorts, I'll bust their courts, 
 
 Sure as my name is Rising 1" 
 
 Pete Stuyvesant lived on Oyster Bay, 
 
 Engaged in snuff and clamming; 
 He thought the Swedes were good fair play, 
 
 The Dutch plain Amsterdamming, 
 Damn-ing 1 
 A courier came. "There's hell to play. 
 
 The Goths have been a lamming. 
 And sneaked your t'other leg away. 
 
 And downed your flag, a'dramming — 
 Flim-flamming 1" 
 
 While Peter got his carvels up 
 
 And felt his dander rising. 
 The Swede he slipped his belly crup 
 
 And did great patronizing. 
 He, pinted every office pup, 
 He sold squaw rights from Hoor Kill up, 
 
 He taxed the advertising — 
 Says he: "I'll overflow my cup 
 
 And hear no more advising" — 
 (Yeast rising.) 
 
 Till one day fore New Castle came 
 
 Three ships with Du Pont powder: 
 
 They fired broadsides full of flame. 
 But Peter's cuss was louder — 
 (O, chowder 1) 
 
32 
 
 They disembarked, their cannon parked, 
 Than Rising they were prouder, 
 
 And Peter's teeth were out of sheath. 
 His moustache rowdy-rowder, 
 
 "The whole State-General are ye, 
 O, coward 1 O, cowarder I" 
 
 They put Sir Rising up for sale, 
 
 To Barbadoes they sold him. 
 He picked the hemp within the jail, 
 He hoed tobacco big as kale, 
 
 Swedeland no more enrolled him, 
 To hold him; 
 His bandy legs parenthesized, ' 
 
 His Punch's paunch despiskl4^4^gf^ y 
 Quoth he: "How am I cathechized 
 
 And down when I was rising — 
 O, Rising 1" 
 
 OLD NEWPORT. 
 
 Newport, now sunk in gabled brick. 
 Long led Christine in movements quick, 
 Behind New Castle's brews and stills. 
 And head port to the Pennish hills. 
 
 There came Far Downers, full of fight. 
 To tackle England's shallow might. 
 And halt upon the willow greens 
 King George's spies and go-betweens. 
 
 Flanked by the long Peninsula, 
 The Mainland like New England lay. 
 Where stretched Long Island level, far 
 Along the line of Northern war. 
 
33 
 
 Yorktown within this crescent shone, 
 Where closed the strain on Washington, 
 And Howe went round this marshy line 
 To break our spine at Brandywine. 
 
 Firm in the hills above the neck 
 The Ulster men the Quakers check. 
 And close the entrance, like a door. 
 To flank us by the Eastern Shore. 
 
 These were the men of sleepless will 
 Who struck King James from Enniskill, 
 Grandsons of them that Penn forfends 
 Between the savage and the Friends. 
 
 And on this foreland none were seen 
 To think as far as Tom McKean — 
 Man of the hills, first to oppose 
 All England with his rock of nose. 
 
 He stood astride of Newport there 
 On Penn's firm land and Delaware, 
 And only Independence saw 
 For God's elect and People's law. 
 
 No passing grievance cold he fanned, 
 But was the King of Ireland, 
 Restoring, past the ocean's flow. 
 The crown of Swift and Molyneux. 
 
 Old Newport, may thy story close 
 In briar and perfume, like the rose; 
 As ope from thee the creeks of clay. 
 Red, White and stiff with life, alway. 
 
34 
 
 NEW CASTLE. 
 
 New Castle I old for us, so new 
 And old and polyglotted then, 
 When seisin plucked by William Penn 
 He witnessed from thy turf and dew ! 
 Almost alone on firm ground standing, 
 Within thy piers the nations landing. 
 Have drunk thy floody river's view. 
 
 Thy legends fade in pavement grass 
 As if they stretched from Holland towns. 
 And through thy tippling boors and clowns 
 We see the Schouts of Anstel pass. 
 Thy Swedish fort we are regarding 
 And Dutch and English ships bombarding: 
 Then, sold to slavery man and lass. 
 
 Talbots and Utyes, Marylanders, 
 Ride in thy market place to swagger, 
 But never meet their favorite dagger 
 Among thy tranquil, boozed commanders; 
 More beer than blood thy streets were spilling, 
 And never was there higher killing 
 
 Than New Year ducks and geese and ganders. 
 
 Tobacco for New Amsterdams 
 And market for thy trappers' skins, 
 Thy great seines sparkled with the fins 
 Of shining shad, and eels and clams; 
 The fishwives crowd to scale and salting, 
 Thy barley ground to brew when malting. 
 And pipe-smoke cured the borough hams. 
 
 So still the streets, the court in session 
 Seemed Sunday with one sleepy preaching. 
 There never was an age when peaching 
 And drying peaches knew regression. 
 Tobacco smoke forever floated; 
 Lovemaking in the night was boated. 
 
 And sounds of smacks were its confession. 
 
35 
 
 The pillory and stocks, long standing, 
 Made all the culprits used to whipping, 
 'Twas over soon, like jacket-stripping, 
 And no hard feelings left, like branding. 
 There never was an hour when singing 
 From jail was not a little ringing. 
 
 Unless the hangman's noose was banding 
 
 The higher law brought mental pleasure, 
 Reads, Grays and Bayards higher faces. 
 And Clayton argued higher cases 
 That in the old burgh left some treasure. 
 Bright women came to cultured spouses. 
 Society had better houses. 
 
 New Castle found a golden leisure. 
 
 The British took our British deedings 
 To lodge them long and keep them better, 
 Or till we broke the red coat fetter 
 And wiped away their special pleadings. 
 Then negro sales ruled, till the nation 
 Heard Lincoln call Emancipation; 
 
 No more black-letter were our readings. 
 
 The cars across the portage started, 
 Two centuries after 'twas a place, 
 And passengers sedately carted; 
 Almost the cows might with them race. 
 Then Wilmington struck up its wassail 
 And met its bells with tired New Castle— 
 The tortoise with the hare may chase. 
 
^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 36 
 
 DU PONT DE NEMOURS. 
 
 1817. 
 
 "With th^se long locks pushed from his brain 
 And sturdy length leaned on a cane, 
 What old man stands to hear the prayer 
 Lawmakers bless in Delaware ? 
 
 "It is au Pont, beside his son — 
 Our member new from Wilmington, 
 Who grinds gunpowder willowy fine 
 In marshes of the Brandywine. 
 
 "Does that old man make powder, too ?" 
 "Out of his brain explosion blew 
 Till Revolution had expanse 
 World-wide from his upheaving France ! 
 
 "His ammunition was no less 
 Than leaden type and printing press; 
 He taught the French for wealth to look 
 Below the Court and with a Book. 
 
 "Banished by Church and State, he yet 
 Redeemed the realm from waste and debt, 
 Fought back the mob from King and Queen 
 And faced oft-times, the guillotine. 
 
 "Senate, Assembly, heights of State. 
 He did preside and moderate. 
 Till military glory won. 
 And rose and fell Napoleon. 
 
 "Turgot, Vergennes, Voltaire could cull 
 Effulgent vapor from his skull 
 And Empire listen at his knee 
 To Plenty's new Economy. 
 
;^ 
 
 37 
 
 "Our Independence felt his hand, 
 Louisiana made our land; 
 Then France, America, grown great, 
 He came to die within our State. 
 
 "In his old brain more pageants cram 
 Than Moses saw or Abraham. 
 Yet his posterity may look 
 Upon more sights than he forsook. 
 
 "As Archimedes could uplift — 
 Had his fulcrum a place to shift — 
 Our little State can hoist our sphere 
 Charged by ^u Pont, the Cannoneer." 
 
 Grow like a lily and increase. 
 Old France's gift of Fleur de Lys 1 
 And bear to later times thy fronds 
 To bloom upon our river ponds 1 
 
 THE LOST LATITUDE. 
 
 Where Naaman's Creek comes foaming, 
 
 Like wolves with shaggy hair, 
 To leap down to the loaming 
 
 And lap the Delaware, 
 A band of men as hoary 
 
 Came in the olden days 
 Down o'er the promontory, 
 
 A boundary to blaze. 
 
 Savage and renegado. 
 
 They toilsome oped a path 
 
 As if a straight tornado 
 
 Had hurled its bolt of wrath 
 
38 
 
 From far off Susquehannock 
 New Netherlands to smite, 
 
 And for the Lords of Calvert 
 Hew antecedent right. 
 
 Their leader was a gallant, 
 
 A hawk was on his wrist; 
 Valor had he, and talent 
 
 To make and hold a tryst — 
 The panther of the border, 
 
 His word and wish were law 
 He loved increase and order. 
 
 And also, usquebaugh.* 
 
 "I, Talbot, Lord-Lieutenant— 
 
 Kin to my Lord, as well — 
 Here plant his baron's pennant 
 
 And claim this parallel 
 To be his northern bounding — 
 
 Deed in King Charles's hand: 
 Now, trumpet ! give a sounding 1 
 
 And 'God save Maryland' !" 
 
 A Dutchman's voice, called leisure, 
 
 Considerately meant: 
 "Thy parallel to measure 
 
 Hast thou no instrument ?" 
 "No, save this cross and martyr 
 
 Relics that here I plant; 
 Possession's next to charter. 
 
 Priority is grant. 
 
 "Christine's the port I covet, 
 
 No higher need I go; 
 The only ports above it 
 
 Uplandt and Weccacoe." 
 "Stand on thy Charter's number 
 
 And its degree attent. 
 Nor thy dimensions cumber 
 
 Without an Instrument." 
 
39 
 
 "Ha ! ha !" George Talbot wondered 
 
 If Penn were shrewd as he, 
 "His province I have plundered 
 
 Of nearly a degree 1" 
 So common view contended, 
 
 Wherever folk would speak, 
 That Maryland ascended 
 
 High up as Naaman's Creek. 
 
 And thinking all were vassal 
 
 Within that line, hewn sly, 
 The Utys claimed New Castle 
 
 And drunk the breweries dry; 
 While Penn's men, up the river. 
 
 Almost as Moses meek. 
 Disputed not a stiver 
 
 Of rights past Naaman's Creek. 
 
 They grew a city splendid. 
 
 With channels to th^ sea 
 And Calvert's province rended 
 
 Within his chart's degree; 
 And Naaman's Creek they stood by, 
 
 When, all too late, was sent, 
 To measure Latitude by 
 
 A Yankee Instrument. 
 
 "Now, Philadelphians! hark ye 1" 
 
 (High rose his bugle's swell) 
 "The King's surveyors mark ye 
 
 Far in our parallel ! 
 Ye build on Calvert's acres — 
 
 I summon ye to speak !" 
 Loud laughed the shad-like Quakers — 
 
 "Thee summoned Naaman's Creek 
 
 The Duke of York to Penn sold 
 The strip that claim inpent, 
 
 And Calvert was again sold 
 Lacking an Instrument. 
 
40 
 
 In Chancery 'twas purveyed 
 So long it grew antique, 
 
 Mason and Dixon surveyed 
 
 The slash to Naainan's Creek. 
 
 *Usquebaugh — Irish whisky. 
 
 [Note. — Philadelphia lies within the original charter of Maryland. This was 
 not proved until after Colonel George Talbot had blazed a path from the Octorara 
 to Naaman's Creek. "In September, 1683, Lord Baltimore commissioned Colonel 
 George Talbot to repair forthwith to the Schuylkill at Delaware and in my name to 
 demand of William Penn, Esquire, or his deputy, all that part of the land on the west 
 side of that river that lyeth south of the 40th degree, north latitude." — Young's 
 "Memorial History of Philadelphia." 
 
 Talbot strained his guesswork boundary to stretch, as he supposed, north of the 
 40th degree. Penn held him to it, confused the issues, bought the water front, now 
 Delaware State, from the Duke of York's conquest, and Maryland was pushed back 
 and down to the tangent angle, as we now see it.l 
 
 BAD AT NEWARK. 
 
 1852-1854. 
 
 Sixty years my cup are brimming 
 
 Since at Newark I was faring; 
 There I learned some skating, swimming, 
 
 And perhaps a little swearing; 
 There I dreamed some small girl winning, 
 
 Though afraid to see her squinting — 
 It was puberty beginning 
 
 Like the bushes' early tinting. 
 
 Ever truant, heart is turning, 
 
 Ever wayward, fancy flighting, 
 White Clay Creek was more than learning 
 
 And the Playhouse best for fighting; 
 In the old annex we stumbled 
 
 When its one banjo was started, 
 Up the tavern fence we tumbled 
 
 When the equine nuptials started. 
 
41 
 
 Tower the northern hills with high lights, 
 
 Storm clouds o'er our level staples; 
 Students, townfolks, in the twilights 
 
 Make low whispers, like our maples. 
 Two wires, like the reins on horses, 
 
 Through the still street, roosting sparrows. 
 Guide the telegraph of Morse's 
 
 Like dead Indians' bows and arrows. 
 
 How amid good boys' derision 
 
 On a fence rail he was crated 
 When some son of Abolition 
 
 Slavery would have debated 1 
 College seniors quick at figures. 
 
 Patriotic in their sporting, 
 Fought free-fisted, free-State niggers. 
 
 If they crossed the line a-courting. 
 
 Who could study when fox hunting 
 
 Back of Herdman's hostel sounded ? 
 Or, Commencement time confronting. 
 
 Young divines each other pounded ? 
 College widows, chancing lesser 
 
 As, the mellow Annos hastened, 
 Wed at last some old professor. 
 
 With the world's perspective chastened. 
 
 Nothing happened but a tipsy 
 
 Scion frequently suspended. 
 Or encamped nearby a gipsy 
 
 Fortune teller, nymphs attended; 
 Days went on with scarce a caper 
 
 As our paper mill, the hummer. 
 Folded down the sheets of paper 
 
 Like the white days before summer. 
 
 At the railroad, past our seeing, 
 Great events went past a-flying; 
 
 Locomotives flagged for being, 
 
 Craped for statesmen lately dying; 
 
42 
 
 There a Misses' seminary 
 
 Our gallants gave oft a rumpus, 
 Passing notes of tender query, 
 
 Fluttering heartstrings like a compass. 
 
 And the Tangent Stone to poet 
 
 Seemed so mystic, we agree 
 Somebody interr'd below it 
 
 Made the devil's boundary; 
 Shakespeare's mill the miller knew not 
 
 He of Shakespeare was an heir; 
 Theatres the jurists do not 
 
 Let perform in Delaware 1 
 
 Yet, from this want of ideal 
 
 And these instincts, hard and blind, 
 Teachers patient, earnest, real. 
 
 Slowly formed the lines of Mind; 
 And great public schools attending 
 
 In great cities, yet to be, 
 Newark boys had long a mending 
 
 From the old Shoe Factory 1 
 
 IRON HILL. 
 
 Yon blue plateau to all seems low, 
 Whose minds some mountain fills, 
 Except us there in Delaware, 
 Who ne'er saw higher hills; 
 At Newark's old academy. 
 It almost shook our will. 
 To walk so far and scale that bar 
 The dome of Iron Hill. 
 
43 
 
 On holidays we saw the haze 
 
 Around its woodlands lie; 
 
 To climb those goals, our level souls 
 
 Seemed tempting destiny; 
 
 The lesser boys they cease their noise 
 
 And hold their laughter still, 
 
 To come more near those heights of fear 
 
 On shaggy Iron hill. 
 
 Beneath its head the iron, red. 
 
 Of ancient ore banks stood, 
 
 Where goblin Swedes their evil deeds 
 
 Revealed in stains of blood; 
 
 Their metal arts our country hearts 
 
 Uncanny thought and ill,— 
 
 From murdered man the oxides ran 
 
 That tinctured Iron hill! 
 
 The tombs we search at old Welsh church 
 
 That guards the cairn's ascent; 
 
 In Cymric writ, those stones of grit 
 
 Increase our fear's ferment: 
 
 Beneath, the dead, above blood-red !— 
 
 The lonely wood paths thrill 
 
 Our ghost awed wits; the old ore pits 
 
 Seem graves on Iron Hill! 
 
 We think we see from some tall tree, 
 
 The blue-veined landscapes, where 
 
 One far-off streak is Chesapeake, 
 
 Another Delaware; 
 
 Their long white length this knoll has strength 
 
 To sunder by its will; 
 
 It disarrays those mighty bays 
 
 The wand of Iron hill. 
 
 In those small years, upon such fears 
 
 My fancy learned to thrill. 
 
 An elevation on me lay, — 
 
 The swell of Iron Hill. 
 
 The misty moods of altitudes, 
 
 Romance's glow and chill; 
 
 And not more high Mount Sinai 
 
 To me, than Iron Hill. 
 
44 
 
 THE TANGENT STONE. 
 
 (Near Newark Station.) 
 
 "What are you hunting out there alone ?" 
 "I'm hunting, Ellen, the Tangent Stone." 
 "O, what a trouble, Ollie, you take — 
 I thought you were going to kill a snake." 
 
 "I have found it, Ellen; I thought it flown; 
 'Tis in the same place, the Tangent Stone. 
 Sit here with me where the two stones clink; 
 You keep right still while I try to think." 
 
 "O, I would rather be called your own 
 Than have you study the Tangent Stone; 
 Tis only a landmark old as the pine 
 They have surveyed on the Boundary Line." 
 
 "Yes, Ellen, the circle here cuts the square. 
 But squaring the circle was long a care; 
 Come meet me here at the mystic zone 
 Where the Compass kissed on the Tangent Stone 
 
 And there oft Ellen found Ollie alone, 
 Trying to fathom the Tangent Stone, 
 The college boys they called him daft, 
 But Ellen at Ollie she never laughed. 
 
 In mathematics his mind was grown, 
 Worshipping arcs at the Tangent Stone, 
 Till in the Heaven he came to be 
 A priest of the spheres' geometry. 
 
 The stars to him in the millions sown 
 Reached kindly light at the Tangent Stone; 
 "Lead, Kindly Light ! Let me understand I" 
 He held to the earth by Ellen's hand. 
 
45 
 
 His fame went round where the Planet men 
 Roved in the night through the starry fen, 
 With Copernik, Galileo known, 
 He compassed their lore from the Tangent Stone. 
 
 "O, I am forgot in your learned tryst 1 
 
 So wide your circle, can I be kissed ?" 
 
 "Love is the radius, Ellen, my own ! 
 
 Our lives touch God, like the Tangent Stone." 
 
 RALPH. 
 
 We were but three, and when he passed 
 I was the loneliest and last; 
 He was so fit for life and glee. 
 Why did they take him and not me? 
 He came from school among the girls, 
 His head hung round with chestnut curls. 
 And girl-like in his sense of dress. 
 Without our type of waywardness. 
 And grew, with boyhood spirit free, 
 To easy popularity. 
 
 From babyhood to birth again 
 He pleased the women like the men, 
 And every street and every mile 
 Cheered with the sunshine of his smile. 
 He had the eye disease would flee. 
 The nerve for coolest surgery; 
 Death felt his hand and juggled weak, 
 Twere hope and health to hear him speak; 
 Healers and doctors of his fame 
 Stood down when he, decisive, came; 
 At his footstep the sick attend 
 To greet the healer in the friend. 
 
46 
 
 The life of feats, of sports the star, 
 
 Tall, animated, muscular, 
 
 The bolt, descended from his birth, 
 
 Smote him, as in a night, to earth, 
 
 And not all lands, with balsam airs. 
 
 Could bring him back, more than our prayers. 
 
 At last he faced remorseless Death 
 In the cold mountains' winter breath, 
 And melted in his cabin's glow, 
 Like to a melting flake of snow. 
 
 He lies where did his heart incline — 
 Among the dead in Brandywine — 
 A story but a chapter read, 
 A poem thought, unfinished. 
 
 RACHEL. 
 
 (Delaware Gunner's Whistle) 
 
 Down in the marshes of the Christeen creek 
 Lives a littel reed bird on which I sneak, 
 She is so fat that she looks right short 
 But when she flies she is real good sport. 
 
 Rachel 1 Rachel 1 why don't you run ? 
 
 Don't you know, Rachel, I carry a gun ? 
 
 Rachel I Rachel 1 I love you the most. 
 
 If I could get you how you would toast 1 
 
 She has a nest on the Christeen creek; 
 Come to it softly and don't you speak I 
 Down in the reeds on the flood tide bog 
 I have a skiff and a pointer dog. 
 
 Rachel 1 Rachel I why don't you fly ? 
 
 When he sees Rachel the dog points shy. 
 
 Rachel I Rachel ! I tremble, too. 
 
 Loading my heart in my gun for you 1 
 
47 
 
 Soft are the stars in the Christeen creek 
 When in the evening my bird I seek, 
 Plump is her breast in her yellow gown 
 Soft is her plumage as reed bird down. 
 
 Rachel 1 Rachel ! why don't you tweet ? 
 
 When you know, Rachel, I could you eat ? 
 
 Rachel 1 Rachel 1 for you I gun, 
 
 I have my bag full when you are won 1 
 
 Like thorn hedges by the Christeen creek 
 Tinted with red is my reed bird's cheek. 
 Trim as the hedge tops her father clips 
 Are the soft lines to my sweet bird's lips. 
 Rachel 1 Rachel 1 why don't you come ? 
 Let me take Rachel to my own home 1 
 Rachel ! Rachel ! thou fat marsh chick, 
 How for my supper thy plushing would pick 
 
 Fall comes fast on the Christeen creek; 
 Soon I must migrate unless thou speak: 
 Dear little Quaker of frost bethink 1 
 I will be gone with the Bob-o-link. 
 
 Rachel 1 Rachel 1 why don't you wed ? 
 
 Winter, my Rachel 1 in my marsh bed ! 
 
 Rachel ! Rachel ! the wind blows bleak. 
 
 Fly to my boat on the Christeen creek 1 
 
 CINDERELL. 
 
 You will not see from the railroad ridge 
 The olden village of Christeen Bridge, 
 Nor hear from the remnant that there dwell 
 The fairy story of Cinderell. 
 She came from the days when the creek Christeen 
 The route of travel and freight had been 
 Twixt the Head of Elk and the busy North, 
 And daily packets and teams went forth. 
 
 A boatman then had cast his spell 
 
 On the fair young Springtime of Cinderell, 
 
48 
 
 And pledged his heart to her trusting hand, 
 But vanished lang syne in a foreign land. 
 
 A lady's age let us not reveal : 
 Steamboats had gone and the routes of steel 
 Left Christeen sleeping down in its dell, 
 With an old, old woman, Cinderell. 
 
 "My Prince will come for me some day I" 
 She cheerily said, as the years grew gray: 
 "Don't pity me 1 For I've done my part 
 And keep for him young my constant heart 1" 
 
 Her old house bent with the tooth of time. 
 But not the inmate with spirit prime; 
 "My Prince is coming a dance to claim! 
 There's a coach for me in my fairy name." 
 
 And travelers took for many a mile 
 That dear old witch's sunrise smile, 
 Which welcomed others on their approach, 
 Like the bright footmen of the Prince's coach. 
 
 She was left alone but she did not flinch, 
 Yielding her fire inch by inch, 
 Ripening sound, like a golden quince, 
 Ever looking to see her Prince. 
 
 He came at last with a noiseless wheel — 
 Golden coach of an automobile — 
 Outriders of grandchildren rode 
 Up to the dear old virgin's abode. 
 
 "Cinderell, I have kept my truth 
 Out of the ashes of time and youth: 
 These, your children, will love you still, 
 Come to your Prince in the last quadrille 1" 
 
 "I am ready and long have been; 
 
 Love still clings to the route Christeen. 
 
 Our old houses are falling down. 
 
 But Life is the coach and Love is the crown I' 
 
49 
 
 RED LION CAMP. 
 1854 
 
 Ere theatres the Law allowed, 
 Or seaside taverns caught the crowd, 
 The big Camp Meeting was the show 
 Where every summer we would go; 
 The tents all good believers had 
 Were waggoned to the hickory woods, 
 The tent poles and the circus goods 
 Brought out our chuckle and our bad — 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 We hear the horn a'blowing 
 "Behave boys, if you can." 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump I 
 (There is a god named Pan.) 
 
 Oh, happy Jews, by day who tramp 
 And every evening pitch a camp 
 Around the lumber preaching stand, 
 With choirs all singing like a band; 
 The people, like a river. 
 The benches overflow, 
 And twenty preachers in a row 
 Address the goodly Giver. 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 A tree frog's in the blowing, 
 "Behave boys, squat you be!" 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 "A squirrel's up this tree 1" 
 
 The huckster's with their cantaloupes 
 And watermelons past the ropes 
 See where the ice cream merchant slips 
 Two three-cent saucers for the fips. 
 We treat our girl, this morning known, 
 We blush with her at the advance; 
 Before the evening we could dance 
 If 'twar not wicked so to own — 
 
 ^,/L. 
 
50 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump I 
 "Beware or I'll among ye 
 My steward's cudgel bear." 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 "A yallow jacket stung me 
 When I was down at prayer." 
 
 Long tables set with cheese and ham, 
 Butter and biscuit, pork and lamb, 
 When down the benches brethren fare — 
 Like ten pin alleys played with prayer; 
 Each Church a tent and table keeps 
 Like the twelve tribes of Israel, 
 And when they ring the feeding bell 
 To the last sup the Bishop leaps. 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump I 
 The Millerites ascending, 
 "Behave boys, what a sight!" 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rumpl 
 "Flop down to get a bite." 
 
 "This tent of ours is empty now, 
 You do love candy, I'll allow. 
 And when 'tis in your mouth to eat, 
 It almost talks, you are so sweet. 
 O, hear that martin bird that sings 
 As if it saw me look at you 
 And from my happiness it knew 
 I would, like it, have song and wings." 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rumpl 
 "Is it we two he's chiding ? 
 His business let him mind!" 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 Love is more deep than blind. 
 
 The mourners for their sins do moan, 
 
 While we no such conviction own, 
 
 But in hallucination bide. 
 
 As happy as the sanctified. 
 
 They shout "forgiven;" they sing so wild 
 
51 
 
 The oak trees scared in wonder move, 
 While our young hearts, just told of love, 
 Swell in the pauses, like a child. 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 The woodlands shriek the glory, 
 We two hushed like the birds, 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 Still eyes are full of words. 
 
 '•Night preaching's past: let us be pent 
 In big Asbury's crowded tent, 
 Set in the straw and whisper fibs 
 And dig each other in the ribs; 
 How kindly dull the whale oil lamps! 
 In our last row they cannot see; 
 Will you sometimes think nice of me. 
 The boy that loved you in the camps ?" 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 "Behave 1" "One kiss 1" "Just one 1" 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 "This next is just for fun I" 
 
 When all the week is o'er at last 
 And woods are still and camp is past, 
 What is left over to enjoy ? 
 Some love of God ; some love of boy. 
 Do they not meet when we are dead 
 And in high heaven the woodlands grow ? 
 I seek the empty camp and know 
 There are revivals overhead. 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 My Dryad love she beckons — 
 Behave, old heart I you must ! 
 
 Ter rump-rump-rump; ter rump! 
 That trump will blow, I trust ! 
 
 
52 
 THE OLD CANAL. 
 
 I learned to read I know not when 
 
 Along the marshy marges, 
 Where, through the o'erflowed feeder moved 
 
 The masted sloops and barges; 
 And like a cup the lock drank up 
 
 Propellers slowly steaming, 
 That churned anew their mystic screw 
 
 Upon the river screaming. 
 
 The pivot bridges slowly shut, 
 
 The high canal a'passing 
 That in its leaks each negro hut 
 
 In shining sky was glassing; 
 And from the moist ground sunflowers broke 
 
 O'erripe, the patchess eeding, 
 And red as blood, the clumps of poke 
 
 The yellow birds were feeding. 
 
 How loved the birds in twittering flocks 
 
 The cat-tails' bursting riches ! 
 How cooled the broad, green splutterdocks 
 
 The turtles in the ditches 1 
 The milk-white lilies sucked the pools. 
 
 Part bud and partly fruiting, 
 The minnows flashed in silver schools 
 
 And every reed was fluting. 
 
 The snakes on little bridges slept 
 
 Or slided in the sluices 
 When near their noonday nap I stept. 
 
 And ran in fluttered ruses. 
 After long life this thought I take. 
 
 My last rest nearly nearing. 
 All beings bit me but a snake. 
 
 And still of snakes I'm fearing. 
 
63 
 
 How solid seem those distant farms 
 
 Beside tiie mirage river, 
 Where orchard trees uplift their arms, 
 
 While hitherward a'quiver 
 The blue kingfisher wings the drain, 
 
 The fish hawk guards his eyrie. 
 And on his stilts the dripping crane 
 
 Stalks, skeleton and wiry. 
 
 The wide land seems to me a float, 
 
 Except my causeway sunning, 
 And through the reed bird clouds some boat 
 
 Pole hidden men a' gunning. 
 The golden bugs they fret me warm, 
 
 My little feet are naked; 
 I see at last my father's farm. 
 By two tall poplars staked. 
 
 The coon limped past me like a dog 
 
 And climbed a copse to see me, 
 The groundhog rolled beneath a log 
 
 While I went past him, dreamy; 
 Those meadow larks all day I trailed, 
 
 They ever found a cover. 
 The coveys of the quail aye quailed 
 
 When I shot high and over. 
 
 Dear vagrant days ! Their food I feel 
 
 At life's ebb latest going, 
 Like to the small sandsnipes that wheel 
 
 To give their plumage growing; 
 We waste no time in youth's stray spells 
 
 But store away each feature, 
 Like to the heart's uncounted swells 
 
 Which strengthen all our nature. 
 
 My girl's name on the beechen rind 
 
 Of woodlands overflooded 
 1 cut, and oft looked back behind 
 
 To see what it foreboded; 
 
54 
 
 When ice the muskrats prisoned in 
 We went for them a'spearing, 
 
 And shot the wild fowl, flying thin 
 Across the leafless clearing. 
 
 How mellow, down the blue lagoon, 
 
 The bands of music sounded. 
 Banging the grand election tune 
 
 When Taylor's fame was rounded; 
 And Clayton, on the towpath crest, 
 
 Of Bweena Vista telling, 
 Pulled down the glory— and his vest — 
 
 With every patriot yelling. 
 
 O, never in this world I shall 
 
 Behold such long suspenders, 
 (Like towlines on the new canal,) 
 
 Expanding battle splendors; 
 They locked him down the Capitol, 
 
 A statesman of the nation. 
 Who plotted from this small canal 
 
 The Isthmian transformation. 
 
 In these bulrushes Bulwer saw— 
 
 With Clayton, treaty-making — 
 The far-off Strait of Panama 
 
 The rival oceans breaking; 
 And from this small canal they put 
 
 The future, hostage deeding, 
 To lock the high Culebra cut, 
 
 With Chagres River feeding. 
 
 The infant feats of Hercules 
 
 His mighty labors sample. 
 He rives the high Hesperides, 
 
 He rises by example; 
 Not laws alone make mighty States, 
 
 In neighbor Works they smoulder — 
 Till yield the globe's eternal gates 
 
 Unto the baby's shoulder. 
 
55 
 
 Once, to my fear, the Buck Bridge gorge 
 
 Was like a Roman labor 
 And streamed the lock of small St. George, 
 
 Niagara's greater neighbor; 
 Now, like a child the old canal 
 
 Has grown more small by ageing, 
 And like a brook or highland dall. 
 
 It shrinks away by raging. 
 
 Yet carries it the shaft of steam. 
 
 The engines dip at stations. 
 And is the Lurlei in a stream 
 
 And rainbow bridging nations; 
 The railway path's a Midas toy 
 
 Whereon the schemers revel, 
 The oceans are the orb's long joy 
 
 And flow in light's own level. 
 
 Ah ! childhood lures me back no more 
 
 To siPs Colonial-dated, 
 When men clung to the Ocean shore, 
 
 On bars peninsulated. 
 Few were the things so well we knew 
 
 And life-long they abided; 
 Upon the world's last slime I grew, 
 
 Before the floods subsided. 
 
 Now in the fens a mighty fort. 
 
 By the Canal ramparted, 
 To the horizon shrieks retort, 
 
 Its cannon thunder-hearted; 
 Down the long bar the engine fumes, 
 
 New York to Norfolk spriting, 
 One energy three States consumes, 
 
 The Dutchman's empire slighting. 
 
 Long past, a little railroad, set 
 
 On sills of stone its wicket, 
 The old canal is flowing yet, 
 
 The railroad's but a thicket; 
 And when the waters find their room, 
 
 Our minds not torn asunder. 
 By still canals we shall resume 
 
 And voyage where we thunder. 
 
56 
 
 BUCK BRIDGE. 
 
 O, Summit Bridge! 
 
 The highest ridge 
 
 Thou leapest the canal o'er, 
 
 Like to a buck 
 
 In springtime pluck 
 
 Leaping in Love's bold valour ! 
 
 Deep down we looked, 
 
 While Stella shooked 
 
 At vessel and propeller, 
 
 And said: "O, high 
 
 As in the sky!" — 
 
 Then Stella looked real stellar. 
 
 The peach vans past 
 
 And o'er us cast 
 
 A scent like love's first breathing. 
 
 Or first child's milk 
 
 In bosom's silk. 
 
 Its dream disturbed by teething. 
 
 And each to each 
 
 We bit the peach 
 
 Of our dear partner's beauty, 
 
 Life's gorge above 
 
 In trusting love. 
 
 And youth's possession fruity. 
 
 Like Life's bright ray. 
 
 Perspective lay 
 
 The stream to locks descending 
 
 On either Bay, 
 
 Like our lives' way, 
 
 Commingling till their ending. 
 
 Long levels lie 
 
 In our By and By, 
 
 Deep down may descend our plummet, 
 
 But our love the first. 
 
 And the first babe nursed. 
 
 Are the high bridge over the Summit. 
 
57 
 PALLAS AND VENUS. 
 
 The Pea Patch Island gems the throat 
 
 Of Delaware, whose bosom, then, 
 Swells many a yarded ship and boat 
 
 Past ocean beaches of Port Penn, 
 Where came a tired boy to swim 
 
 In summer, by the still hotel. 
 And hid him in the sedgy rim. 
 
 Lest some disaster him befell. 
 
 A maiden came, her limbs to swathe; 
 
 Alone she walked into the bay. 
 The boy then ventured in to bathe 
 
 And close behind the damsel play. 
 She was so prim she spied not him, 
 
 Her form her clinging garments hid, 
 And, unrevealed each lengthened limb, 
 
 Her mild eye lifted scarce its lid. 
 
 He heard her sigh: "Some one to love I 
 
 I am heart-hungry, lacking one: 
 'Tender affections in me move; 
 
 I would, by one unloved, be won I" 
 Then, turned her face, the boy she saw, 
 
 Blushed like the peaches ripening by, 
 He thought her plain and he, so raw, 
 
 He also blushed, nor made reply. 
 
 Something admiring in her look 
 
 Suffused the boy with flushed respect. 
 As if he read some serious book 
 
 That turned his heart to intellect. 
 The dear occasion tarried by; 
 
 Almost their courage broke their spell; 
 She looked him full with loving eye — 
 
 Then vanished in the still hotel. 
 
58 
 
 Down to the beach a rainbow came 
 
 That flashed a spectrum full of dyes 
 All clothed with coquetry and flame 
 
 And dazzled in the bather's eyes; 
 "Come I bathe me, boy I the bay is drear, 
 
 Unless thou float me like my beau I 
 My name is Venus: never fear 1 
 
 And never from me canst thou go." 
 
 Upon his hand she languorous lay, 
 
 The sunny surf inspired their blood, 
 Her dark eyes tender lightnings play. 
 
 Her spring time form was in its bud; 
 His soul matured into its noon: 
 
 Calm evening came not in his life 
 With patient vigil like the moon. 
 
 When Venus was the bather's wife. 
 
 THE STEAMBOATS. 
 (1843-49.) 
 
 I saw the steamboats ere the cars, 
 
 And pleasant in my fancy 
 The old Balloon, the Pioneer, 
 
 The Whilldin and Cohansy ! 
 Those were the years when books were dear 
 
 And therefore life-long treasured. 
 We read the long voyage with no care 
 
 And naps the chapters measured. 
 
 Down the companion-way bright feet 
 
 Above the page we took in» 
 Like illustrations painted meet 
 
 The beautiful new book in. 
 Sometimes a miss would with us speak, 
 
 Both timid, in old fashion; 
 We wondered at her blooming cheek. 
 
 The first sweet taste of passion. 
 
59 
 
 The open engine door us thrilled, 
 
 She shuddering my wrist on; 
 The walking beam, the furnace grilled. 
 
 The axle and the piston; 
 She bought the candy whilst we sat 
 
 The negro fiddlers jigging; 
 Her father was a Democrat, 
 
 And mine was slyly Whigging. 
 
 The pilot grinding of his wheel 
 
 We saw up there a'chewing; 
 The deckhand ever coiling rope, 
 
 The plank his mates were clewing; 
 And when some passenger was left 
 
 The long wharf hardly halfing, 
 And looked of every hope bereft, 
 
 We almost died of laughing. 
 
 Baskets of cherries made the freight 
 
 And chickens chilled in feathers, 
 Some lambs a'bleating in a crate 
 
 Accusing their bellwethers; 
 At Marcus Hook we took in shad, 
 
 At Pennsgrove peaches yellowed. 
 And at old Chester calves so bad 
 
 They pulled back and they bellowed. 
 
 O, how the coming city smoked ! 
 
 Its shot tower and its steeples ! 
 Its final pier by cabmen folked. 
 
 And nothing grew but peoples: 
 "Your tickets ready; step ashore I" 
 
 Where is my girl, that beamer ? 
 She's got already beaux galore. 
 
 O, how I loved that steamer I 
 
60 
 
 SWEDE AND INDIAN CANTICO. 
 
 1638 
 
 Little Minqua girl on the Christine kill 1 
 
 Go get your sisters five 
 And stand them here twixt the kill and the hill, 
 
 Till the boatswain pipes alive : 
 Then, whistle, my Jack ! and fiddle, Mynheer ! 
 
 Till the Minqua girl so neat. 
 Can not stand still for the little brown ear 
 That tells such tunes to her feet I 
 Then whistle, my Jack I and fiddle Mynheer I 
 
 And the brandy wine kag tip more I 
 The Minqua maid is my little brown deer — 
 The Swede man's happy ashore ! 
 
 The Kalmar Nyckel's a right fine ship, 
 
 The Vogel Gripen's fast. 
 But the Minqua girl has a cherry lip 
 And a lean like the vessel's mast; 
 Then whistle, my Jack I and fiddle. Mynheer ! 
 
 Till the Minqua girl so young. 
 Shall feel no man but the Swede man near. 
 And teach him the Minqua tongue I 
 Then whistle, my Jack 1 and fiddle. Mynheer I 
 
 And the brandy wine kag tip more ! 
 The Minqua maid is my little fawn deer — 
 The Swede man's happy ashore 1 
 
 I love our queen, the little Christine, 
 
 Nor Stockholm's lassies slur. 
 But the Minqua girl has the red doe's lean. 
 
 And the sleek of the beaver fur; 
 Then whistle, my Jack ! and fiddle. Mynheer I 
 
 Till we fire the Kalmar's gun 
 And the Minqua girl runs away with fear 
 In the woods where is venison ! 
 Then whistle, my Jack 1 and fiddle. Mynheer I 
 
 And the brandy wine kag tip more I 
 The Minqua maid is my little game deer — 
 The Swede man's happy ashore 1 
 
61 
 
 ADAM KING. 
 
 So noble that he made me wince 
 They sat beside me quite a Prince, 
 So tail, so clean, so fair a thing, 
 He filled the name of Adam King. 
 
 I hardly looked to see his face, 
 He made me bashful by his grace. 
 Behind that school desk's narrow stage 
 He seemed an eaglet in a cage. 
 
 His silence spoke like woman's charms. 
 But when he raised his voice and arms 
 In oratory, thrilled we dumb, 
 As if the son of Speech had come. 
 
 Beautiful friend, I followed far 
 Into the jaws of lengthened war I 
 He trode the ramparts as with wing, 
 The first, the fittest, Adam King I 
 
 In public life he filled the breach, 
 A help to statesman by his speech, 
 And rose to office with acclaim, 
 As golden as his kingly name. 
 
 If pleasure the pomegranite specked 
 Firm fruit his gracious intellect; 
 Not all the nation forth could bring 
 A speaker like our Adam King. 
 
 And when he died, a voice from far 
 Fell like the poet's voice of star; 
 O, idol of my childhood's lot, 
 Shall I go up and hear thee not ? 
 
62 
 
 THE BOOKHATER. 
 
 Tom Digges of Blackbird in the Poorhouse found 
 A pretty little foundling waiting to be "bound;" 
 "Maggie, I'm your master; on me when you look 
 Know me for a squire that never read a book I" 
 
 Maggie a goose feather stuck in Digges's hat: 
 "Master, I will know you by the sign of that; 
 All the fowls and horses and cattle by the brook 
 Are as great as you and never read a book." 
 
 Tommy liked the compliment and told it "thar" and "yer." 
 "Yer's an honest farmer, born in Delewer. 
 Them az books that's writed, give em to my cook ! 
 I'm a man of business and never read a book." 
 
 By the chimney fire, when the winter wails, 
 Maggie, growing pretty, told Tom pretty tales; 
 "Where you get em, Maggie ?" "From a book I took" — 
 "I'm a honest farmer and never read a book!" 
 
 Maggie grew to freedom and afar would rove; 
 "Maggie, do not leave me, dead am I in love." 
 Then the mules and bull calves bellowed as they shook: 
 "Tom Digges, the great man, never read a book I" 
 
 They then went to Lewes, as a ship in came; 
 "Master, can you read it, that great vessel's name ? 
 'Tis the name one taught me who his babe forsook." 
 "Danged if I can read it, printed like a book." 
 
 Down came the captain of the "Maggie Lost." 
 "You must be my father, to your daughter toss'd." 
 "Darling child, I 've found you. And is this your spook ?" 
 "I'm the chief," says Tommy, "that never read a book." 
 
 "You have time," says captain; "shipmates, take a look 
 On the one quadruped that never read a book 1" 
 Maggie sailed away, then. Tom, he shed more tears 
 Than the water confined in the sea wall's piers. 
 
63 
 
 Hard it was for Tommy late in life to read, 
 But he read the Bible at Love's greatest speed. 
 In a year the captain saw him shame-faced snook 
 Up the gang plank, pleading: "I have read a book." 
 
 "Blow the speaking trumpet ! Here's a sinner saved; 
 Come aboard, for Maggie pities you enslaved. 
 Fire the cannon, hearties, for a mate we've took, 
 Tom Digges, our shipmate, swears he read a book !" 
 
 BAYARD'S BLUE ROOSTER. 
 
 When Bayard long was pent, 
 Commissioner at Ghent, 
 
 To treat for peace with England, it seemed long. 
 Napoleon had been quelled. 
 And America beheld 
 
 Her enemies released, their armies strong: 
 "No Peace for Yankee ye, on circumference or sea. 
 We burnt your Capital and broke your Treasury; 
 Your cabinet has run; your invasions they are done — 
 
 We'll give you bellyfull before a Peace there'll be 1" 
 
 So Bayard took the lickin' — 
 His companion was a Chicken, 
 
 It looked as blue as Bayard, was as still; 
 It crowed no more at dawn, 
 Its appetite was gone, 
 
 That cock of Delaware was deadly ill. 
 "O, cock of Peter, trump ! and lift me from this dump I 
 You know the war I hated; I voted with the rump." 
 The Blue Hen's Chicken faltered. 
 It seemed a capon altered. 
 
 And it could neither tip-toe, nor stretch its neck, nor hump. 
 
64 
 
 McDonough left the main 
 To sail on Lake Champlain; 
 
 His ships he ranged at Plattsburg for defence. 
 Down came Sir George Prevo, 
 With Kanucks and Eskimo, 
 
 With Indians and regulars and tents. 
 His army partly beat, he signalled to his fleet: 
 "Go at him 1 Sink him ! Hull him! Tack and wear 1" 
 (McDonough drew his sap 
 From a huddle called The Trappe, 
 
 On a swell of wheaten plain in Delaware.) 
 
 The fleets they hid in smoke, 
 But all the British broke. 
 
 And when the fight was over, punk was the British oak; 
 They strewed the lake with spars. 
 Sir George Prevo, as Mars, 
 
 Back to his thin, snow country went faster than a poke. 
 
 No word had Bayard heard 
 When, at Ghent, his drooping bird 
 
 Took heart and crowed so often that the dead he might 
 have stirred; 
 In came the British treaters, 
 Like some penitent St. Peters, 
 
 And said, with much politeness: "Well, Peace is now the 
 word !" 
 
 "Why change their tune so quick ? 
 Is the British lion sick ? 
 
 Has Napoleon come from Elba ? Is it not a kind of trick?' 
 The rooster crowed and tread 
 So fiercely, Bayard said: 
 
 "I wonder if McDonough's cut the comb right off their 
 head ?" 
 
 Yes 1 That battle stopped the war. 
 The farmer sailor's star 
 
 Moved in the constellations of the Nile and Trafalgar. 
 "PEACE 1" All the nations heard— 
 McDonough spoke that word — 
 
 And all the hens in Delaware laid eggs for Bayard's bird. 
 
65 
 
 THE BEE HIVE. 
 
 I was so bashful with our Sis 
 I never asked her for a kiss, 
 Though I would give, one kiss to snatch, 
 My finger rings, besides my watch. 
 My cousin Jack was not so shy 
 And he would kiss when I was by 
 And say to Sis: "The red birds hush 
 To see that tender Joseph blush I" 
 
 Twas by St. Georges at her home 
 
 We robbed the bees of honey and comb, 
 
 We smoked their hives and Jack upset 
 
 A bee hive on us and our pet; 
 
 They stung but Sis, twice on the thumb, 
 
 She screamed; "Go, Jack, get camphor some 1" 
 
 Smoke in her eyes, sting in her paw, 
 
 She put at me that thumb, stung raw; 
 
 What could I do — the lovely thing — 
 
 But from her thumb suck out the sting ? 
 
 I sucked that thumb with lips and tongue 
 
 As I sucked mine when baby-young; 
 
 "O, what relief !" said Sis, the saint, 
 
 And went right off, as in a faint, 
 
 Her face so close, with beauty fraught, 
 
 I took one kiss — and I was caught. 
 
 In my dismay another smack 
 
 I gave to take that small one back — 
 
 And this time I was caught by Jack. 
 
 "I do not camphor need," said she, 
 "Jerome applied a remedy." 
 She shut her eyes without constraint; 
 I almost thought myself to faint. 
 "Enough of this," said Jack, the bold, 
 "Do not presume my girl to hold 1" 
 Said Sis: "His holding is but just — 
 The timid kiss is what I trust." 
 
66 
 
 O, how the bees then went for me 1 
 Their stings were buzzing melody. 
 I let them sting, as brave as dumb, 
 For Sis held out her sovereign thumb: 
 I sucked, while Jack left in a foam, 
 The honey off the honeycomb. 
 
 ADDRESS BEFORE DELAWARE COLLEGE. 
 
 Newark, Delaware, 1868. 
 
 A hundred years, less six, has White Clay run 
 Toward deep Christina, turgid in the sun, 
 Since from Gray's Hill the General through his glass 
 His threadbare army saw through Newark pass; 
 Its straggling villagers, their nervous chins 
 Poised on the windows of the shops and inns. 
 And much they hoped if battle he must seek. 
 Farther he'd go and choose the Red Clay creek. 
 The Red Clay country pleased him for a fight; 
 
 From Iron Hill he marked it by daylight; 
 The Stanton folks, the Newport people scattered, 
 Expecting, both, their hip roofs to be battered; 
 But General Washington advanced his line 
 Far North as Chadd's Ford on the Brandywine, 
 And after all this waiting and retreating. 
 Sir William gave him an effectual beating. 
 
 We've learned the lesson this Commencement dawn: 
 Defeat's inglorious tempted farther on 1 
 This spot was picked to check the foe's advance, 
 'Tis nearest to his lines. Sir Ignorance ! 
 
67 
 
 Here on these classic stones again to thrive, 
 
 We seek our gracious College to revive, 
 
 To plant its standard drooping since lang syne, 
 
 To fight the action out upon this line, 
 
 And keep at heart, though Northward we might roam, 
 
 The snugger precept: "Educate at home 1" 
 
 Not widest empires lure the reverend most: 
 The wisest Magi sought small Judah's coast, 
 The Russian Czar to modest Holland sped, 
 To little Weimar, Schiller, Goethe fled. 
 Famed Heidelberg in narrow Baden see, 
 And cramped Bologna fostered Italy. 
 Shut in the softest verdure of the East, 
 
 Our Delawarean nook, although the least. 
 
 Has soil enough for education's seeds. 
 
 And schools and students are what most she needs. 
 
 No sign we want to tell us when we roam: 
 
 "The schoolmaster has been away from home;" 
 
 For — if we say it need there be a blush ? — 
 
 Good boys, unlike good wine, need most the hush. 
 
 The century flower has blossomed pleasantly 
 Above the tiles of yon Academy, 
 Which from the peaceful Penns derived its lease, 
 And six score years has taught the arts of peace. 
 In Seventy-six its boys marched with the "Blues," 
 The girls behind them stitched their soldiers' shoes, 
 "Delightful task ! to mend the tender boot, 
 And teach the young idea how to shoot." 
 
 Here labored long those quiet Scottish Chiefs, 
 Holding for God His precious souls as fiefs, 
 McDowell, Ewing, Allison, and more 
 Whose gentle influence filled this Eastern Shore, 
 And humanized its homes from Chester creek, 
 Far as the lonely capes of Chesapeake. 
 
68 
 
 In greenest graveyards sleep those pilgrim sires 
 By Swedish chapels or by English spires, 
 By country kirks wrapt soft in dews or mists, 
 Or lulled to peace by singing Methodists; 
 Tranquil their lives, not restless, nothing grand, 
 But melted in the epic of the land, 
 Part of the nation strong and vindicated, 
 Part of the school they cherished and created. 
 Part of the light and culture which endure. 
 The dawning arts and strengthening literature. 
 The social life, which seeks high thoughts for food, 
 And bulwarks of our pride of neighborhood. 
 
 Scarce fifty years had scattered Freedom's foes, 
 When, by the school, our pleasant college rose; 
 Loud spoke its bell — what melody did swing it 
 Whene'er the Janitor would let us ring it ! 
 A score of years or more came, for its crack. 
 Fat boys from Cecil, lean from Accomac, 
 Pale boys from cities, from the country pink, 
 Queer boys from Duck and Appoquinimink, 
 Boys raised on Iron Hill — real mountaineers — 
 On shady Sassafras, oystery Tangiers, 
 From whate'er neck, or sound, or manor passengers. 
 They all stole pears and apples down at Hossenger's. 
 
 My hasty nuse, rouse up and once more show 
 
 The scenes in Newark twenty years ago ! 
 
 The morning prayer, the bell's boom strong and sweet, 
 
 Swung down the one aisle of the village street, 
 
 "Day scholars" hurrying on foot, in gigs. 
 
 Professors smoothing out their hairs — or wigs — 
 
 The shy new student who can eat no pittance. 
 
 Mocked by the old boy spending his remittance. 
 
 That marvel of all Freshmen in their turn. 
 
 The one queer boy who came to school to learn, 
 
 That other wonder, whom the mass insist 
 
 To be sans peur, the College humorist: 
 
 An idle, jolly, impecunious elf, 
 
 Who jests on everything — except himself, 
 
«9 
 
 And, greater than all favorites of renown, 
 The boy whose pretty sister lives in town; 
 In all his woes rose dozens of redressers. 
 He was a favorite — even with Professors. 
 
 At Summer noon, the lanes and fields are seen. 
 To fill with urchins hastening to "The Green." 
 Proud swimmer he, whose shy probation o'er, 
 Disdains less fathoms than the "Sycamore," 
 Or nudis verbis whitely stands revealed 
 Poised on the "Deep Rocks" — as he calls it "peeled," 
 And palms clasped a la mode, head foremost goes 
 To fetch up stones, while small boys tie his clothes. 
 
 Meantime the lovelorn student roams behind. 
 And carves his torment on the beech tree rind. 
 And to the dear initials makes his moan — 
 A bolder student slily adds his own. 
 
 Our fine girl then, nor skater was, nor sailor; 
 
 Therefore her children in our days are frailer; 
 
 Let us admit we both did something err: 
 
 Ungallant she to Nature, we to her. 
 
 She never wrote in ice her epigram. 
 
 Cutting "High Dutch" on Dean's or Curtis' dam. 
 
 Nor down the Roseville rapids showed her skill, boys, 
 
 Risking a flogging for it from the mill boys. 
 
 She never wished the Northern hills to climb 
 
 Which on our border lean their ribs of grime. 
 
 And strangle streams which hurl more mill wheels' arms. 
 
 And bathe more sheep, and beautify more farms — 
 
 That royal road, the North, she did not dare, 
 
 Like our wild hearts pent up in Delaware, 
 
 And wondering what beyond those hilltops lay 
 
 When trudging toward them on a Saturday. 
 
 Not in that fashion did our sweetheart journey. 
 
 But only with a power of Attorney, 
 
 Two trunks, a muff, a bridesmaid, and a fan. 
 
 She sacrificed the scenery for the man. 
 
70 
 
 Twas still her triumph when Commencement came 
 
 And tallow candles made the College flame; 
 
 For her alone the Athenaeums speak, 
 
 The Delta Phians don their badge of Greek, 
 
 For her, for nothing less, do both submit 
 
 To wear a coat cut in the nether pit. 
 
 And hear the pert Academicians cry, 
 
 In chorus: "When the Swallows Homeward Fly." 
 
 Nothing between a boy and book can slip, 
 
 Like the soft vision of an eye and lip, 
 
 And let us stand upon it if we fight there. 
 
 Nothing has more excuse or much more right there I 
 
 Much more, if time and art, like memory, held, 
 
 Might we recover from this cloister eld; 
 
 Rise up ye tutors, sacrificed for us : 
 
 Our lack of love, our Natures boisterous — 
 
 Whose blood and tears we drew and never knew it. 
 
 Ah 1 the perversity I Could we undo it ! 
 
 Are boys to boys more generous than men ? 
 Do we desire our boyhood back again ? 
 Is it the right, the gallant, roseate time ? 
 "Yea," say the Poets, in the same old rhyme. 
 All college orators insist upon it. 
 Decrying manhood ere they have begun it; 
 Candor compels a more prosaic ruling: 
 Much of the talk on boyhood joys is pulling 1 
 
 The strong young savage, moving on his muscle, 
 Ready to rob an orchard, try a tussle, 
 Of everlasting restlessness pursuant. 
 Mocking his tutor, selfish, hooking truant, 
 Of ravenous appetite, ungrateful, vain. 
 His keenest sense of pleasure, giving pain, 
 What man would ask to be a boy again ? 
 
 Who would resign the calm and chastened bliss, 
 The fireside faith, sealed in his goodwife's kiss. 
 The measured duties of the father, neighbor. 
 
71 
 
 And sense of manhood dignified by labor, 
 To roam again an urchin by the creek, 
 And learn to swear about a shinny stick ? 
 
 Of all the frauds which schools from schoolmen ape 
 
 None is more empty than the college "scrape." 
 
 Books have been made on scrapes, and maidens tell them 
 
 Sad, for their sex, that no such larks befel them; 
 
 The college scrape, as I remember it, 
 
 Was ruffianism in the mask of wit. 
 
 Played on a tutor's feelings, a child's terror, 
 
 A strong boy's dignity or weak boy's error: 
 
 To tip the bell up and freeze water in it. 
 
 Or by a hidden cord all night to din it. 
 To call the poor, pinched tutor but a "flat," 
 And yell from hiding places: "what a hat 1" 
 A horse to whitewash, most superb of all 1 — 
 To tie the grass that wayfarers might fall, 
 Let down the farmer's bars, write terms of spite 
 By darkness, for the town to read by light. 
 Our sculptor, Crawford, in a noble mood 
 A subject chose from boyhood's habitude: 
 A little spaniel, terrified and worn. 
 Its fleeces dabbled and its white feet torn, 
 Climbs spent, beseeching, to one gentle breast— 
 The one brave boy humane among the rest — 
 Who cuts the kettle which had driven it wild, 
 And strokes it, as a father soothes his child. ' 
 Worthy this statue for our halls of State— 
 
 A boy indignant and considerate I 
 For, if the boy were Father of the man, 
 As the trite line of some old poet ran, 
 Apt might the boy be to affix a can 
 Behind his sire, and chase him with a clan. 
 
 The sports of schools have now a higher fame 
 With baseball clubs where women watch the game, 
 While tidy barge crews down the rivers spin 
 And play is beautified by discipline. 
 
72 
 
 To these high joys of the Curriculum, 
 
 Must meaner "larks" and older "scrapes" succumb; 
 
 For, 'tis the student gives the school address, 
 
 His best diploma is his manliness: 
 
 The sense of honor seldom can be taught. 
 
 Lost it may be or not in vain be sought; 
 
 It is that breath of good men which survives, 
 
 The floating aroma of fragrant lives, 
 
 The gentler thoughts superior souls dispense. 
 
 And fruit of every noble influence. 
 
 "Surely," says one, "our poet's a free lance; 
 
 The boys are with us; give the boys a chance I" 
 
 No 1 these young students who would build again 
 
 Our crumbled ramparts are not boys — but men, 
 
 The boys in frolic, some twelve years or more 
 
 Departed, locked this venerable door, 
 
 A newer, better generation comes, 
 
 Out of the roll of Freedom's victor drums, 
 
 A race of boys made men by manlier walk. 
 
 By gentler thinking and by truer talk. 
 
 On darkened latitudes no more intent. 
 
 But, like a sailor, in the firmament 
 
 Searching for lamps, and midst them, strong and far. 
 
 Shines down the magic of the Northern Star. 
 
 Retire then men, who puerile have grown. 
 Be men for them ye boys of better date. 
 And let this College be the corner stone 
 Of a humane and reawakened State; 
 
73 
 
 THE SAW HORSE. 
 
 I was sawing wood at a saw horse set, 
 When up came Fanny, the Suffragette: 
 Said she: "I want your vote to get 
 The ballot, now, for a Suffragette!" 
 
 "Fanny, the i<itchen wants this wood 
 And I would cook if I only could; 
 If you can saw, as a man must do, 
 I almost think I could vote for you." 
 
 "My hat's in the ring," said Fanny bold 
 And handed the hat for me to hold; 
 I held that hat as a shield to see 
 How a Suffragette could bend the knee. 
 
 She took the saw on the low saw-horse. 
 And her arms akimbo tightened her corse. 
 Her breath came short as she said: "O, dear ! 
 Is there none but you, sir, a'standing near ?" 
 
 Then up went her knee and she caught her gown. 
 Two shapely feet I was looking down: 
 "Fanny, your premiss is understood, 
 We men shut our eyes when we're sawing wood." 
 
 She shut her eyes and she watched not me. 
 And she sawed her hand and she slipped her knee, 
 She caught her sleeve and she bared her arm. 
 And she worked that saw with every charm. 
 
 Transfixed I stood, unobserved, to note 
 Every reason had she to obtain my vote, 
 If no reason above, I had reason to see 
 The downright argument settled me 1 
 
 "You shall vote," said I, "let it be the law I 
 Though you sawed not much, how you stood I saw. 
 There's a tenderer saw-horse on my knee. 
 Wherever you vote, the Inspector's Me I" 
 
74 
 
 THE HOUSELESS LAWN. 
 
 In Dutch Neck did my pastor sire 
 
 A farm long own of moderate yield, 
 Where, than the level loam land higher, 
 
 There was a forty-acre field; 
 He planted on its front plateau 
 
 All ornamental trees of shade 
 That on our lawn in time they'd grow, 
 
 When he, by thrift, a home had made. 
 
 And many years, when he was dead, 
 
 I came to see that empty lawn; 
 The grove of trees a perfume shed 
 
 And waved their tops, though he was gone; 
 The passers-by to me would say: 
 
 "Was there a house within that slope ?" 
 I only answered: "Father's day 
 
 They habitated with his hope." 
 
 He saw the home we did not see. 
 
 He felt the shade above his age 
 To bless his wife and family 
 
 When he had quit this mortal stage. 
 I feel his spirit shadows there. 
 
 It was his joy, it is his tomb, 
 And in that grove I say my prayer 
 
 That somewhere father's found a home. 
 
 His son has planted twigs of trees 
 
 And saplings quick with bud and root, 
 That some day may detain the breeze 
 
 And blossom flowers, if not fruit — 
 Fancies and verses — may they grow I 
 
 Homes after me to cool and please ! 
 Although my lawn the farmers mow, 
 
 I felt the shade, I saw the trees. 
 
75 
 
 RIVER DELAWARE. 
 
 There was a time when rivers were roads. 
 Boating and sailing were then the modes, 
 And people conveyed from homely care, 
 Far and along the Delaware. 
 
 Those were days when Jersey was split, 
 Quaker the western half of it, 
 Except at Salem New England made 
 A new New Haven for whales and trade. 
 
 The Swedes and Dutch both sprinkled the shores; 
 Scotch below us of Baltimores; 
 German sectarians broke the farms 
 Up the Lehigh and Schuylkill arms. 
 
 Some Finns and Welsh cleared the brinks and back: 
 Refugees out of Accomac; 
 Huguenot exiles and Danish men- 
 All had beautiful daughters then. 
 
 So, to sail was to find a love 
 
 In the inlets below or the coves above. 
 
 Cupid was ever minded to go; 
 
 Tide and wind were his quiver and bow. 
 
 Fishes were provender, cooked on the isles; 
 River was base for a thousand miles; 
 Beaver and otter and deer and bear 
 Sovereigns were of the Delaware. 
 
 Up the sources were foaming rills, 
 Mountain springs winded through the hills, 
 Moccasins were the only maps, 
 Salt and saplings the hunter's traps. 
 
 Fashions were left to the Indian few. 
 Squaws were simple and sometimes true, 
 Drawing a bead on them they fell; 
 Home-stilled rum made a tribe revel. 
 
76 
 
 So the trader or peddler took 
 Hearts away in the pack to look, 
 And to hoodoo the susceptible lass, 
 Showed her herself in a looking glass. 
 
 Glad for my virtue I lived not then ! 
 Would I recall that Eden again ? 
 Nay, Saint Anthony, do not scold ! 
 I am harmless because I'm old. 
 
 When the purest the river did fall, 
 Moonstruck to tides that embraced it all; 
 Long above them its childhood flowed, 
 Still, its rapids the only road. 
 
 Wind-gap, water-gap, mountain of blue. 
 
 Pass we on in our light canoe. 
 
 Till the bald eagle sails beneath 
 
 And the portage the storm clouds wreathe. 
 
 Chief of rivers in that past, 
 Delaware changes its life the last, 
 And its elbow bends and loops, 
 Qadri lateral for our troops. 
 
 Here, her passage from Holland paid. 
 Grateful to God was the peasant maid, 
 And his image attracted her: 
 Masterman and redemptioner. 
 
 Welded races their broods above 
 Made the City of Brotherly Love, 
 Conquered, recovered, O, what spells 1 
 Independence first rang its bells. 
 
 Washington in the snow and ice 
 Crossed it to battle more than thrice. 
 Persevered till the roses blent 
 Strewed his path to be President 1 
 
77 
 
 River abounding, steady and wide I 
 Beautiful river, be our pride ! 
 Wiiile like white swans from thy slips, 
 Sail to the ocean thy offspring ships I 
 
 Freshen thy cities with thy airs ! 
 Freight thy fleets with thy infinite wares ! 
 Delaware ! River of peace and rest ! 
 Cool my heart in thy verdurous breast I 
 
 CURTIS' MILL. 
 (By Newark). 
 
 Is't White Clay creek white paper makes ? 
 
 Or white hands of young Anna, 
 That take the pulp in snowy flakes, 
 
 As though she gathered manna ? 
 Down flows its milk as to her breast. 
 
 The fountain's foam returning. 
 Or comes the dairy milk to rest 
 
 Where Anna sits a'churning. 
 
 Oft in my boyhood truanting, 
 
 Beneath the long bridge idling, 
 I saw her like a pigeon wing, 
 
 Her white flock guiding, bridling. 
 Unto her hand the pulp canal 
 
 Moved on from vats of vapor — 
 A cascade frothing from a dall 
 
 To calmest lakes of paper. 
 
 Sheet after sheet beneath her eyes 
 
 They come to rest as I do 
 When in the humming mill my sighs 
 
 Are hushed as by Queen Dido; 
 Her arm a sceptre waves her hands 
 
 Across the sheets as free as 
 That Queen dismissed on Carthange sands 
 
 The sails of fleet Aeneas. 
 
78 
 
 We college lads our writing tasks 
 
 Compose on Anna's moulding, 
 And all our Latin barely masks 
 
 The poesy she's folding; 
 We come to watch her with heart still 
 
 Where she's the day adorning, 
 Folding within the paper mill 
 
 The white light of the morning. 
 
 ARNOLD NAUDAIN. 
 
 Making antiquarian search 
 
 In the grounds of Drawyer's church- 
 All deserted to the rain — 
 
 Sudden on a tomb I came 
 
 With a Senatorial name: 
 Arnold Naudain. 
 
 As I marked it, slowly creaked 
 The kirk shutter, and there peaked 
 
 A wild dog, and peaked again, 
 And a flock of blackbirds shouted 
 When I read again and doubted: 
 
 "Arnold Naudain." 
 
 Some old scion fled from France 
 When they broke the truce of Nantes — 
 
 Calvinistic, face and grain; 
 Here he grew to good respect, 
 Presybterian and elect: 
 
 Arnold Naudain. 
 
 Scotch and Irish, Dutch and French, 
 To the Senate and the bench, 
 
 (Men for honor or for gain,) 
 Many of thy faith have risen: 
 Whom wert thou fast in his prison, 
 
 Arnold Naudain ? 
 
79 
 
 Then it seemed that in the stillness, 
 With a special sigh of shrillness, 
 
 Answered to me the refrain, 
 While my heart a space retreated, 
 And the old brick kirk repeated: 
 
 "Arnold Naudain." 
 
 In the field the corn was naked. 
 And the great State road forsaked; 
 
 Bare of sails the river plain; 
 All too grave to be facetious. 
 Rose the echo superstitious: 
 
 "Arnold Naudain." 
 
 Very ancient was the region; 
 Perished many a religion — 
 
 Quaker, Labadist, in vain 
 For the mastery contended; 
 "All but thine and mine are ended, 
 
 Arnold Naudain. 
 
 "Speak aloud ! I do not fear thee, 
 
 What said'st thou, when pressed to hear thee, 
 
 Members, Senators in train, 
 And thy desk and form surrounded ?" 
 Then again the grave resounded: 
 
 "Arnold Naudain !" 
 
 "Ha I" said I, "thou mad'st no speeches. 
 Like thy vote, thine echo teaches 
 
 Simple words and duty plain. 
 Others jabbered oft and clever: 
 But at roll-call thou wert ever 
 
 'Arnold Naudain.' " 
 
 And the wind in solemn shiver. 
 And the marshes and the river 
 
 Seemed articulate again. 
 Name and station, State and nation. 
 Murmured with the dead creation. 
 
 "Arnold Naudain I" 
 
80 
 
 OLD CANAL SONG. 
 
 Path driver, wind thy tender horn 
 
 When any vessel passes ! 
 There's one we sometimes hail at morn, 
 
 Bright with her Captain's lassies; 
 Then sound this note, as Past we move 
 
 And break my flag above us I 
 How small the world before we love, 
 
 How great, with one to love us I 
 
 The tame canal is sometimes dull — 
 
 Not so when Polly meets me; 
 Her head and neck are beautiful, 
 
 With what an eye she greets me ! y 
 Wind all thy horn to tell myj ove oL- 
 
 What echoes tell above us: 
 How dull the world before we love. 
 
 How gay, with one to love us 1 
 
 Her heart's so near to board my boat 
 
 My heart must almost tow her; 
 One step and in my yawl afloat 
 
 The little winds would row her; 
 I know she comes; her topmasts move I 
 
 Our fluttered pulses prove us: 
 How drifts the world before we love. 
 
 How sails, with one to love us I 
 
81 
 
 QUEEN MAG. 
 
 The once Dutch dames on Delaware 
 
 Have lost their lustre silken, — 
 Dark-eyed Walloons, with Flamande hair 
 
 And bosoms full and milken, 
 Such as Van Loo or Rubens drew 
 
 Like kine at evening homing — 
 God bless you, Maggie Vandegrift, 
 
 Head of the herd, you're coming ! 
 
 She has no care upon her face. 
 
 She stands like milch cows feeding, 
 Breast high in every public place 
 
 And every spring time breeding. 
 Adonises are all her boys, 
 
 Her flowing sap aye giving; 
 Around her lap are only joys 
 
 And only life she's living. 
 
 Tranquil on her the mornings lift. 
 
 She's diligent and cheery — 
 Sky-hearted Maggie Vandegrift, 
 
 How much you love your dairy ! 
 Never your heart to clabber turns, 
 
 Like rising cream I think you, 
 That comes to butter when she churns — 
 
 To love you is to drink you. 
 
 Her tint makes silk of Maggie's shift: 
 
 The ballroom loves the sinner; 
 At worship Maggie Vandegrift 
 
 The sermon briefs to dinner, 
 And when she eats, the sunbeams slant, 
 
 Eaten to be within her; 
 It seems a banquet in Branbant 
 
 When Maggie gives a dinner. 
 
82 
 
 Ideal things she knows not of, 
 
 Too noble to be common, 
 She is embosomed in love 
 
 And offers naught but woman. 
 When Maggie Vandegrift is gone, 
 
 Her daughter will be wedding. 
 All milky as the tuliped lawn, 
 
 The herd of Holland heading. 
 
 ELM CORBIN. 
 
 Middletown, 'twixt the Bays half way, 
 Took its growth at a later day 
 Than the port on Lord Herman's ridge 
 Famed two centuries, "Cantwell's Bridge.' 
 
 There the ships loaded staves and spars 
 For the Navy in Marlborough's wars, 
 And the best wheat put hatches upon 
 In the campaigns of Napoleon. 
 Russian wheat gave it Russian aim 
 And to Odessa it switched its name. 
 
 Long the Quakers held their perch. 
 Spite of the Synod and Drawyer's Church, 
 Sullenly falling back in the lists, 
 Episcopalians or Methodists; 
 But if you age them by their teeth, 
 Penn men and Foxes they were beneath. 
 
 Mark you a house on the southern side, 
 Where the old brick lines the ivies hide, 
 And the big open doorway calls 
 Breezes to the wide stairway and halls ? 
 There, when the coasts and isles he toured, 
 Cromwell Corbin, the captain, moored. 
 
83 
 
 He was a Quaker skipper then, 
 Plain as the scion of Admiral Penn, 
 And in his speaking trumpet spoke 
 "Thee" and "Thou" to his sailor folk, 
 "Thee" and "Thou" he spoke to his dog, 
 And to his crew when he gave them grog; 
 
 Never his fist to a man he put, 
 
 But had a terrible way, to butt. 
 
 And when they flew to shrouds and stays, 
 
 Saying: "Now, friend, thee may go thy ways." 
 
 Yet in his eye was a man of war, 
 
 Daunting ruffians near and far. 
 
 Under his brown tarpaulin hides 
 
 Lineage of Cromwell's Ironsides. 
 
 One fair daughter was Corbin's all. 
 
 She would preach when she had a "call," 
 
 And she was ever brave and good, 
 
 Blooming into her womanhood: 
 
 Elm was her name, as from elms they come, 
 
 Puritans banished her people from; 
 
 She could steady a vessel's helm 
 
 With branching arms like the village elm, 
 
 Trumpet in hand and shouting high 
 
 To her father, "yea" and "aye, aye." 
 
 Corbin spoke, on an April day: 
 
 "Daughter, I'll be all summer away; 
 
 To the Indies my trade is blown. 
 
 Thee is too tender to live alone; 
 
 I have sent for an old friend's son, 
 
 Over the Bayhead to Darlington; 
 
 When I return some young Quaker I'll find 
 
 Fit to marry thy sober mind; 
 
 Then, with thy children old age to charm, 
 
 I will live with thee, daughter, and farm; 
 
 Few of us left; let it never be said 
 
 Out of our Meeting my daughter wed." 
 
d 
 
 84 
 
 When,- like a moon by day, his sail 
 Sank down o'er the marshes and left her as pale. 
 Turning, she saw a man with a beast — 
 "Maiden," quoth he, "thee beholds Jonas Priest I 
 My last apple has Betsy got — 
 Without apples she's hard on the trot." 
 "Stable thy baggage along with the nags," 
 "Nothing have I but my saddle bags." 
 
 So he lived with his mare apart. 
 Soberly practiced his home-drawn art. 
 Gardened and carpentered and restored 
 Beautiful panels and wainscots of board; 
 Clad in the Japtain's old fisher suits, 
 Shaved himself and polished his boots; 
 Elm could see, as he curried his nag. 
 Hands refined and limbs like a stag. 
 
 Lord's Day she called him in where she spoke 
 Spirit-moved, to the Quaker folk; 
 Once she asked: "Does the Spirit move 
 Thee, Friend Jonas, to tell God's love ?" 
 
 Modest he rose as became his years, 
 Moved on his tears all her people to tears, 
 Mifflin or Chalkley to overwhelm. 
 More like our Master he looked to Elm. 
 
 She made him groom when she rode to take air, 
 Feeding of apples to Betsy, his mare. 
 He was her mate when, with catboat out, 
 She went crabbing or trolling for trout. 
 People together grow like at best, 
 There came a tenderer interest; 
 
 It was plain all his weakness above 
 
 Jonas was hiding from Elm his love; 
 
 Elm, like her mother, the elm, never stayed ^ 
 
 Far from where Jonas had moved to her shade. 
 
85 
 
 Spring and summer were over and past 
 When Cromwell Corbin made harbor at last; 
 Kisses and presents and ventures said o'er, 
 He took his evening smoke at the door. 
 "Father," spoke Elm, "let the truth be short ! 
 Unto Friend Jonas I've given my heart 1" 
 "Captain," spoke Jonas, "I ask with my life 
 Elm, thy daughter, to give me for wife I" 
 
 "Before I give thee my child for a rib 
 I think I must study the cut of thy jib; 
 Get me two horses at dawn, my son. 
 And ride with me to Darlington!" 
 
 There was a storm in the captain's greet 
 Till they strolled up the great wide street. 
 "Here is a sawed-off steeple house. 
 Come inside and hear them carouse!" 
 
 As they went in, the lovers before, 
 Captain Corbin stayed by the door. 
 It was Protracted Meeting night, 
 Freeborn Garrettson at his height — 
 Chancellor Livingstone's brother-in-law — 
 Swung at the sinner his terrible jaw. 
 Hell and he had no room for each other, 
 "Come, my sister ! Repent, my brother ! 
 Come and be washed in the lamb's blood white, 
 Hear the trumpet ! Tonight's the night !" 
 
 "Glory ! my soul !" spoke a voice they had heard, 
 Jonas Priest had his feelings stirred; 
 
 "Come and exhort, thou sheep we have missed!" 
 Shouted to him the Revivalist. 
 Love of earth and the gospel call 
 Thrilled like the trumpets at Jericho's fall. 
 "Come, ye sinners ! your hard hearts melt !" 
 Elm went up to the altar and knelt; 
 
86 
 
 Captain Corbin clenched his fist — 
 "Guessed him right well for a Methodist 1" 
 
 Silent, unsociable, Corbin and Priest 
 Rode past the Elk and the river Northeast; 
 The sailor's hull was galled like a pot, 
 Betsy, the preacher's mare, struck a trot, 
 Apples she needed; he needed a splint, 
 Elm had given her lover a hint. 
 
 Day the second the ferry was won, 
 
 At the Bald Friars to Darlington; 
 
 Yearly Meeting of Friends was there, 
 
 Corbin went in more for vengeance than prayer. 
 
 O, what blisters and sores were his hide 
 
 Two days after that violent ride. 
 
 Turning tow'rd home, they entered at will 
 Through the green walls of a ruined mill. 
 "Here we drop anchor !" the captain's tip. 
 Took from his saddlebags pistol and whip; 
 "This is Deer Creek and the Quaker's last stand 
 From many Meetings in Maryland; 
 
 "Thou wast indentured to ship with me. 
 Wooing my daughter was mutiny. 
 Yearly Meeting, where once thou stood clear, 
 Gives me thy fate as a mutineer; 
 Strip off thy coat and stand my foe. 
 From thy heart my daughter must go !" 
 
 "God," said Jonas, "has chastening love; 
 Father, thy chastenings would not me move 
 But that one dearer than is thy ship 
 Bade me never be marked by a whip !" 
 
 Each his muscles to tension put; 
 
 Jonas saw Corbin preparing to butt; 
 
 Down dropped his head like a goring bull 
 
 Charging the matador, beautiful. 
 
 Sore was his length every point of his hide; 
 
87 
 
 Jonas, the nimble, stepped him aside, 
 Tripped with his foot the old sailor's charge; 
 Lengthwise he lay, like a grounded barge. 
 
 Blacks from somewhere rushed in and tied 
 
 Feet together and hands by his side, 
 
 Betsy, the mare, eating apples sedate, 
 
 Struck with the captain her penitent gait. 
 
 Over the hills did the cortege pass, 
 
 Down to smooth water at Havre de Grace. 
 
 There stood a ship with a maid at the helm, 
 
 "Father, come home !" spoke the deep voice of Elm 
 
 Out they pointed, making no stay, 
 
 Three of them only to cross the Bay. 
 
 Well had they waited, for on, ahead. 
 The long Elk Mountain was blazing red; 
 Over the Bay Pool's pasture awrack 
 Scared the flocks of the Canvasback; 
 Thunderbolts from Spesutie's isle 
 Zig-zagged to Turkey Point the while; 
 There was a pause ere the storm could whelm, 
 The truce of the quarrel, the voice of Elm: 
 
 "Father, Jonas with sailors shipped — 
 Rogers's tars at the port we have slipped — 
 Quaker boy on a ship of war. 
 He was taken prisoner afar, 
 Doomed to fire and lingering pain, 
 Chained in a jail on the Spanish Main. 
 There he vowed if God would release 
 Him from death he would preach his peace. 
 Indian's love then opened his door; 
 Landing, ragged, in Baltimore, 
 A church's floor for warmth he trod. 
 Freeborn Garrettson brought him to God, 
 Started him out in the traveling lists. 
 Roving preacher of Methodists; 
 Thy invitation came to him to be 
 Thy sailor apprentice and steward to me." 
 
88 
 
 Now the voice of Jonas was heard: 
 
 "Father — my father knew not a word 
 
 Of my conversion when cheerful to send 
 
 His absent son from a Friend to a Friend. 
 
 I recalled how a Quaker child 
 
 Melted my heart in the days I was wild 
 
 Preaching at Darlington Meeting House, 
 
 She was the guiding star of my vows; 
 
 Her to convert or be convert to her, 
 
 Silent I answered thy call, I aver. 
 
 Elm was that child, still in blossom of May; 
 
 Jesus never ruled Love from His way. 
 
 Still, I was Quaker in language and dress, 
 
 Waiting the time I could to thee confess; 
 
 When the time came I spoke out, nothing loath, 
 
 Methodist man to the men of my cloth. 
 
 Father, thy bonds are loose; take command I 
 
 We are near Heaven here as on land 1" 
 
 Now came the storm in its terrible wrath. 
 But the particulars tell not in Gath ! 
 Corbin, the captain, and Jonas, the mate. 
 Elm at the tiller and shipwreck their fate; 
 Canvas blown off by a thunderbolt ripped. 
 Bow staven in and the rudder unshipped. 
 Both of the men would with Elm swim abreast — 
 Jonas she took and her father she blessed. 
 
 Up the Elk River they went with a tide 
 
 And came to life on Bohemia's side. 
 
 Dried them and cried them at Herman's demesne, 
 
 Sent for store clothing to Saint Augustine. 
 
 Cantwell's Bridge saw them like Joseph's flight pass: 
 
 Which was the Joseph and which was the ass ? 
 
 Counsel of war in the morning they took, 
 Jonas his pay for his preaching forsook; 
 Corbin gave seafaring up to the pair, 
 Betsy had apples and Elm had the heir. 
 
89 
 
 HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR. 
 
 I — The Manor. 
 
 "My corn is gathered in the bins," 
 The Lord Augustin Herman said; 
 
 "My wild swine romp in chincapins; 
 
 Dried are the deer and beaver skins; 
 
 And on Elk Mountain's languid head 
 The autumn woods are red. 
 
 "So in my heart an autumn falls; 
 
 I stand a lonely tree unleaved; 
 And to my hermit manor walls 
 The wild-goose from the water calls, 
 As if to mock a man bereaved: 
 My years are nearly sheaved. 
 
 "Go saddle me the Flemish steed 
 
 My brother Verlett gave to me. 
 What time his sister did concede 
 Her dainty hand to hear me plead I 
 
 Poor soul I she's mouldering by the sea 
 And I with misery." 
 
 The slave man brought the wild-maned horse- 
 All wilder that with stags he grazed— 
 Bred from the seed the knightly Norse 
 Rode from Araby. Like remorse 
 
 The eyes in his gray forehead blazed, 
 As on his lord he gazed. 
 
 "Now guard ye well my lands and stock; 
 
 Slack not the seine, ply well the axe ! 
 The eagle circles o'er the flock; 
 The Indian at my gates may knock; 
 
 The firelock prime for his attacks ! 
 
 I ride the sunrise tracks." 
 
 Swift as a wizard on a broom. 
 
 The strong gray horse and rider ran, 
 
90 
 
 Adown the forest stripped of bloom. 
 
 By stump and bough that scarce gave room 
 
 To pass the woodman's caravan, 
 
 Rode the Bohemian. 
 
 "Lord Herman, stay," the brewer cried, 
 "And Huddy's friendly flagon clink 1" 
 
 And martial Hinoyossa spied 
 
 The horseman, moving with the tide 
 That ebbed from Appoquinimink, 
 Nor stopped to rest or drink. 
 
 "Where rides old Herman ?" Beekman mused; 
 "That railing wife has turned his head." 
 
 "He keep the saddle as he used. 
 
 In younger days, when he infused 
 
 Three provinces," Pierre Alricks said, 
 "And mapped their landscape's spread." 
 
 Broad rose Zuydt River as the sail 
 
 Above his periauger flew; 
 Loud neighed the steed to snuff the gale; 
 But Herman saw not, swift and pale. 
 
 Two carrier pigeons, winging true 
 
 Northeast, across the blue. 
 
 They quit the cage of Stuyvesant's spy, 
 And lurking Willems' message bore: 
 
 ("This morn rode Herman rapid by, 
 
 Tow'rd Amsterdam, to satisfy 
 Yet wider titles than he tore 
 From shallow Baltimore I") 
 
 II. — Replevin. 
 
 The second sunset at his back 
 
 From Navesink Highlands threw the shade 
 Of horse and Herman, long and black. 
 Across the golden ripples' track. 
 
 Where with the Kills the ocean played 
 
 A measured serenade. 
 
91 
 
 There, where to sea a river ran, 
 
 Between tall hills of brown and sand, 
 
 A mountain island rose to span 
 
 The outlet of the Raritan, 
 
 And made a world on either hand 
 Soft as a poet planned: 
 
 Fair marshes pierced with brimming creeks, 
 Where wild-fowl dived to oyster caves; 
 
 And shores that swung to wooded peaks, 
 
 Where many a falling water seeks 
 
 The cascade's plunge to reach the waves, 
 And greenest farmland laves; 
 
 Deep tide to every roadstead slips, 
 And many capes confuse the shore. 
 
 Yet none do with their forms eclipse 
 
 Yon ocean, made for royal ships, 
 
 Whose swells on silver beaches roar 
 And rock forevermore. 
 
 Old Herman gazed through lengthening shades 
 Far up the inland, where the spires, 
 
 Defined on rocky palisades. 
 
 Flung sunset from their burnished blades. 
 And with their bells in evening choirs 
 Breathed homesick men's desires: 
 
 "New Amsterdam 1 'tis thine or mine — 
 The foreground of this stately plan 1 
 
 To me the Indian did assign — 
 
 Totem on totem, line on line — 
 
 Both Staten and the groves that ran 
 Far up the Raritan. 
 
 "By spiteful Stuyvesant long restrained, 
 
 Now, while the English break his power, 
 Be Achter Kill again regained 
 And Herman's title entertained I — 
 
 Here float my banner from my tower ! 
 Here is my right, my hour 1" 
 
92 
 III. — The Squatters. 
 
 He scarce had finished, when a rush, 
 
 Like partridge through the stubble, broke, 
 
 And armed men trod down the brush; 
 
 A harsh voice, trembling in the hush. 
 As it must either stab or choke, 
 Imperiously spoke: 
 
 "Ye conquered men of Achter Kill, 
 Whose farms by loyal toil ye got, 
 True Dutchmen 1 give this traitor will — 
 And he is yours to loose or kill — 
 
 All that ye have he will allot 
 
 Anew — field, cradle, cot. 
 
 "Years past, beyond our Southern bounds, 
 On State's commission sent by me, 
 
 He mapped the English papists' grounds. 
 
 And like a Judas, o'er our wounds. 
 Our raiment parted openly: 
 This is the man ye see I 
 
 "Yet, followed by my sleepless age, 
 Fast as he rode my pigeons sped — 
 
 Straight as the ravens from their cage, 
 
 Straight as the arrows of my rage. 
 Straight as the meteor overhead 
 That strikes a traitor dead." 
 
 They bound Lord Herman fast as hate, 
 And bore him o'er to Staten Isle; 
 
 Behind him closed the postern gate, 
 
 And round him pitiless as fate. 
 
 Closed moat and palisade and pile: 
 "Thou diest at morn," they smile. 
 
 IV. — Stuyvesant. 
 
 Morn broke on lofty Staten's height, 
 
 O'er low Amboy and Arthur Kill; 
 And ocean dallying with the light. 
 
93 
 
 Between the beaches leprous white, 
 And silent hook and headland hill, 
 And Stuyvesant had his will; 
 
 One-legged he stood, his sharp mustache 
 
 Stiff as the sword he slashed in ire; 
 His bald crown, like a calabash. 
 Fringed round with ringlets white as ash, 
 And features scorched with inner fire; 
 Age wore him like a briar. 
 
 "Bring the Bohemian forth I" he cried; 
 
 "Old man, thy moments are but few." 
 "So much the better, Dutchman I bide 
 Thy little time of aged pride, 
 
 Thy poor revenges to pursue 1 — 
 
 Thy date is hastening, too, 
 
 "No crime is mine, save that I sought 
 
 A refuge past thy jealous ken, 
 And peaceful arts to strangers taught, 
 And mine own title hither brought. 
 
 Before the laws of Englishmen, 
 
 A banished denizen. 
 
 "Yet that thy churlish soul may plead 
 
 A favor to a dying foe, 
 I'll ask thee, Stuyvesant, ere I bleed. 
 Let me once more on my gray steed 
 
 Thrice round the timbered enceinte go: 
 
 Fire, when I tell thee so 1" 
 
 "What freak is this ?" quoth Stuyvesant grim. 
 
 Quoth Herman, " Twas a charger brave- 
 Like my first bride in eye and limb — 
 A wedding-gift; indulge the whim ! 
 
 And from his back to plunge, I crave, 
 
 A bridegroom, in her grave." 
 
94 
 
 Then, muttered the uneasy guard: 
 
 "We rob an old man of his lands, 
 And slay him. Sure his fate is hard, 
 His dying plea to disregard 1" 
 
 "Ride then to death 1" Stuyvesant command 
 
 "Unbind his horse, his hands !" 
 
 V. — The Leap. 
 
 The old steed darted in the fort, 
 
 And neighed and shook his long gray mane; 
 Then, seeing soldiery, his port 
 Grew savage. With a charger's snort, 
 
 Upright he reared, as young again 
 
 And scenting a campaign. 
 
 Hard on his nostrils Herman laid 
 
 An iron hand and drew him down, 
 
 Then, mounting in the esplanade. 
 
 The rude Dutch rustics stared afraid: 
 
 "By Santa Glaus I he needs no crown, 
 To look more proud renown 1" 
 
 Lame Stuyvesant also, envious saw 
 
 How stright he sat in courteous power, 
 
 Like boldness sanctified by law. 
 
 And age gave magisterial awe; 
 
 Though in his last and bitter hour, 
 Of knightliness the flower. 
 
 His gray hairs o'er his cassock blew. 
 And in his peak'd hat waved a plume; 
 
 A horn swung loose and shining through 
 
 High boots of buckskin, as he drew 
 The rein, a jewel burst to bloom: 
 The signet ring of doom. 
 
 "Thrice round the fort I Then as I raise 
 
 This hand, aim all and murder well I" 
 His head bends low; the steed's eyes blaze, 
 But not less bright do Herman's gaze, 
 
95 
 
 As circling round the citadel, 
 He peers for hope in hell. 
 
 Fast were the gates; no crevice showed. 
 
 The ramparts, spiked with palisades, 
 Grew higher as once round he rode; 
 The arquebusiers prime the load 
 
 And drop to aim from ambuscades; 
 
 No latch, no loophole aids. 
 
 But one small hut its chimney thrust 
 
 Between the timbers, close as they; 
 Twice round and with a desperate trust 
 Lord Herman muttered: "Die I must: 
 
 There, charge 1" and spurred through beam and clay 
 
 "By heaven I he is away 1" 
 
 VI.— The Kills. 
 
 In clouds of dust the muskets fire. 
 
 And volleying oaths old Stuyvesant from: 
 
 "Turn out 1 In yonder Kills he'll mire 
 
 Or drown, unless the fiends conspire. 
 
 "Mount ! Follow ! Still he must succumb — 
 That tide was never swum." 
 
 Through hut and chimney, down the ditch 
 And up the bank, plunge horse and man; 
 
 And down the hills of bramble pitch. 
 
 Oft stumbling, those old gray knees which, 
 Hunting the raccoon, led the van; 
 Now, limp yet game he ran. 
 
 But cool and supple, Herman sat, 
 
 His mind at work, his frame the horse's. 
 And knew with each pulsation, that 
 Past foe and fen, past crag, and flat. 
 
 And marsh, the steed he nearer forces 
 
 To the broad sea's recourses. 
 
96 
 
 "Old friend," he thought, "thou art too weak 
 
 To try the Kills and drown, or falter, 
 The while from shore their marksmen seek 
 My heart. (Once o'er the Chesapeake 
 I paddled oarless.) Lest the halter 
 Be mine, I must not palter — 
 
 "Thou diest, though my marriage-gift: 
 
 I still can swim. Poor Joost, adieu !" 
 
 Ere ceased the heartfelt sigh he lift, 
 
 The prospect widened; all adrift. 
 The salty sluice burst into view, 
 Where grappling tides fought through 
 
 And sucked to doom the venturous bear. 
 And from his ferry swept the rower — 
 
 How wide, how terrible, how fair 1 
 
 Yet how inspiriting the air — 
 
 How tempts the long salt grass the mower I 
 How treacherous the shore ! 
 
 Far up the right spread Newark Bay, 
 
 To lone Secaucus wooded rock; 
 Nor could the Kill von Kull convey 
 Passaic's mountain flood away: 
 
 In Arthur Kill the surges choke, 
 
 The wild tides interlock. 
 
 O'er Arthur Kill the Holland farms 
 
 Their gambril roofs, red painted, show; 
 
 Beyond, the newer Yankee swarms — 
 
 His cider-presses spread their arms. 
 Before, the squatter; back, the foe: 
 And the dark waters flow. 
 
 As that salt air the stallion felt. 
 He whimpers gayly, as if still is 
 
 Upon his sight his native Scheldt, 
 
 Or Skagger Rack, or Little Belt— 
 
 Their waving grass and silver lilies. 
 Where browsed the amorous fillies. 
 
97 
 
 And o'er the tide some lady nags 
 
 Blew back his challenge. Scarce could Herman 
 Hold in his seat. "By John of Prague's 
 True faith !" he thought, "thy spirit lags 
 
 Not, Joost 1 Thy course thyself determine !" 
 
 And plunges like a merman. 
 
 Leander's spirit in the steed 
 
 Inspired his stroke, not Herman's fear; 
 And fast the island shores recede, 
 Fast ride the rider's spirits freed. 
 
 The golden mainland draws more near — 
 
 "O gallant horse I 'tis here 1" 
 
 VII. — Elusion. 
 
 Across the Kills the muskets crack — 
 
 "Ha ! ha !" Lord Herman waves his beaver: 
 "Die of thy spleen ere I come back, 
 Old Stuyvesant '" With a noise of wrack 
 The fort blew up of his aggriever 1 — 
 But not without retriever; 
 
 For from the smoke two pigeons fly, 
 
 One south, one westward, separating. 
 
 And straight as arrows crossed the sky, 
 
 With silent orders ("He must die 
 
 Who comes hereafter. Lie in waiting !") 
 Their snowy pinions freighting. 
 
 They warn the men of Minisink; 
 
 They warn the Dutchman of Zuydt River. 
 Now speed to Jersey's farther brink. 
 Old horse, old master, ere ye shrink 1 — 
 
 Or ambushed fall ere moonrise quiver 
 
 On paths where ye shall shiver. 
 
 On went the twain till past the ford 
 
 That red-walled Raritan led over. 
 And lonely woodland shades explored. 
 Unarmed with firelock or with sword, 
 
 Free-hearted rode the forest rover, 
 
 Of all wild kind the drover: 
 
98 
 
 Fled deer and bear before his coming, 
 The wild cat glared, the viper hissed; 
 
 And died the long day's insect-drumming. 
 
 Where things of night began their humming, 
 And witchly phantoms went to tryst. 
 Was Herman exorcist. 
 
 "No land so tangled but my eye 
 
 Can map its confines and its courses; 
 Yet on life's map who can espy 
 Where hides his foe — where he shall die ?" 
 So Herman said, and his resources 
 Resigned unto his horse's. 
 
 All night the steed instinctive travelled — 
 
 His weary rider wept for him — 
 Through unseen gulfs the whirlwind ravelled, 
 Up moonlit beds of streamlets gravelled, 
 Till halting every bleeding limb. 
 He stands by something dim. 
 
 And will not stir till morning breaks. 
 
 "What is't I see, low clustering there. 
 Beyond those broadening bays and lakes, 
 That yonder point familiar makes ? — 
 
 Is it New Amstel, lowly fair, 
 
 And this the Delaware ?" 
 
 VIII— The Echo. 
 
 Lord Herman hugged his horse with pride; 
 
 He raised his horn and blew so loudly. 
 That more than echoes back replied: 
 Horns answered louder; horsemen cried. 
 And muskets banged, as if avowedly 
 On Stuyvesant's errand proudly 1 
 
 "Die, traitor I fleer I though thou 'scape 
 
 Our ambush on thy devil's racer. 
 Caught here upon this marshy cape. 
 Thy bones the muskrat's brood shall scrape. 
 The sturgeon suck — Death thy embracer I 
 So shouts each sanguine chaser. 
 
99 
 
 To die in sight of Amstel's walls, 
 
 And gallant Joost to die beside him I — 
 
 O foolish blast, such fate that calls ! 
 
 O river, that the heart appals ! 
 
 Dear Joost may live. And they bestride him ? 
 "By Hell 1 none else shall ride him 1 
 
 "My steed, thy limbs like mine are sore ! 
 
 Few years are left us ere the billows 
 Roll over both. Come but once more, 
 And to the bottom or the shore, 
 
 Bear me and thee to happy pillows, 
 
 Or 'neath the water willows I 
 
 He strokes old Joost. He bends him low. 
 
 He winds his horn and laughs derision. 
 One spring 1 — they've cleared the bog and sloe. 
 And down the ebb-tide buoyant go — 
 
 That stately tide, so like a vision 
 
 Of home, to Norse and Frisian, 
 
 Where full a league spread Maas and Rhine, 
 And in the marsh the rice-birds twitter; 
 
 The long cranes pasture and the kine 
 
 Loom lofty in the misty shine 
 
 Of dawn and reedy islands glitter: 
 Yet death all where is bitter. 
 
 Ere out of range a volley peals. 
 
 But greed too great made aye a blunder. 
 His horse Lord Herman's self conceals. 
 Yet once his horse and he go under. 
 And rise again. No wound he feels. 
 
 They hold their fire in wonder ? 
 
 Short of the mark the bullets splash: 
 
 "Now drown thee, wizard 1 at thy pleasure," 
 
 The Dutchmen hiss through teeth they gnash. 
 
 He answers not; for o'er the plash 
 
 Of waves he hears Joost's gasping measure 
 Of breath's fast wasting treasure. 
 
100 
 IX. — Pegasus. 
 
 The sighs when dying comrades fall, 
 Struck by the foe, are only sad; 
 
 They leaped the ditch and climbed the wall, 
 
 And shared the purpose of us all; 
 
 The fame they have; the joy they had: 
 "Rest in thy tracks, brave lad 1" 
 
 But thou, poor beast! unknown to fame. 
 
 Whose heart is reached while ours is bounding, 
 
 Amidst the victory's acclaim — 
 
 By thee we kneel with more of shame. 
 
 That bore us through the fight resounding. 
 And dumbly took our wounding 1 
 
 Lord Herman saw the blood drops seethe, 
 The nag's neck droop, the nostril bubble, 
 
 And loosed the bridle from his teeth; 
 
 Yet swam the old legs underneath. 
 
 Invincibly. The gap they double; 
 But further swim in trouble. 
 
 And lovely Nature stretched her aid. 
 
 Her sympathetic tow and eddy; 
 The oars of air with azure blade. 
 And silent gravities persuade 
 
 And waft them onward, slow and steady — 
 
 On duteous deeds aye ready. 
 
 High leaped the perch. The hawk screamed joy. 
 
 Under Joost's belly musically 
 The ripples broke. Bright clouds convoy 
 The brute that man would but destroy. 
 
 And all instinctive agents rally 
 
 Strong and medicinally. 
 
 In vain ! The gurgling waters suck 
 
 That old life under. Herman swimming 
 Seized but the horse tail. Like a buck 
 
101 
 
 Breasting a lake in wild woods' pluck, 
 
 Joost rose, the glaze his bright eyes dimming, 
 And blood his sockets brimming. 
 
 Then, voices speak and women cry. 
 
 The treading feet find soil to stand. 
 Above them the green ramparts lie, 
 And 'twixt their shadows and the sky. 
 
 The wondering burghers crowd the strand, 
 
 And Herman help to land: 
 
 "Now to Newcastle's English walls, 
 
 Hail, Herman I and thy matchless stud" ! 
 
 Joost staggers up the bank and falls. 
 
 And, dying, to his master crawls. 
 Yields up his long solicitude. 
 And spills his veins of blood. 
 
 In Herman's arms his neck is prest. 
 
 With martial pride his dark eye glazes; 
 
 He feels the hand he loves the best 
 
 Stroke fondly, and a chill of rest, 
 As if he rolled in pasture daisies 
 And heard in winds his praises: 
 
 "O could'st thou speak, what wouldst thou say ? 
 
 I, who can speak, am dumb before thee. 
 Thine eyes that drink Olympian day 
 Where steeds of wings thy soul convey. 
 
 With pride of eagles circling o'er thee: 
 
 Thou seest I adore thee ! 
 
 "Bound to thy starry home and her 
 
 Who brought me thee and left earth hollow I 
 An honored grave thy bones inter, 
 And painting shall thy fame confer. 
 
 Ere in thy shining track I follow, 
 
 Thou courser of Appolo I" 
 
102 
 
 (^mtn QII|ri0ttn^ 
 
 Founder of Delaware State. 
 Fontainebleau, 1657. 
 
 Father, is he dead ? Then I'll confess me: 
 His period is my pause where Aftertime 
 Will lay my book down and consider me. 
 You shall be my posterity and judge 1 
 
 I had no child but Sweden and foreswore it; 
 
 Homeless by choice, I chose a homeless staff 
 
 From generosity; the man just slain 
 
 Monaldeschi, was nothing but a servant. 
 
 Marquis I made him like the Marquis Ancre, 
 
 King Louis' father slew. Italian like 
 
 He mixed in my concerns, my lonely state 
 
 Unpitying, set his wits to work to spoil 
 
 My independence; forged his comrade's hand 
 
 And traded in my livery like a traitor. 
 
 His plot he brought me: 'twas assassination; 
 
 Thinking a Queen ten years o'er Sweden's council 
 
 Could be so shallow. "Let me execute him I" 
 
 The jockey swore. The table's turned: he's dead. 
 
 His lesson is not lost on Latindom. 
 
 Let women twit 1 Christine was crowned a King. 
 
 Defence I scorn, whose court, like old King Lear's, 
 Is where I visit. Am I yet a nun ? 
 Vasa's resentment certain as his justice 
 Wakes in his grandson's child. Father and son 
 I executed, ere I abdicated. 
 For prodding my resignment ere its time. 
 Absolute Queen I pass from throne to Pope, 
 No subject anywhere, my rent crown lands, 
 My confidence State secrets; treason, death I 
 She who of late by armies executed. 
 
103 
 
 Visited kings with thunders, dyeing rivers 
 
 Blood red, was gloriously commended; 
 
 Heretic then she was, but worth conversion. 
 
 This day I sentenced one — but one — all shrived, 
 
 Who articled with me, and mutinied. 
 What did my Judas sell ? That's perished with him: 
 I trapped him ere he bit. Was he my lover ? 
 Cowards will say so for two hundred years. 
 Eve had it said of her, all nature's mother. 
 Listen, thou priest ! 'Twas Knowledge bit us both. 
 Knowledge has bit thy church. At Westphalia 
 I forced to peace the Thirty Years of war. 
 And Toleration was my crown. Therefore 
 I took the cross in Lenity's crusade. 
 To minimize the consequence of creeds, 
 Nor ever have I Sweden asked to follow. 
 
 I went to Rome to help the milder dawn. 
 When warring sects shall merge their strength for earth, 
 And fill the moats of feudal States with Heaven — 
 Sunlight's illusion on the cold-throned Alps, 
 Mass's illusion in smug churchmen's hearts, 
 Women's illusion in their sex-sick heads — 
 Heaven, not hell, makes earth yawn wide from man. 
 And draws its small portcullises of churches 
 Upward or down like selfish castellans. 
 
 My filial shame was Christ's triumphant day: 
 A white-horsed Amazon, the penitent 
 Rode like Alaric or the Vandal king 
 Through Rome: Herodias with her father's head. 
 
 Then French and Spanish parties played for me. 
 
 Like Pilate's Roman dicers. Up I gat 
 
 With my small suite and sought politest France. 
 
 Italians ruled it; Mazarin, step-monarch. 
 
 His nieces, queens. Ladies wore warriors' crowns. 
 
 None felt my sarcasm when the magdalen, 
 
 Ninon de I'Enclos, mistress of an abbe, 
 
 I singled out and wrote around her slime: 
 
 "Frondeurs unsinning! sling the first stone here 1" 
 
104 
 
 The woman is a plant, her flower early, 
 Her reproduction her biography. 
 My mother pined and died for her Gustavus; 
 His only child I was, to wear his sword; 
 His sister had a son who wooed me hard; 
 I felt the Vasa jealousy of partners 
 And fed my brain and let my bosom starve. 
 My mind had no companionships in Sweden: 
 I sent abroad for scholars. Soon contempt 
 Of amorous thought withered my wedding wreath. 
 Our Lutherans were lusty, women forward; 
 Magnus, my fancy, wedded Charles's sister; 
 I promised Charles my crown without my hand 
 And formed the Order of the Amaranth, 
 The monks and nuns of Learning; one stood fast. 
 My frame grew steel, my mind became all man: 
 Monaldeschi trifled with an Amazon. 
 
 But I have proved the sexes have reversion— 
 And from Minerva's brain Mars can be born: 
 The King I chose has rounded Sweden's bounds 
 And beaten Poland. Scania is a fief 
 Of the Roman empire and Christina ends 
 Semiramis, like Margaret of the North. 
 
 The Woman left in me was my Conversion: 
 I tired of sermons but to woo my soul 
 Was an amour, sweet, timorous, and sighful, 
 Like the annunciation of the Virgin. 
 Spain, Portugal, the Pope, sent purseuivants 
 Who talked in liquid tongues, which I had learned 
 Without a master, of supernal love. 
 Long I coquetted with those Jesuits, 
 Resisted, threw them off, returned and yielded. 
 And never told the soft solicitation: 
 One woman kept a secret; it was pure. 
 To learn our fate we seek the fortune teller 
 Who promises it all: Rome outbid Luther. 
 We know not much; on them who swear they know 
 We lay our doubts: Rome has one Swede; she, Rome. 
 
105 
 
 Rome's civil law and Koster's printed Bible, 
 Fermented in rude States; the age is loosed: 
 High intellects are readjusting knowledge. 
 The Northern Schools Kepler and Tycho Brahe 
 Have graduated to revise the lights 
 And Earth's circumferential to her Sun. 
 Rome has reformed; Christine reform to Rome, /^ 
 To be Hypatia to the fading Gods. 
 
 The year my father fell in Lutzen fight 
 (j^ Old Galileu did a/jure the truth 
 
 In Rome. No more will Rome science suppress. 
 
 Intolerance will take its stand in France 
 
 And from this old chateau, who knows, but Louis 
 
 Will shame his grandsire Henry more than 
 
 Gustave Adolphus ? Priest-kings are the worst. 
 
 I will against intolerance be Protestant 
 
 In Rome itself. The earth awakes from sleep 
 
 By revolution. France may turn too swift. 
 
 Who's yonder ? Henriette of England comes; 
 Cromwell supplies the head of her and Charles. 
 Von Wallenstein took counsel of the stars 
 But fell like Monaldeschi, Captain-slashed. 
 The forest here has a Black Huntsman in it. 
 King Henry's apparition ere he died; 
 There will I ride alone, who ne'er saw ghost. 
 How indolently safe to trust one's priest ? 
 
 Nature ! I sighed thee that I had no babe ! 
 There was one, Little Sweden, that I swaddled 
 In the new world; its mart was named for me. 
 The Dutch have taken it and changed the name; 
 In neither Sweden have I left a chick. 
 
 Error preserves us often, like misfortune. 
 The wayward child is still the best beloved. 
 I took my crown off for sweet independence. 
 Fashion I like not; business wore me out. 
 I will be humble when I live in Rome. 
 
106 
 
 Meantime these French who bought my father's death 
 Shall keep me for two years at their expense ! 
 I will resume my study — true devotion; 
 My books — the holy graves of saints; myself — 
 Portent of learning in the female plant. 
 As Mazarin collects his books for France, 
 I will become Rome's vestal bibliophile. 
 Cumaean sibyl for new oracles. 
 The riddle of the woman who shall bruise 
 The serpent's head, bear children and be ruled 
 By her desire of husband, therein lies. 
 As in the Sibyl's books Christ was acrostic. 
 
 The negative of man is his child-bearer. 
 
 The serpent's head is this small female head. 
 
 Which coils on man's and has no separate growth; 
 
 The quickening contact mounts not to her reason. 
 
 Diana's priestesses had each one breast; 
 
 One was too many for symmetric art 
 
 And Sappho's lyre was lovesick. Woman grew 
 
 Half on, with single breast, and Greece was dam 
 
 To the strong brood of woman-minded thoughts, 
 
 In the harmonious temples of her head; 
 
 That, draggled through the Arab caliph's lusts. 
 
 Glanced off from Spain and lodged in Italy, 
 
 And on the barren rock of Peter grew 
 
 The lillied Renaissance. Still negative 
 
 Is woman, led by France and fashion down 
 
 Below the stature of her column's head: 
 
 Man grows a tree and woman grows a vine 
 
 And chokes the tree of Knowledge. Earth's o'er-brooded I 
 
 All faiths that are have superstitious ends. 
 Earth has no end in its continual sphere. 
 Material truths one day will be a faith, 
 When woman comprehends and holds the ground 
 That man has won. The vast negation waits. 
 
 When I was at Nykoping, Oxenstiern — 
 
 A greater mind than Richelieu's, but in Sweden — 
 
107 
 
 Gave me a dog called Fides, saying "Chris., 
 
 Thou learn's too much from books; learn from this setter I" 
 
 We had an echo on the water there; 
 
 My dog's bark barked at him and the first night 
 
 He barked all night at Echo. The next night 
 
 Fides kept all awake. My aunt cried "Kill him !" 
 
 " 'Tis his devotion," said my uncle John, 
 
 "He worships at the unaccountable." 
 
 How ghostly seem we to ourselves in mirrors 
 At dusk, as they reflect our coming shade 1 
 In dusk I ferried Fides tow'rd his Echo, 
 I spoke myself one name for the last time; 
 "Magnus." 
 
 Art listening, priest ? 
 
 (He is asleep. 
 The death he has seen done this hour prostrates him.) 
 
 The rest I'll tell to Echo, whispering here. 
 In the long halls where Henry kissed Diana 
 In Rondelet's fireplace, where kiss quenched flame. 
 In her Initial, Henry is the cipher. 
 She subdued him when Dauphin, nineteen years 
 Her junior. But she married at thirteen; 
 Widowed at thirty-two: it is my age ! 
 She was re-born and turned a man in love. 
 Once in an age old woman has her reiglln. — ^ 
 (Would I had tilted with Montgomery I) 
 The renaissance at Fountainebleau was Love. 
 
 Mary of Scots was here a bride and Philip 
 
 Of Spain did wed his murdered son's affianced; 
 
 Francis was satyr to his market girls; 
 
 Navarre in love-war met his Ravaillac. 
 
 Kings get no more than peasants from the sex ! 
 
 The furious love scenes painted by Italians 
 Are just effaced by Anne of Austria, 
 Lest Mazarin admire them more than her. 
 In this chateau, where art was stripped to Isis 
 A hundred years ago, they stand me off. 
 Who am an honest monk, a maiden queen. 
 
108 
 
 When brother Guises in some such chateau 
 Were foully stabbed, the Valois line expired ! 
 My traitor wore a corselet like a woman, 
 His sentence paralyzed his lizard tongue. 
 I'll whisper to this sleeping priest my secret — 
 God's drowsy ear, the old maid's deaf confessor. 
 
 'Twas play for Poland, which the Jesuits 
 
 Have made another Spain, and smothered knowledge, 
 
 Has been the silent secret of my soul I 
 
 Sweden is flanked by Denmark, our oppressor; 
 Poland and Russia are conjoined with it. 
 Jagellon's line concluded with a woman 
 Who wed my father's uncle, John of Vasa; 
 Sweden and Poland were their son's demesnes — 
 Sigismund. He would force the Poles' religion 
 Upon our Lutherans, who did depose him. 
 The Dissidents he persecutes in Poland, 
 Its Huguenots, who do solicit me 
 To be their Henry of Navarre and join 
 Against the Russians our united powers. 
 Else Russia will devour both Swedes and Poles. 
 I must be Catholic if Queen in Poland I 
 
 I set my cousin Charles upon my throne, 
 He in my secrets as my ardent lover. 
 To shatter Denmark and King Sigismund, 
 And stepped me down, a wondrous Catholic. 
 
 Learning had taught me silliness of churches: 
 Religions are the national costumes. 
 More silken Southward and more woollen North. 
 I could afford to humor them I vanquished, 
 They were not subtle to discern my play. 
 Like Fides, Echo from the farther side 
 Returned to this, as I to it went nearer 
 (The dog did reason it when he was hoarse). 
 Who shall chase Echoes from opposing shores ? 
 What of Christine is altered by exchanging 
 The creed of Odin for the creed of Venus ? 
 
109 
 
 The toasted babes in Thirty Years of war 
 Called on the motherhood in my dry milk 
 To taste the sacrament that I had humbled, 
 As Jesus dipped with John, Not by the Cross 
 But by the Dove was writ the sign of Conquer 1 
 
 Poland, Bohemia, Sweden, Hungary, 
 Beneath a woman's love, would wall the Tartar 
 And Bear, out of Midgarden's paradise: 
 I wished to be the tolerant queen of Poland 1 
 Lest this might be, the Jesuits mine equerry 
 Hired — Monaldeschi — to snook over me. 
 I caught him with my letters, trapped him here, 
 And sent his ghost to Rome to give me awe 1 
 
 Rome will sit squat. Her morals are Conversion. 
 
 Public Opinion, ever absolute. 
 
 In midnight tryanny as in the day. 
 
 Now has Christine beneath its microscope: 
 
 Poland, I fear, is frozen from my love 1 
 
 The woman's reign in Eden was not long; 
 The curse of children was her balance wheel. 
 Sweden is lost to me; Poland affrighted; 
 Rome is uneasy with its roving convert: 
 I have no other home. Father, awake ! 
 Absolve Rome's daughter from her passing sin ! 
 
 [Note: — "There is every reason to believe that this change of re- 
 ligion was rather the result of policy than conviction. The elective 
 throne of PolandtTaving become vacant this year (1667), we find Chris- 
 tina, after having flung away the crown her father had bequeathed 
 her, the most eager of all the competitors for a crown which she had 
 almost trampled upon. The surprising genius, the sagacity and the 
 learning of this unaccountable woman are apparent in the artful and 
 powerfully written letters and instructions which she drew up herself 
 for the mincers she employed." — Mrs. Jameson: "Female Sovereigns." 
 
110 
 
 IC^ttt OIoutttQ 
 
 THE CORNER FIREPLACE. 
 
 In the cool, green Kentish marshes, 
 
 Dinner and discussion done, 
 To their chariots and caleches 
 
 Sped the guests of Dickinson. 
 Farmers' Letters he had written, 
 
 They had passed them "just the thing," 
 That the tax and troops of Britain 
 
 Should be halted by the King. 
 
 Finer men Colonial station 
 
 Had not than these gentry fair, 
 Sitting inquest on a nation 
 
 For their province, Delaware: 
 Chew and Mifflin, Read and Bassett, 
 
 Men of law and substance good. 
 They had many a cherished asset 
 
 In their chosen neighborhood. 
 
 Immigrant from regions older. 
 
 They Penn's Territories sought; 
 Some were cautious, some were bolder. 
 
 All to act the rightful) thought — 
 Church men, Quakers, wived, estated. 
 
 Should they keep the strife afar, 
 Or plunge madly, Moloch-fated, 
 
 After Boston into war. 
 
 Negroes cleared the cloth these planters 
 Had enjoyed — the wild duck thin, 
 The Madeira in decanters. 
 
Ill 
 
 The tureen of terrapin; 
 Pulled the table to the fireplace, 
 
 Where the corner chimney stood, 
 And their master's sword and broadbrim 
 
 Hung above the blazing wood. 
 
 (Did he see a sail a'mooring 
 
 At his landing by the creek 
 And his Quaker lady shoring. 
 
 Flitting through the evening bleak ?) 
 Dickinson sat down to writing 
 
 And his mind went far afar; 
 "Haven't we a cause for fighting ? — 
 
 Shall we shun the tyrant's war ?" 
 
 Down his Quaker broadbrim tumbled 
 
 On the firewood, at the word. 
 And he took it up, right humbled. 
 
 Seeing but his father's sword — 
 Sword in Indian warfare whetted, 
 
 Flashing in the battle's glow, 
 When the Quakers peace abetted 
 
 And caressed the savage foe. 
 
 Back he hung the hat, emitting: 
 
 "War must end it just the same I 
 All the flues this chimney splitting 
 
 Have one outlet for the flame. 
 Thirteen provinces aflaming 
 
 Thirteen Colonies one aim — 
 They are like the corner chimney, 
 
 All united making flame. 
 
 All my chambers this is warning, 
 
 Shall one flue to draw refuse ? 
 The whole continent is arming 
 
 Like my corner chimney flues. 
 Liberty 1 O flame ascendence I 
 
 Till one generous warmth we know! 
 Chimney stack of Independence, 
 
 Every fireplace in a glow 1" 
 
112 
 
 As he paced the room, aroused, 
 
 Drawing forth the sword revered, 
 For a moment was unhoused: — 
 
 Queer ! the hat had disappeared. 
 But next morning it was hanging 
 
 And the sword no more was there: 
 Some fair Philadelphia lady 
 
 Busied her with Delaware. 
 
 Time soon sped the Declaration 
 
 And united fire begun; 
 Not a signer for the Nation 
 
 Was the name of Dickinson 1 
 Quaker property imperilled. 
 
 All too late his sword he bare. 
 Though within the corner fireplace 
 
 Fuel burnt of Delaware, 
 
 DOVER, DELAWARE. 
 
 In a bracket mortised. 
 Like a bust with fractured head 
 Of some lady delicate, 
 Stands the Delawarean State. 
 
 Counties, three, are all her own, 
 Rising like a triple stone; 
 Down her profile like her hair 
 Showers the golden Delaware. 
 
 In her lids, retiring shy, 
 Brown NewCastle is her eye; 
 In the ocean's ewer thrust 
 Rosy Lewes tips her bust. 
 
 In her throat's slim interval 
 Dover is her capital. 
 
113 
 
 Like a modest brooch within 
 Velvet recess of her chin. 
 
 From its agate to the bay- 
 Ribbons a soft creek away, 
 Through the lotos lily ponds 
 And the marshes' diamonds. 
 
 Humid in the groves it stands. 
 Like some town in Netherlands, 
 Rising steepled o'er the fen— 
 A mirage of Hindlopen. 
 
 As within the locket's lid 
 Him, the lady loved, is hid, 
 Delaware, her face demure, 
 Shows in Dover's miniature: 
 
 Edmond Andros wigged so grand, 
 Francis Lovelace granting land. 
 Royal York and William Penn 
 And the Calvert gentlemen. 
 
 While the Dutchman trapped for furs, 
 Here were glebe and worshippers 
 Whilst the separate State began. 
 In the fresh years of Queen Anne. 
 
 And the sheriff set his stocks 
 In St. Jones's splatterdocks; 
 When its rent it would not pay 
 The Assembly drove away. 
 
 In his marshes wrote with grace. 
 By his cornered fireplace, 
 Dickinson, with eagle wing, 
 "Farmer's Letters" for the King. 
 
 Here the bell, like falchion keen, 
 Rang the soldiers to the green. 
 Who, erewhile, to court had come 
 At the beating of the drum. 
 
114 
 
 Like a trumpet of his Lord's. 
 Guarded by tlie gentry's swords, 
 Preached the school house steps upon 
 "Tory" Freeborn Garrettson. 
 
 Barratt's chapel was the lists, 
 Where old Wesley's Methodists 
 Bishops did themselves create, 
 In a new Episcopate. 
 
 Whatcoat's grave is in the town. 
 Bassett. convert of renown, 
 (Landed statesman in the strife,) 
 Bayard gave his child to wife. 
 
 Found by Presbyterian kirks 
 Are the heroes and their works, 
 With the Irish and the Scot 
 And their kindred Huguenot. 
 
 Every nook its own equips — 
 Jones, McDonough fought their ships 
 With the country-hearted air 
 Breathed in sylvan Delaware. 
 
 Like the gamecock first to crow, 
 While imperial States were slow, 
 Delaware her blessing sent 
 To a Federal government. 
 
 Count de Segur bringing gold. 
 Peeped on Dover's sleep, and told: 
 Marshal Grouchy, gunning through, 
 Shot more than at Waterloo. 
 
 Through our borders making tours, 
 Here came Du Pont de Nemours, 
 With his sons Lavoisier taught 
 To make powder full of thought. 
 
 Straight as it were almost new, 
 The cool house of Quaker Chew 
 
115 
 
 Echoes more than war's renown 
 Round his hall at Germantown: 
 
 Not his daughters, royal fine, 
 Not his old Madeira wine, 
 But all filial war's surcease: 
 Clayton's, Bulwer's solemn peace. 
 
 Clayton to young Fisher there 
 Told the lore of Delaware; 
 Local-hearted was his breast 
 As the fishhawk to its nest. 
 
 Bayards four, to Senates sent, 
 From the rented State house went. 
 Cross the square, unspeaking, three 
 Rival brothers Saulsbury I 
 
 Who shall know a magazine 
 Crept to print on Dover green ? 
 Or that Smithers, lawyer prim, 
 Here composed in Latin hymn ? 
 
 Or that jurist Ridgelys sank 
 Sterling talents in a bank ? 
 And, her Blue Hen's chickens canned, 
 Dover gave the world her brand. 
 
 Surgery its native realms 
 Founded under Dover elms 
 And, its green retreats within, 
 Letters gave to medicine,* 
 
 Delaware's tranquil increase 
 Comes from times of Prince Maurice, 
 Fragment of their soul's concern — 
 Grotius and Oxenstiern. 
 
 Down her creek ports from the ways 
 Glide her sloops, where cattle graze. 
 Ever fattening, never gone, 
 On Van Rembrandt's river lawn. 
 
116 
 
 Jurisprudence of Its courts 
 Dignified by its reports; 
 By its Senators sustained 
 The equality it gained. 
 
 Not the fractious rights of States 
 Riots in her water gates; 
 Kirtled in her slender zone, 
 Daughter of our Union. 
 
 Ancient blendings in her type 
 Give her beauty rare and ripe, 
 All of Europe's races born 
 In the orient of her morn. 
 
 Wanton cities spoil her not; 
 Like her peach and apricot, 
 She, within her little tree, 
 hi as the Orchard's luxury. 
 ♦Doctors James Sykes and Edward Miller. 1799. 
 
 JOAN OF ARC. 
 
 What's she I see in Camden street ? 
 
 As I ride through the evening shade, 
 In armor clad from head to feet, 
 
 A faded woman, yet a maid? 
 "Halt I" comes the challenge, deep and low; 
 
 "Now, whom be you that glints the dark ?" 
 "Know I am she that, long ago, 
 
 You named Joan, the Maid of Arcl 
 
 "Here in this Quaker hamlet born, 
 A Quaker child with rustic sense, 
 
 I stand an effigy forlorn 
 
 And challenge you who drew me hence ! 
 
 One day among our Hicksite Friends 
 I felt the spirit come to preach — 
 
117 
 
 You printed me to the world's ends, 
 A miracle of face and speech. 
 
 "No more I loved what I had been; 
 
 I felt a fierce ambition come 
 And plunged into the world of men 
 
 And for their world exchanged a home — 
 Lectured, harangued the mob at polls, 
 
 Unfrocked my limbs to tread the stage, 
 Played like bright witches with their souls. 
 
 Till beauty fled before old age. 
 
 "Give back to me my childhood calm 1 
 
 The wish to wife and mother be. 
 The fireside kiss, the dew and balm. 
 
 And blessings of obscurity 1 
 "Ah ! Maid of Arc, I feel the same: 
 
 Home left, the public way to take, 
 In youth we bore the oriflame. 
 
 Last, come the faggots and the stake." 
 
 THE JUDGE'S LAST TUNE. 
 
 The Judge took down his fiddle, 
 
 And put his feet on the stove. 
 And heaved a sigh from his middle 
 
 That might have been fat, or love; 
 He leaned his head on the mantel. 
 
 And bent his ear to the strings. 
 And the tender chords awakened 
 
 The echoes of many things. 
 
 The Bar had enjoyed the measure, 
 The Bench and Senate had been 
 
 Amused at the simple pleasure. 
 He drew from his violin. 
 
118 
 
 But weary of power and duty, 
 
 He had laid them down with a sigh, 
 
 Exhausted of life the beauty. 
 
 And he fiddled he knew not why. 
 
 In the days when love just budded. 
 
 And she, in the church yard lain, 
 Came over his books as he studied. 
 
 With an exquisite pang of pain. 
 He played to his sons their mother's 
 
 Old favorites ere she wed, 
 Those tunes, like hundreds of others. 
 
 Were requiems of the dead. 
 
 They lay in the kirk's enclosure: 
 
 All three, in the shadows dim, 
 In a cenotaph's cynosure 
 
 That waited for only him. 
 Who sat with his fiddle tuning 
 
 On the spot where his fame was won, 
 On the empty world communing. 
 
 Without a wife or a son. 
 
 And he drew his bow so plaintive 
 
 And loud, like a human cry, 
 That the light of the shutter darkened 
 
 From somebody passing by. 
 A young man peeped at the pensive 
 
 Great man, so familiar known, 
 His features, if inoffensive, 
 
 Were like to the judge's own. 
 
 "Come in," cried the politician. 
 
 "Come not." his soul would have said, 
 "Thou bringest to me a vision 
 
 Of a sin ere thy mother wed, 
 When I, wild boy from college, 
 
 Her humble desert o'ercame, 
 And we hid the guilty knowledge 
 
 Beneath thy father's name." 
 
119 
 
 The youth delayed no longer, 
 
 His sense of music strong, 
 Nor knew of his mother's wronger, 
 
 Nor that she had known a wrong; 
 Deep in the grave the secret 
 
 Her husband might never guess. 
 He stood before his father 
 
 With a loyal gentleness. 
 
 "What tune, fair boy, desirest 
 
 My old friend's worthy son ? — 
 Say but what he requirest. 
 
 And for father's sake 'tis done." 
 "Oh ! Judge, our State's defender. 
 
 Whose life has all been power, 
 Play me the tune most tender, . 
 
 When thou felt thy greatest hour ^ 
 
 The old man thought a minute, 
 
 Irresolutely stirred. 
 As if his fiddle's humor 
 
 Changed like a mocking bird: 
 Then, as his tears came raining 
 
 Upon the plaintive chords. 
 He played the invitation 
 
 To the sinner, of his Lord's. 
 
 "Come poor and needy sinners. 
 
 And weak and sick, and sore, 
 The patient Jesus lingers / 
 
 To draw you through the door J^ — . 
 It was a tune remembered 
 
 From old revival nights. 
 In crowded country churches. 
 
 Where dimly blew the lights 
 
 And boys grow superstitious 
 
 To hear the mourners wail. 
 The great man, self-degraded, 
 
 So sighed his contrite tale 
 In notes that failed for sobbing, 
 
120 
 
 To feel Heaven's sentence well, 
 That took away his Isaac 
 And blessed the Ishmael. 
 
 Low in the tomb of glory 
 
 The old man's ashes lie — 
 Unuttered this my story, 
 
 Unwritten to human eye; 
 And the young man, blessed and blessing, 
 
 Walks over the shady town. 
 The evil passions repressing 
 
 And his head bent humbly down. 
 
 Perhaps he marvels why treasure 
 
 Of the judge to his credit is set. 
 And an old revival measure 
 
 Should have been the statesman's^'pet. 
 But he hears the invitation. 
 
 And sees the streaming eyes, 
 Of the old man lost to the nation. 
 
 And forgiven beyond the skies. 
 
 BOMBAY HOOK LIGHT. 
 
 When Hesper died at Bombay Hook 
 
 And in the turf was covered, 
 A storm, that night, the Light House shook 
 
 And o'er the wide Bay hovered. 
 Jonah came from the funeral 
 
 So broken-hearted, weeping. 
 His gloom was like his Hesper's pall. 
 
 His mind worn out and sleeping. 
 
 For Hesper daily oiled the lamp 
 And nightly set its motion. 
 
121 
 
 And flamed it like a blazing camp 
 
 Upon the darkened ocean. 
 No gulls now struck the lantern high, 
 
 Though storm the waters cumbered, 
 For Bombay Hook forgot its eye 
 
 And, like its keeper, slumbered. 
 
 Sudden above the thunder peals 
 
 A ship's loud cannon blended; 
 One almost heard the cannon wheels, 
 
 So near the broadside rended; 
 Trumpets of men and toll of bells 
 
 Came close amid the gloaming. 
 And helpless on the stormy swells 
 
 To doom a ship was homing. 
 
 "God help her 1 Hesper's grave is theirs: 
 The beacon needs its keeper I" 
 
 Jonah rushed up to the tower stairs — 
 Too late, the tardy sleeper ! 
 
 What's that ? A sea bird from a star 
 
 Illumined o'er the river. 
 And flying straight from Heaven far, 
 
 Made all the lenses shiver; 
 The broken panes a hand admit — 
 
 A hand like Hesper's glazing — 
 And every wick with glory lit 
 
 Till Bombay Hook was blazing. 
 
 The ship veered to the helm's constraint; 
 
 Said Jonah's sacred sense: 
 "Hesper is not an idle saint — 
 
 Her Heaven is Diligence 1" 
 
122 
 
 THE POLE-WELL. 
 
 In Murder Kill, as it befell, 
 
 I saw a Miss at an old pole-well, 
 
 Drawing water, and as she pulled 
 
 The pole in the air, this stave she trolled: 
 
 "All our family, five, they tell. 
 
 Came up from the depths of this old well; 
 
 Maybe, some day, the bucket will bring 
 
 A dear little baby to hear me sing." 
 
 I said: "I'm thirsty, give me a drink 1" 
 Said she: "Help me the bucket to sink ! 
 My name's Fredericka and don't stay long: 
 There's them in the well that likes my song I 
 All our family, five, they tell. 
 We drew, all dripping, from this good well: 
 I hope, some day, that the bucket will 
 A dear little sister for Freddie spill I" 
 
 I dropped the bucket deep and still, 
 
 We leaned together to see it fill. 
 
 And when the well reflected, we 
 
 Two heads saw there, Fredericka and me: 
 "All our family, five, they tell. 
 Came out alive from this old well: 
 I hope some day that Freddy's face 
 Comes up in the bucket to take her place." 
 
 "Hold still, Fredericka ! look at the shine 
 And put your head right close to mine. 
 And rest it there where I have a drouth 
 That you can cool with your dewy mouth." 
 
 "I can't sing close, for I must have space; 
 Your eyes are wells where I see my face; 
 Or is it my baby there I see. 
 That the good Kriss Kringle promised me ? 
 
123 
 
 "Now I can't sing and the well will miss; 
 
 But there is a tune in your kind of kiss: 
 
 Two heads are there and another must be — 
 
 Look in the bucket if it you see 1 
 All my family, five, they tell, 
 My mother says came up this well; 
 If you don't go perhaps you'll see 
 One more come up and sing with me 1" 
 
 "Tell your mother to let me sue 1 
 I want a baby, just like you I 
 I'll come in the house and be your beau, 
 This water's so fresh it makes me glow" 
 All our family, five, they tell, 
 Begun right there by the old pole well; 
 Maybe, some day, the bucket will bring 
 A jay like me to help us sing." 
 
 AT LEIPSIC. 
 
 Down from my father's forest farm, 
 
 A little boy, I'm bringing. 
 Peach baskets full on either arm 
 
 And bugs my neck a'stinging. 
 It is so hot I cannot swear. 
 
 In the mosquitoes' gripe sick. 
 But I expect to see her there — 
 
 The ham-armed girl at Leipsic. 
 
 Her arm is large as country hams. 
 
 Skinned white, with reddish fleshing. 
 
 Her gentle bleat is like a lamb's. 
 Her bosom, how refreshing! 
 
 She never thinks of timid me. 
 
Tho' darting like a snipe sick^ 
 That casts sheep's eyes whene'er I see 
 The ham-armed girl at Leipsic. 
 
 The creek winds through a marsh as high 
 
 As the low-gabled houses. 
 The vessels pierce the drooping sky, 
 
 The stunted heifer browses. 
 Penn's Germans planned a wheat port nigh 
 
 And smoked the gnats till pipe-sick. 
 And there descended like a thigh 
 
 The ham-armed maid of Leipsic. 
 
 I never knew of love's alarm 
 
 Till she that shoulder flashed me, 
 And her effulgent Phryne's arm 
 
 Dropped on my heart and mashed Jme. 
 Through sixty years it folds me still, 
 
 With years I'm growing ripe-sick, 
 I see her, young, beside the kill, 
 
 The ham-armed girl of Leipsic. 
 
 HASLET'S MARCH. 
 
 One light makes all the morn, 
 
 Fall in I Fall in I 
 One heat grows all the corn. 
 
 Fall in 1 
 One halloo fills our horn, 
 
 Fall in 1 Fall in I Fallen ! 
 
 Old man, be not too late, 
 
 Fall in I Fall in 1 
 Young man, go kiss your mate, 
 
 Fall in I 
 Step out and make a State, 
 
 Fall in ! Fall in I Fall in I 
 
^^/ 
 
 125 
 
 Poor chap with naught to do, 
 
 Fall in ! Fall in 1 
 Rich man, let's muster you, 
 
 Fall in ! 
 You failure, come ! be Ao ! — _ 
 
 Fall in ! Fall in ! Fall in ! 
 
 The war it will be long: 
 
 Fall in ! Fall in ! 
 Promotions will be strong: 
 
 Fall in ! 
 Independence be our song. 
 
 Fall in ! Fall in ! Fall in I 
 
 There's a memory in war — 
 
 Fall in ! Fall in I 
 It will spangle age afar, 
 
 Fall in ! 
 Who falls will shine a star 1 
 
 Fall in ! Fall in ! Fall in I 
 
 The fife invites the drum: 
 
 Fall in I Fall in ! 
 They unite to sprite the dumb, 
 
 Fall in ! 
 When music plays, O, come I 
 
 Fall in ! Fall in ! Fall in I 
 
 There's a General to be — 
 
 Fall in ! Fall in I 
 Mother's boy, you may be he — 
 
 Fall in I 
 The flag we fly is free — 
 
 Fall in ! Fall in ! Fall in I 
 
 Home always trims our lamp. 
 
 Fall in I Fall in 1 
 How comrade-like our tramp ! 
 
 Fall in ! 
 Oh ! beautiful the camp I 
 
 Fall in I Fall in 1 Fall in ! 
 
 (Played by flfes, kettle drums, clappers and base drum.) 
 
126 
 
 DELAWARE HYMN 
 ADOPTING THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 
 
 (December 7, 1787.) 
 
 Our small estate, left anxious long, 
 Rounds up a Nation, wide and strong, 
 And bursts to bloom in fairy bond, 
 Like lilies in our lotos pond. 
 
 H. 
 
 No more we fear the fragile fates 
 That do attend on budding States; 
 Tied in the great Republic's sheaf 
 And guarded by our mighty chief. 
 
 in. 
 
 Let larger States think subtle things 1 
 We bide beneath the sheltering wings 
 That in the long war kept us free; 
 And our extension is the Sea. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Our equal rights secure we wield, 
 The Constitution aye our shield; 
 The Revolution's march undone 
 Until we march in Union. 
 
 V. 
 
 Dear country 1 hold in love and rest 
 The prophecy that waits the West, 
 Where sunlight makes its longest stay, 
 And ends the drama with the Day ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Like to our robin, bold and shy, 
 We leap, the first to ratify; 
 And raise to light the redbreast note. 
 With dew and worship in our throat 1 
 
127 
 
 AT JUDGE WHITE'S, 
 IN THE DELAWARE FOREST— 1781. 
 
 Rev. Francis Asbury: 
 
 Saturday night ! How the forest wind raves 1 
 Call in for prayers the people and slaves: 
 Ere breaks the Sabbath let Christians be grim — 
 What is that singing ? What is that hymn ? 
 
 Song from the Kitchen: 
 
 "Kitty Cazier I Save me a rose I 
 That in thy casement or bright bosom grows; 
 Twould smell of thee, sweetheart so dear, 
 Out in the snowdrift, Kitty Cazier !" 
 
 Mr. Asbury: 
 
 The Song: 
 
 Mr. Asbury: 
 
 The Song: 
 
 Sister, is not that a hymn of the war ? 
 Oh, this Rebellion ! It's near and it's far ! 
 Wesley's poor soldiers are hermits abhorred — 
 Sweet is that voice if 'twas pitched to the Lord ! 
 
 "Kitty Cazier ! save me a smile ! 
 Far on the march it would light me the while; 
 If I should die it would take away fear; 
 Save me a bright smile, Kitty Cazier !" 
 
 Brethren are whipped, and hanged one has been; 
 Poor Brother Clowe preached and died on the Green. 
 Now, raise the hymn; and "Old Hundred" it is; 
 (Surely, that sister who sings, is remiss.) 
 
 "Kitty Cazier ! Save me a thought ! 
 'Twould make a man of me, dear, when I fought; 
 Thinking of me, it would drive away care. 
 Thinking of thee, 'twould be Kitty Cazier." 
 
Mr. Asbury: 
 
 The Song: 
 
 Mr. Asbury: 
 
 128 
 
 Satan I Thy worldly chords shed a delight; 
 (Sure 'tis a Nightingale singing at night ! 
 Not out of England have I heard the bird). 
 Enter, thou tempter, and hark to the Word ! 
 
 "Kitty Cazier ! Save me a kiss ! 
 How it would feed me when food was remiss; 
 How, when disbanded and drawing thee near. 
 It would be victory, Kitty Cazier 1" 
 
 Love ! these young hearts go up Thee as a stair. 
 (Almost that damsel has scattered my prayer). 
 Come in, my sister, we're on Sabbath's rim; 
 Kneel ! I will pray for thy soul and thy hymn. 
 
 The Song: 
 
 Mr. Asbury: 
 
 "Kitty Cazier ! Save me thy heart ! 
 Let not thy lover's heart, losing thee, smart I 
 Heart to heart beating. Heaven is here I 
 Sweet Independence 1 Kitty Cazier 1" 
 
 Echo ? Or are they recruits on the way 
 
 Down the thick rivers that lead to the Bay ? 
 
 Brother Cornwall is is fast in the fork 
 
 At the Bay's mouth 'twixt the James and the York I 
 
 Music of recruits heard receding; singing Kitty Cazier as the 
 foresters kneel to pray. 
 
129 
 
 SMYRNA TAVERN. 
 
 My father sold his wheat 
 At Smyrna's shipping seat 
 
 And with us boys he started for the farm; 
 He had a pale pretence 
 Of worldly confidence, 
 
 For the currency had made his pocket warm. 
 
 But all at once his mare 
 He pulled, with face of care. 
 
 And said: "Boys, back to town we'll go; 
 For I'm afraid of harm 
 Upon that forest farm, 
 
 With money, as those foresters must know." 
 
 It made our pulses throb 
 To think of them who rob. 
 
 We never in our lives before had been 
 Where barroom liquors flow. 
 And spotted dice, men throw; 
 
 The Preacher never harbored at an inn. 
 
 So, trembling in the tavern — 
 Aladdin in the cavern — 
 
 I hardly dared to look up from the floor; 
 It seemed so strange to eat 
 Within that stud horse seat 
 
 And, eke 1 to hear the public jackass roar. 
 
 The Good Samaritan 
 
 Had lodged the wounded man 
 
 For twopence at an inn, somewhere, to mend; 
 And Joseph's maid did stall 
 Without the tavern wall. 
 
 But Preachers lodged forever with a friend. 
 
 However, neath the eaves 
 I dreamed of country thieves 
 
 And wondered that my father was afraid 
 
130 
 
 To feel so ill-assorted 
 With only country-hearted, 
 
 When at the wicked inn the good man stayed. 
 
 The morning sun uprose 
 And we, (slept in our clothes,) 
 
 Our money it was counted even right; 
 The fame of Smyrna lies 
 In its tavern, in my eyes. 
 
 That landlord is the clearing of my sight. 
 
 For in the heart within. 
 Not the place, abides the sin. 
 
 There was no tavern by when Cain went mad. 
 But Peter, he denied. 
 When the tavern maid him spied 
 
 That with Christ acquaint he ever had. 
 
 My father he perceives 
 That the foresters are thieves, 
 
 (The Preacher that the foresters are sweet;) 
 There are shadows in the cavern. 
 There are sunbeams in the tavern, 
 
 And money's always safest where there's wheat. 
 
 TO A DELAWARE PINE. 
 
 Palisade Pine I that gave us lands, 
 Thrusting thy feet in the flowing sands, 
 Holding the bar till it was our own — 
 Why dost thou ever moan and moan ? 
 
 Is it because Thou wert mountain bred. 
 In the heavens Thy dark green head, 
 Growing Thy seed in the crushed sandstone, 
 That, in our levels. Thou makest moan ? 
 
131 
 
 Thou art higher than all our hills, 
 Soaring above our humble wills 1 
 Straight Thy spine, till Thou seemest flown 
 'Mongst the birds in an upper zone. 
 
 Still Thou repinest, Pine so high I 
 Halted just short of the weeping sky. 
 Stemming the rush of the wild cyclone: 
 Pine, what makest Thee moan and moan ? 
 
 Hast Thou root in too shallow land. 
 Needing Thee spread for Thy naked stand, 
 Need of wide feet to arise alone. 
 That in Thy tower Thou makest moan ? 
 
 Carpeted under Thee, brown Thy shats. 
 Like an Indian chief with mats; 
 Clean Thy shade of Thy stems and cone, 
 Childless, Thy royalty making moan. 
 
 Where Thou moanest we cannot reach 
 To Thy pulpit, to hear Thee preach; 
 Only a branch we annual see. 
 Grave and gay, in the Christmas tree. 
 
 When we are saddened, astray, alone, 
 Comforting, brother, is Thy still moan ! 
 Seeming to say from our loved ones flown 
 Murmurs above in their telephone 1 
 
 Once I knew a stature like Thine, 
 Stately trunk as the glorious Pine, 
 Rich brunette, she was dark and fair. 
 Pale sky eyes and Thy waving hair. 
 
 Something too lofty for our soil, 
 Far away from our day's turmoil, 
 High, ineffable, dreaming, alone. 
 Aye she walked in Zenobia's zone. 
 
 Lover nor conqueror climbed to her 
 Fruitless, yielding but cone and burr; 
 
132 
 
 Left by time, though to wedlock prone, 
 Stately she stood with a soul in moan. 
 
 Set in opinion like the Pine, 
 Drawing everything but the vine. 
 Elegant, glorious, she like Its sigh, 
 Featured the Pine with its head in the sky. 
 
 Then, in a night, was the lady wrecked. 
 Wild the luxuriant intellect: 
 There was a taint in the brain and bone.- 
 Hear in the midnight the Pine tree moan ! 
 
 A DUCK CREEK LEGEND. 
 
 O, lovely shone the daytime sun 
 
 Upon the pair just wedded! 
 They took the train at Washington 
 
 For Philadelphia headed. 
 So pure the bride, her groom beside. 
 
 Her buds and blossoms wreathing, 
 It seemed she saw the angels glide 
 
 Out of his holy breathing. 
 
 She, heiress of a sire's clean work. 
 
 Her purse sat light upon her; 
 And he, a ship's paymaster's clerk, 
 
 He did the Navy honor; 
 Clean lips and life his cool heart from 
 
 He worshiped with her, singing. 
 From his she saw their race to come 
 
 About her bosom clinging. 
 
 Vestal and matron spirits there 
 Coquetted in her dreaming. 
 
 Till in the Bay of Delaware 
 
 They saw a Warship steaming; 
 
133 
 
 "I seem to hear her seamen cheer 
 For you, their dear paymaster !" 
 
 Said he: "The city's drawing near, 
 But we'll get there the faster I" 
 
 Thus ever she felt spirits by — 
 
 A spell than nuptials stranger — 
 And leaned upon his large, fond eye 
 
 That smiled away all danger; 
 Till, to their bridal chamber came 
 
 His friends to call him to them. 
 He kissed with flame, then, calm and tame, 
 
 Went out as if he knew them. 
 
 Never again, to bride or man, 
 
 His life, or shade, has risen; 
 He forged the payrolls of his ship 
 
 And spent a life in prison. 
 The vestal bride wed one beside. 
 
 With less supernal graces; 
 Her children fill the countryside; 
 
 Fond heart fits many faces 1 
 
 DICK. 
 
 Who's that child upon a chair 
 
 At campmeeting making speeches ? 
 Gracious I how mature his air, 
 
 Though he wears a baby's breeches ! 
 Don't you know him ? That's Dick — 
 
 Son of Lawyer Champetry — 
 Born a speaker in the quick; 
 
 What a statesman he will be — 
 So slick I 
 Dick. 
 
134 
 
 Who's that boy with eyes like saucers 
 
 And ox cherries, coolly stumping ? 
 Like a bull calf, high he tosses 
 
 Grown up stumpers, hardly humping: 
 Don't you know him ? Dick, you see, 
 
 Of our State the prodigy ! 
 See him turn on them the trick — 
 
 While the people roar with glee, 
 So quick ! 
 Dick. 
 
 Who's that man in public station, 
 
 Portly, courtly, prosecuting, 
 Soaring, roaring for the nation, 
 
 Now convicting, now non-suiting, 
 Don't you know him ? That's Dick I 
 
 O, if Dick could only be 
 Quiet-minded as trump-winded, 
 
 What a counsellor he'd be 1 
 Who'd lick 
 Dick? 
 
 Who's that haggard, pale defendant, 
 
 Pleading for his liberty, 
 Of his eloquence still pendant 
 
 Noble pathos in his plea ? 
 Don't you know him ? That's Dick. 
 
 Poor boy I Precocious he 1 
 Gift of tongues has made him sick, 
 
 Now, if ever, serious be ! 
 Blue chick — 
 Dick. 
 
 
135 
 
 CREEK MOTHER. 
 
 Winding creeks in marslies wide, 
 Rising, falling, night or noon, 
 
 Do ye know what makes the tide ? 
 She that's far off in the moon 1 
 
 All her tow lines grapple ye. 
 
 Like the spider's strands drawn tight, 
 All cast off in harmony, 
 
 Lift and loose ye by her light. 
 
 So, she sucks the world perforce. 
 Though assundered and above, 
 
 As a mother in divorce 
 
 Draws her offspring by her love. 
 
 Though by day her fiery spouse 
 
 Searches lest their cribs she win, 
 
 In the night she finds their house 
 And by moonlight steals within. 
 
 THE PEACH. 
 
 Superb coquette of fruits the queen ! 
 Nor apricot nor damascene 
 With thy voluputous shape can vie. 
 Nor draw such blushes from the sky. 
 
 Until my lady's cheek I kissed. 
 
 And eke her brooch of amethyst, 
 
 I never found, in earth or air, 
 
 A bloom with thine that would compare. 
 
 And now that she is mine to bite, 
 Thy juicy plumpness charms me quite: 
 
13ft 
 
 If her in vain I do beseech, 
 I give my kisses to the peach. 
 
 Ah 1 how like thee, inconstant tree. 
 Her buxom beauty is to me 1 
 This year a mildew, next a frost — 
 I've learned the story to my cost. 
 
 Yet if but one time out of seven 
 She ripens under glowing heaven, 
 Each basket of her crimson flame 
 Is worth an orchard all the same. 
 
 I know the bees have stung her sweets 
 While she was wooing summer's heats, 
 That on the twig she droops alone, 
 And that her kernel is a stone. 
 
 Still, Princess of the Delaware ! 
 Thou fair and frail, thou rich and rare, 
 To hold thee true from span to span, 
 The cell for thee shall be a can. 
 
 Then as a Turk in winter's snow 
 Steals oft to his seraglio, 
 Thy pantry ardently I reach. 
 And summer enters with the peach. 
 
 Bloom, O, my love ! but should'st thou fade, 
 
 That passion dies be not afraid; 
 
 For by the tree that blessed me so 
 
 I'll plant thy seed and thou shalt grow. 
 
 
137 
 
 THE LAST PEACH. 
 
 Late September, a frost is due, 
 
 Let me wander my orchard through. 
 
 What is it that I seem to see ? 
 
 One last peach, the last on the tree ! 
 
 One last peach I may cull for me, 
 
 One last peach, the last on the tree. 
 
 'Tis not red, it is white as I, 
 Ripening white as the bleachen sky; 
 Late, late Heath, shall I pull down thee ? 
 One last peach, the last on the tree ! 
 One last peach I may cull for me. 
 One last peach, the last on the tree. 
 
 Leaves are many like my thick hairs; 
 Desolate peach ! are we left no pairs ? 
 Once there was rapture for you and me. 
 One last peach, the last on the tree ! 
 One last peach I may cull for me, 
 One last peach, the last on the tree ! 
 
 They were luscious and debonair, 
 Peaches and sweethearts everywhere, 
 Where so many we plucked them free. 
 One last peach, the last on the tree I 
 One last peach I may pluck for me. 
 One last peach, the last on the tree. 
 
 Now we are lonely we are chaste — 
 Grapes are high for the fox's taste; 
 My old spouse I will give her thee 1 
 One last peach, the last on the tree. 
 One last peach, 'tis the frost's decree, 
 One last peach, the last on the tree. 
 
138 
 
 PHOEBE BIRD. 
 
 Mispiliion has a Phoebe bird 
 
 Whose mate I cannot see; 
 He only knows a single word: 
 
 "Phoebe 1 Phoebe !" 
 
 He flies from quince tree to rose bush 
 
 And makes all day his plea; 
 I love it better than the thrush — 
 
 "Phoebe I Phoebe I" 
 
 O, is she dead who built his nest 
 
 To his one harmony, 
 And hatched his offspring with her breast ? 
 
 "Phoebe 1 Phoebe I" 
 
 One word goes to my lonely heart, 
 
 It fits my vacancy; 
 O, widower bird, I feel thy dart — 
 
 "Phoebe 1 Phoebe I" 
 
 Thy rest of life nest by my door, 
 
 Thy plaint is sympathy; 
 Sing of my mate that's gone before: 
 
 "Phoebe ! Phoebe !" 
 
 BARRETT'S CHAPEL. 
 
 This wayside chapel ready lay 
 Upon a churchly Saturday, 
 To hold the traveling preachers' trysts 
 And Bishops give the Methodists. 
 
 Astray, Asburys tears awoke; 
 Wesley to greet in Doctor Coke. 
 
139 
 
 Who, Oxford graduate in bands, 
 Prescribed the laying on of hands. 
 
 They two invoked the heavenly host. 
 With Wesley for the Triune Ghost; 
 By zeal and independence led. 
 To give the Western church a head. 
 
 Rectors of old had fled afar, 
 Their forty parishes in war. 
 And Wesley left his fold a prey 
 Over the long Peninsula. 
 
 The vacant see Coke saw and filled. 
 By education eagle-willed. 
 Founded a college and no more 
 His mitre wore on sea or shore. 
 
 Asbury, Bishop-hearted, won 
 
 The sole command, like Washington, 
 
 Marshalled his army till it pressed 
 
 To North and South and East and West. 
 
 I lay my chaplet at his kirk, 
 Who set plain men to higher work. 
 Made pastors loved, of humble ones. 
 And moved earth farther for their sons. 
 
 FLAT WOODS. 
 
 Bright is the holly underneath the pines. 
 
 Purple the fox grape, clambering in vines, 
 
 Blue and sweet upon its bush hangs the humble haw, 
 
 Coy the mauve May apple and the brown paw-paw; 
 
 Jelly in my drinking ear drops a juicy hymn — 
 
 Tis the little grey bird, singing on a limb ! 
 
f 
 
 140 
 
 Mystic is the calamus, springing in the burn, 
 Whose sun flashing fountains know not where to turn; 
 Lone the white magnolia scents the forest shade, 
 Halts the squirrel for a smell in the everglade; 
 Solemn are the shats and bark of the forest dim. 
 Till the little grey bird flutes them from the limb ! 
 
 The red-tufted woodpecker hides behind the trunk, 
 Like the crow in treetops, silent as a monk; 
 Grassy green the willow in the damp pool stands, 
 Strengthened by the iron melting from the sands; 
 We would not believe the sun lent the woods the vim 
 Of the little grey bird warbling from the limb ! 
 
 STATE STAVE. 
 
 From the hazeg^of the Bays 
 
 We have verdure always 
 
 And marl from the sea shells below; 
 
 The Sun aye abides and the Moon draws us tides 
 
 And the winter warms wheat with the snow; 
 
 At night falls the dew 
 
 On the land ever new — 
 
 Hurrah for the marsh and the wind ! 
 
 Creation keeps late, right on in our State — 
 
 Hurrah for the soil ever kind I 
 
 Our fathers the peach 
 
 Saw bloom on the beach 
 
 And the Indian tilling his corn. 
 
 And the wild fowl fly 
 
 In the coast and the sky 
 
 And the fish hawk swim in the morn; 
 
 The brown woods lined 
 
 The orchards behind 
 
 And the creek bore the red man's canoe — 
 
141 
 
 Hurrah for the mould 
 That never grows old 
 And the river and land ever new ! 
 
 The honey the bees 
 
 For their centuries 
 
 Have stored in the provident hives; 
 
 The kine that the reeds of the blue marsh feeds 
 
 The fruit that is dried by our wives — 
 
 Hurrah for the corn 
 
 And the fox-hunter's horn, 
 
 The craft on the sea and the crew ! 
 
 For the flowing sap, 
 
 The game and the trap, 
 
 The seed that to warm life grew 1 
 
 The sheep in the pens 
 
 And the laying hens — 
 
 Hurrah for the babies new ! 
 
 The tints of the flesh 
 
 Of the girls and the fresh 
 
 Rich milk of the annual cow 1 
 
 The litter of pigs 
 
 In the fodder rigs 
 
 And the care of the mother sow i 
 
 Our shield and our arms 
 
 Are the fine white charms 
 
 Of the farmers' girls that we sue 
 
 The bird that moults 
 
 And the new-born colts 
 
 And the reed bird flocks ever new ! 
 
 The plough runs light. 
 
 But the crops requite: 
 
 The barn yard is our mine. 
 
 In the new-mown hay 
 
 The horses neigh 
 
 And the oxen draw and dine. 
 
 Hurrah for the muskrats in our ponds ! 
 
 The barley and rye we stock ! 
 
142 
 
 Hurrah for these and the butter and cheese 
 
 And the smear case in the crock 1 
 
 For the pigeon flock 
 
 And the crowing cock, 
 
 The sheep that is clad in wool, 
 
 For the lamb and ram, 
 
 The calf and dam — 
 
 Hurrah for the gay young bull ! 
 
 Let the gobblers cluck 
 
 To the geese and duck 
 
 And the guinea fowl wail 1 
 
 All Eden lies in the glorious eyes 
 
 Disclosed in the peacock's tail 1 
 
 Before the myths 
 
 We had joiners and smiths 
 
 And millpond wheels and saws, 
 
 And shingle mills and timber sills, 
 
 Before we had jails and laws. 
 
 Hurrah for the clays 
 
 That the brickyard lays, 
 
 The gravel roads' smooth view 1 
 
 The blackbirds' flocks 
 
 And the few hard rocks 
 
 That hinder the farms ever new 1 
 
 Hurrah for the wains 
 
 And the engine trains 
 
 That step our Delaware blue ! 
 
 Hurrah for the mould 
 
 That is never old 
 
 And the life that is always new I 
 
143 
 
 BuBBtK Cfl^mttg 
 
 THE TERRAPIN. 
 
 Scott's Run o'erflowed my father's land 
 
 As in our woodland, walking there, 
 I went with Eunice hand in hand — 
 
 Gentle was she, unwooed and fair I 
 To tell her better than in speech 
 
 I, while she wove for me a wreath, 
 Cut her initials on a beech 
 
 And mine, who loved her, underneath. 
 
 "What's this ?" spoke Eunice, coy to win, 
 
 "That crawls so blind across my feet ?" 
 It was a hard-shell Terrapin, 
 
 Its eyes aye down, its pace not fleet; 
 "These slow things beat the Hare, they tell. 
 
 And humbly creep, boxed in their lair: 
 I'll cut your letters on its shell 
 
 And wait until it beats the Hare." 
 
 Turned upside down it took her name 
 
 Upon its base, so brown and black, 
 Then with slow motion as it came. 
 
 The Terrapin resumed his track, 
 And like it, slow, I made my way 
 
 To her young heart till love was crowned, 
 And years went by until she lay 
 
 Within the woodland in the ground. 
 
 Heart-broken, old and past love's sin, 
 
 I listless roamed that tree to find; 
 Twas gone, but not the Terrapin — 
 
 I found love's record on its rind. 
 "0, groundling, longest lived you are, 
 
 The grave is faster than your chase. 
 The Terrapin has caught the Hare 
 
 And Love was beaten in the race 1" 
 
144 
 
 GEORGETOWN, DELAWARE. 
 
 Between the Indian River, that of the ocean tastes, 
 
 And springs that seek the Nanticoke through sandy forest wastes, 
 
 And mill-ponds that in mighty swamps the buried timber soak, 
 
 And deluge all the cypress lands to gain the Pocomoke, 
 
 The court-house village cleaves a space and little has to spare — 
 
 So many miles, by statute, from each and everywhere. 
 
 The houses are of shingle, and gardens hem them round. 
 Lean grow the elms and maples about the court-house ground. 
 And in the public corner, like some old town-pump's ghost. 
 The chicken thief of moonlight observes the whipping-post, — 
 He who has clasped it fondly knew not, I fear me, then. 
 It was a peaceful heirloom from gracious William Penn. 
 
 No house is so forsaken the chickens are not there. 
 
 Tax dogs, tax hogs, but mulct ye not the hens of Delaware! 
 
 They won the mains at Valley Forge, and should be quartered now 
 
 Upon the ancient arms of State beside the brindled cow. 
 
 Let mountain people eagles love and on their standards plant 'em, 
 
 The bird of Sussex fights or fries — it is the azure bantam. 
 
 Around the stores to empty carts the yokes of oxen stand. 
 Or drag the knees and keels of ships from saw mills close at hand; 
 The solemn bank is locked at noon to let the Croesus dine. 
 And grave old county clerks come forth to tipple apple wine. 
 Not unobserved their noses bloom, for at the window blinds 
 Old ladies sit the whole day long of criticising minds. 
 
 V/ith sheriffs' sales and country studs the tavern walls are filled, 
 
 And, save in the election heats, all politics is stilled; 
 
 Then nature to disorder runs, society to fear. 
 
 Lest Jones or Smith might get a place worth ninety pounds a year. 
 
 So old they grow by quiet lives, the graveyard fills but slow. 
 
 And only age and infancy upon the tombstones show. 
 
 Old lawyers to their students speak when evening comes apace. 
 Of many a mighty advocate in many a storied case — 
 How Robert Frame took but a dram to make himself austere. 
 
145 
 
 And John M. Clayton got a fee would keep a man a year. 
 
 The church bell sounds at twilight, and shadows cross the square. 
 
 Young couples full of v/edlock and widows full of prayer. 
 
 The peach trees grapple with the pines and drive the forest back, 
 And move to town the teams of fruit o'er many a woodland track; 
 Far cities stretch their hands to take the crimson harvest in. 
 And bribe the negro to release his haul of terrapin. 
 The perch in all the inlets run, the crabs unslip their shells, 
 And deep in sweet potato vines the heifers clink their bells. 
 
 Then, when the fodder of the corn is bundled in the stack. 
 And through the turning autumn leaves the mill-ponds glisten black 
 The hunting dogs grow restive and round their masters pant — 
 They sniff the odor of the quail, the flavor of the brant, 
 And bid adieu by half the town, some one old lady starts 
 By railroad to the city to see the styles and arts. 
 
 Now, chuckling'low of winter nights beside his office fire. 
 The old Recorder reads the wills of many a family sire, 
 Who made his mark and left a sow to several various heirs. 
 And had the barrow slaughtered to pay for funeral prayers. 
 "Ho I ho !" he quoth, "how some proud heads would never bow to me 
 If ever they should know I poked about their family tree!" 
 
 And level as the sandy land is human life diffused; 
 To preacher turns the stricken lad a maiden has refused; 
 A little lawsuit with its cares the rival homesteads haunts. 
 And hastens to untimxely graves the aged litigants; 
 So are the years repeated, as tell an ancient few, 
 Since Lewes lost the court-house, soon after Ninety-Two. 
 
 So life moves on from year to year, unstirred by fears or schisms, 
 
 And old men read their Bibles and nurse their rheumatisms; 
 
 The moss grows on some older roof, familiar signs grow dim, 
 
 Or from a venerable tree falls some decrepit limb. 
 
 So still it is, I almost hear the cry I raised, that morn, 
 
 When here, past thirty years ago, my mother's son was born. 
 
 (1876.) 
 
146 
 
 GENERAL DAGWORTHYS TOOTH. 
 
 That peach distilled by Governor Stockly speeds us 
 To old Dagsboro, like a mastodon 
 In skeleton, along the State road settling, 
 People abide but houses emigrate them. 
 
 Here was a town when Dagworthy was general — 
 Dag means a dagger; he was worthy of one, 
 And claimed the precedence of Washington, 
 Who journeyed to New England to contest him. 
 
 That brings me here to know Dagworthy's station 
 And his reality. 
 
 Perhaps he was 
 A Scot from Jersey big at Perth Amboy 
 Who got far west as people thought in that day 
 Toward Virginia as the great Blue Ridge. 
 
 Well ! here's the church Dagworthy must have vestried, 
 And here's a sxeton digging in the sands, 
 The Old Mortality of former gravestones. 
 
 "Say, Sexton ! Saw you aught of great Dagworthy, 
 
 Who vexed our Washington fighting the French ? 
 
 He must have left some relics in his ashes — 
 
 A sword, a claymore, or a mourning ring ? 
 
 I am a pilgrim to Dagworthy's fastness: 
 
 What have you found while sanding of his compost ?" 
 
 The sexton balanced on his long-shaft shovel ; 
 He cocked his hat and viewed me through his glasses. 
 "This is the lot of General Dagworthy, 
 You've found the hero. I have sifted him." 
 
 "Well, what's the spoil ? You seem an honest sexton. 
 Like me, you glorify real hero dirt." 
 
 "Sir," quoth the digger, biting his tobacco, 
 "I paid particular attention to it; 
 
147 
 
 I sieved him like a marl pit; this I found: 
 One tooth of his'n was stuck to my shovel." 
 
 *'Only a tooth of old Dagworthy sticking ? 
 
 Say, what didst thou, grave digger, with his molar ?" 
 
 "I put it back and kivered it right keerful; 
 'Twould now be hard to sieve it from the sand pit. 
 But if you need it I will find it twice." 
 
 "Thanks, friend of Yorick, let his tooth be hallowed 
 Till comes the next of kin to seek Dagworthy; 
 Oft have I wandered near the bones of greatness. 
 But this is least of all a striking keepsake. 
 A tooth 1 Farewell 1 Adieu to Dagsboro, 
 There yet is time to sample Stockly's peach bounce. 
 
 ROSA GERRY. 
 
 Upon the banks of Nanticoke 
 
 Lived pretty Rosa Gerry, 
 She rowed the long sweep's forward stroke 
 
 Across her father's ferry. 
 And many there mock errands put 
 
 To see lithe Rosa Gerry 
 Throw all her strength above her foot 
 
 To bend the oar, and ferry. 
 
 O, what a lissome vine her spine I 
 
 The spray set tight her bustle; 
 But like the springing sapling pine 
 
 The graces of her muscle I 
 It was her skipper father's task 
 
 Midships to steer and mind her, 
 But when her feet he did not mask, 
 
 What bliss to be behind her ! 
 
148 
 
 I took her on my horse one day 
 
 When we had crossed the ferry; 
 To Laurel town we rode our way, — 
 
 Before me Rosa Gerry. 
 "Sweetheart," said I, "go back no more 
 
 To push that stubborn wherry 1 
 Let me bend to thee as my oar 
 
 To row thee o'er Life's ferry!" 
 
 So, now I'm Rosa Gerry's stroke 
 
 And she and me may royster ! 
 I sail her down the Nanticoke 
 
 To fish and crab and oyster; 
 Down my forecastle list her tweet 
 
 As on the old-time ferry ! 
 If she grows old I'll see her feet 
 
 And know she's Rosa Gerry I 
 
 KEDGE ANCHOR. 
 
 To Enter Indian River. 
 
 When through the inlet, over the bar. 
 Surf dashes by you, stranded you are. 
 Wade with the anchor and cable as far 
 
 As the quicksand on the sedge ! 
 Pull to the anchor right through the breach ! 
 Ride up the slide of the wave from the beach 
 Pull to the anchor your skiff like a sledge — 
 
 Kedge ! 
 
 Then shall you enter the Indian pond 
 Tranquil in sound of the ocean beyond; 
 Fishes preceded you, safe and joconde, 
 Wild fowl dive in the sedge; 
 
149 
 
 Little beach birds come and twitter and fledge 
 Delicate shells trundle in, spinning fond — 
 Pull to the anchor, your hostage and pledge: 
 Kedge ! 
 
 When the wide ocean rages behind, 
 
 And overhead bursts the tempest unkind, 
 
 Think if the beach has a runnel inclined 
 
 Where you may ground like a dredge ! 
 Wade with the anchor ! Pull to its grip ! 
 If there's a leak that can swim but a chip, 
 It may split up the shore like a wedge; 
 Pull to the haven, staunch as a ship — 
 
 Kedge ! 
 
 Life I There is night, like the Indian lake 
 Over the bar where the Day cannot break; 
 Pass to thy anchorage, slumber partake ! 
 
 Lie at the storm's broken edge 1 
 Then there is peace in the dreamful lagoon; 
 Nothing strays in but the stars and the moon; 
 Left close behind you the ocean's bassoon, 
 Pull to thy rest o'er the ledge: 
 
 Kedge ! 
 
 THE BELL CRANE. 
 
 In Marshy Hope there dwelt a crane 
 With legs so slim they made him vain. 
 And strolling young, just from the egg. 
 He slipped in mire and lost a leg; 
 A wheelwright made of slim rattan 
 Another leg to his knee pan, 
 And everybody pitying him. 
 They fed him so, he primped with whim, 
 And came so close his paunch to fill 
 
160 
 
 He swept the tables with his bill. 
 
 All other cranes looked starved and thin 
 
 To see this cripple pity win; 
 
 They tackled him and tore his leg. 
 
 The rattan leg out from its peg. 
 
 Then sympathy went on a spell 
 And to his knee cap hung a bell, 
 That "ting-a-ling" went through the air 
 And set the startled cranes to prayer; 
 They thought he was the heavenly dove 
 Freighted with music from above, 
 And superstitious of such sounds 
 They fled from all the feeding grounds 1 
 He was so fat he flew close down 
 And chased the flock till left alone 1 
 
 As long as he was lame and begged 
 
 It was no loss to be one-legged, 
 
 And never knew an hour's dejection 
 
 Screaming or taking a collection; 
 
 As a melodeon he was poor. 
 
 And turned from every pious door: 
 
 They all said: "Shoo 1 Thou whip-poor-will I 
 
 You have a bell, therefore no bill !" 
 
 Ah ! then he felt a thrill intense — 
 His music had no audience I 
 
 They heard his tinkle overhead 
 
 And ducked in pools, pretending dead, 
 
 And winged their ears to have him pass, 
 
 Like some priest's bell boy, fled from Mass. 
 
 Nobody but the bullfrogs woke 
 
 And to his tinkle raised a croak; 
 
 He could not run, but only flew. 
 
 And with his feathers scraped the dew, 
 
 Stood on one leg and with his thigh 
 
 Rang "ting-a-ling," without reply. 
 
 Summoned the faithful like a Pope, 
 
 But no response gave Marshy Hope. 
 
151 
 
 The buzzards heard his funeral knell— 
 The dying tinkle of his bell; 
 Picking his bones, they all agree: 
 "This stilt-bird died of Poetry!" 
 
 SAINT JOHN'S. 
 
 They say Saint John's was in Maryland 
 
 Before they ran the line 
 And found itself on the Delaware strand 
 
 Bemoaned by a single pine, — 
 The pine that the Rector's ashes grew 
 
 And making the self-same tone 
 Of the parish prayers that he only knew, 
 
 And that is the Rector's moan. 
 
 When came the Scots out of Somerset 
 
 To fight the Penns away, 
 The old pine tree had a mighty fret 
 
 And waved its arms to the fray: 
 The kirk folk paused as to hear low mass; 
 
 Like a seashell every cone 
 Old service breathed in the ears that pass, 
 
 And that is the Rector's moan. 
 
 He stood his ground when all had fled. 
 
 Like Thomas A'Becket slain. 
 And chanted the Litany when dead. 
 
 Like the seed of the pine in pain. 
 High in the heaven his finger grew 
 
 And murmured his dying tone: 
 Anathema to the spoilers blew. 
 
 And this is the Rector's moan. 
 
152 
 SEAFORD SISTERS. 
 
 Sisters down at Seaford 
 
 Light me as with halos; 
 How they lift my freeboard, 
 
 Float me o'er the shallows I 
 "You are not a dead man 
 
 Doomed to grave of myrtle 
 Get you out of bed, man; 
 
 We will catch you turtle 1 
 
 "Let us row the river, 
 
 Let us sail and cruise some 1" 
 Arrows in me quiver. 
 
 Sped from swelling bosom: 
 "Sisters, how your missiles 
 
 From your bows do;'hurtle ! 
 Tingled in my gristles, 
 
 I must turn and turtle,!" 
 
 Daisy, game a'wishing, 
 
 Faced me, panting, rowing: 
 In the stern, a'fishing. 
 
 Pretty feet a'showing, 
 With her hair a'flowing. 
 
 Likewise loose her kirtle, 
 Norah, bending, bowing, 
 
 Strove to catch a turtle. 
 
 "Sisters, I'm besought by 
 
 Your live bait and pledges; 
 Terrapin is caught by 
 
 Your coy seine or dredges; 
 Is it crab or spider 
 
 From the ooze so fertile ?" 
 "Goose ! it is a slider. 
 
 Otherwise a turtle !" 
 
 Squealing as it glides, 
 
 Dropping of their hair a pin. 
 
T 
 
 153 
 
 Neath both sisters slides 
 
 That mouse-chasing terrapin; 
 "It is up my shoe !" 
 
 "It hides in my kirtle !" 
 "Sisters, spry are you, 
 
 Dodging of a turtle." 
 
 So we have a rout, 
 
 Turtle, sherry, cider; 
 But next day the gout 
 
 Beds me, a back slider; 
 My big toe, a lump, 
 
 Sisters cool in myrtle, 
 But no/ more they jump 
 
 Running from the turtle ! 
 
 THE WHIP-POOR-WILL. 
 
 From Milton town and out Broad Kill 
 I followed the wail of the whip-poor-will. 
 As it ran and shrieked in the twilight drowse, 
 Till it perched on the pales of a silent house, 
 
 Singing: "Whip-poor-will " 
 
 In the evening still, 
 
 "Whip willy and whip-poor-will I" 
 
 I came so close that the Nighthawk fled, 
 When at a window a lady said: 
 "How dead is the world when my bird is still 
 And the bull frogs croak at the whip-poor-will 
 
 Friendly whip-poor-will. 
 
 How I love its trill ! 
 
 'Whip-willy' or 'whip-poor-will!'" 
 
 "Pray pardon me that I did so ill 
 
 As to frighten, Madama, the whip-poor-will I 
 
154 
 
 I seemed to hear in its heart-broke plaint 
 My own heart grieve for my parted saint ! 
 
 Mated whip-poor-will 
 
 Makes my eyes to fill: 
 
 'Whip-willy' or 'whip-poor-will !' " 
 
 "Since my late Lord departed above 
 
 Only the song of that bird I love; 
 
 My husband comes to my window sill 
 
 And sobs with my soul, like the whip-poor-will." 
 
 (Then the whip-poor-will 
 
 Made us both distill) 
 
 "Whip-willy " aye, "Whip-poor-will I" 
 
 "Far off on the marsh he is almost mute, 
 His wail dies low, like a funeral flute; 
 Let me come in; I may dry your tears, 
 You may take from my solitude its fears. 
 
 Let the whip-poor-will 
 
 Quiet down his quill — 
 
 "Whip-willy" and "Whip-poor-will 1" 
 
 "How warm your hand 1 And has mine a chill ? 
 A dove led me, though a whip-poor-will; 
 The mourning mate found somewhere a spouse, 
 His wail led me to your beautiful house: 
 
 Guiding whip-poor-will, 
 
 With a kiss in his bill 1" 
 
 "Whip-willy" and "Whip-poor-will I" 
 
155 
 
 ALFRED TORBERT. 
 
 Here are we two, who breath first drew 
 
 Right opposite each other, 
 Within a quiet country town 
 
 And suckled each a mother; 
 The church drew me, the army he, 
 
 We met when war was over, 
 Within the self-same country town, 
 
 He resting, I a rover. 
 
 And now I crave above his grave 
 
 (Three-score and ten a'summing) 
 To drop my tear upon his bier 
 
 And say: "I'm soon a'coming." 
 O, Torbert, gentle, gracious, brave, 
 
 Safe in the cannon's rattle, 
 Why shouldst thou in the Ocean wave 
 
 Alone, fight life's last battle? 
 
 Wide as the sea, thy cavalry 
 
 Surged up the mountains' shoring; 
 The mighty raid lit by thy blade 
 
 A Comet's flame restoring. 
 And last, a speck in plunging wreck, 
 
 With all of life's devotion. 
 Thou fought to shore, thyself no more. 
 
 Whelmed in the tropic ocean. 
 
 The vessel yards of Milford tap 
 
 Their adzes o'er him, sleeping, 
 They'll launch no hull as beautiful 
 
 As that beneath the reaping. 
 The millstones eat the corn and wheat 
 
 Like to the waves that tore him. 
 The pines repeat their moans so sweet, 
 
 The grass grows tender o'er him. 
 
 I do not see Headquarters' flag 
 Behind his escort flowing; 
 
156 
 
 All that is done — his mother's son 
 Lies in the grave unknowing; 
 
 Gone are the cares of great careers 
 And gone is glory's riot; 
 
 There sleeps below, where he did grow, 
 The hero in his quiet. 
 
 BREAKWATER LIGHT. 
 
 The coaster knows the western gales 
 
 Beat on the Jersey bars, 
 And anxiously he reefs his sails — 
 
 Aloft but naked spars; 
 When the horizon threatening lies, 
 
 And storm-clouds deepen night, 
 He bids the watch with straining eyes 
 
 Look well for Lewes light. 
 
 Its red, revolving beams burn low, 
 
 Its cheery lenses flame. 
 "Now spread the sails and speedy go, 
 
 Breakwater's help to claim 1" 
 From every point the vessels climb, 
 
 The burly and the small, 
 And parked together bide their time 
 
 Behind the friendly wall. 
 
 Norwegians, Carolina bound. 
 
 And Spaniards weighed with corn, 
 And whalers from Long Island Sound, 
 
 And colliers from Cape Horn; 
 Behind the Yankee barrier screened 
 
 They watch the billows break — 
 Without the roaring ocean fiend: 
 
 Within, a Christian lake. 
 
157 
 
 A hundred years of pious toil 
 
 And fifty of debate 
 opeak in the beacon's burning oil 
 
 The sacrificing State 
 That raised the stones above the sea 
 
 To give its navies rest, 
 And prove the worth of liberty 
 
 To nations, for the West. 
 
 When morning streaks the sky with peace 
 
 The capstans turn with song; 
 Each vessel hoists its golden fleece. 
 
 Nor any linger long. 
 They drop behind the crystal edge 
 
 And down the current roll. 
 Nor think the friendly roads to pledge 
 
 In a religious bowl. 
 
 Then on the pilot's ancient town 
 
 Comes silence like the grass, 
 The sand has drunk its forest down, 
 
 The beaches glow like brass. 
 Clap-boarded, the old captains' homes 
 
 Beneath the church spire sleep, 
 And bask between the farming loams 
 
 And the insensate deep. 
 
 THE VOTE BUYER. 
 
 "Come 1 Sell me, friends, your shadows I 
 
 Election day for a trade 1" 
 They saw that he cast no shadow 
 
 And huddled together, afraid. 
 "Ha 1 then if shadows come dearly" — 
 
 He laughed like the billy goats — 
 
158 
 
 'Trade me your birthrights, merely: 
 I pay spot cash for your votes I" 
 
 Beneath a bridge he paid them 
 
 To vote as they were told : 
 "Now, keep your shadows, bullies. 
 
 But your manhood ye have sold I" 
 The peddler without a shadow 
 
 Their bodies retained for tolls, 
 And only their shadows voted 
 
 When there opened Norfwark's polls 
 
 Since then all Norfwark's elections 
 
 By phantoms have carried been; 
 Their shadows are voted in sections. 
 
 But not the living men; 
 The coin of gold to buy them 
 
 Their images throws, like a sun. 
 And their neighbors identify them 
 
 By reflections, every one 1 
 
 They are known by their purchase money, 
 
 Forever so bought and sold, 
 By their faces never sunny 
 
 And their sons aye poor and old. 
 And they moan: "Thou peddler, bad, oh 1 
 
 Return us our manhood again I 
 O, take us out of our shadow 
 
 And vote us as real men I" 
 
 ^'f^ 
 
159 
 
 GUMBORO. 
 
 Gumboro, on the Pocomoke, 
 
 Set in the Cypress swamp to soak 1 
 
 I only know thee by my bird, 
 
 The Mocking Bird, that fails in word, 
 
 But has the sounds of bush and brake, 
 
 The hissing of the wooing snake, 
 
 The eagle's challenge and the wit 
 
 Or warble of the wren and tit. 
 
 With such variety of quill 
 
 In the morass why grew thy trill ? 
 
 But in the city ne'er repeats 
 
 The noises of the human streets ? 
 
 I think I hear the sawyer's saw. 
 
 The night wind and the tempest's awe, 
 
 The trickle of the Cypress spring, 
 
 The owl's chant, the carolling 
 
 Of catbirds, when they check their chat 
 
 To hoot the prowling tiger cat — 
 
 O, couldst thou speak, Shakespeare might note 
 
 Vocabulary in thy throat 
 
 And Nature's man, all sided, show 
 
 In the small life of Gumboro. 
 
 Bird of the thicket ! tell me things 
 
 Not known to Bishops or to Kings, 
 
 Nor fashion's women, gaping at 
 
 Thy plumage only in their hat ! 
 
 Past my conceiving flowing were 
 
 Thy runlets sweet with juniper. 
 
 Till through the iron sands they took 
 
 Magnetic tonic from the brook. 
 
 Lent me their mockery to romp 
 
 With strength and music from the swamp, 
 
 And Nature in my haste invoke — 
 
 Remembered strains of Pocomoke. 
 
 O, to their music tune my words — 
 
 Composer to the Mocking Birds 1 
 
160 
 
 RAISING THE FLAG. 
 
 At Lewes, Delaware, 1777 
 
 At these old capes, discovered oft, 
 We raise the Day and Night aloft; 
 The streaks of dawn, the stars of even, 
 Hope of the world and faith of Heaven. 
 O, day of Liberty, alight, 
 Down from the azure field of Night I 
 We trust this flag shall not be furled 
 Until 'tis loved around the world ! 
 
 Chorus: 
 Avast, shipmates ! half-mast o'erhead ! 
 There pause a little for our dead. 
 Now, to the peak hoist, floating free, 
 The flag of life and Victory. 
 
 By women's hands 'twas sewed at morn 
 Like baby clothes for one unborn; 
 Washed in the tempest and the wind, 
 'Twill clothe the babe when it has mind; 
 In battle wave, like women's hands 
 To husbands, lovers, their commands 
 Not to be lowered from our peak 
 While hull can float or guns can speak 1 
 
 Chorus: 
 Avast, shipmates ! cheer as our crest 
 Our flag, the herald of the West ! 
 Till perseverance adds more stars 
 In days of peace and dark of wars ! 
 
 The blood-red stripes alternate glow 
 Like waves of sea in fight's flambeau; 
 The lines of white are like the comb 
 Of billows breaking into foam, 
 And in the depths the star field shown 
 Our constellation, shining down ! 
 Chorus: 
 
161 
 
 Avast, shipmates ! Top-gallant sight 
 The spangled stars, the bars of light; 
 Shine till oppression's cloud be o'er 
 And rainbows arch from shore to shore ! 
 
 Lift anchor 1 Let the broadside greet 
 The new-born signal to the fleet. 
 And trail it past the thousands miles, 
 A Comet o'er the British Isles, 
 Until the King shall feel its beams. 
 The Magian child in Herod's dreams 1 
 
 Chorus: 
 Avast, shipmates 1 Now, three times three 
 Speed the white swan of Liberty I 
 Republics more shall loose anew 
 The fairy flag — Red, White and Blue ! 
 
 THREE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF CAPE HENLOPEN. 
 
 (Sept. 22, 1909.) 
 
 Henlopen's Cape is the self-same sand. 
 
 However the winds do blow, 
 As when their footprints claimed this land 
 
 Three hundred years ago — 
 The stout Dutchmen, whose sands are we, 
 
 Though many have gone away; 
 There are change and range for them who flee. 
 
 And a calm for them who stay. 
 
 Old Holland bides in her Netherlands, 
 
 More happy, if no more great; 
 The hour-glass measures our frugal sands, 
 
 Which time yon imperial State; 
 
162 
 
 Their hearths we guard for the hosts who stray 
 And their old gravestones we show; 
 
 There are rest and love for them who stay, 
 As well as for them who go. 
 
 Yon heaving sea has a million lost 
 
 The Breakwater could not save, 
 The mountain West has our tempest tossed 
 
 Gone wrecked to a stranger's grave; 
 Here on the Cape, in the rock-locked quay, 
 
 Fast land we Colonials know — 
 There is comfort enough for them who stay 
 
 And trial for them who go. 
 
 Shine, Lewes light ! on the restless waves ! 
 
 Safe hold her ships, oh, ye stones ! 
 We have treasure left in our father's graves 
 
 And flowers for our children's bones. 
 These title deeds to our wealth we show 
 
 As the centuries grow gray — 
 Happy be ye who like ravens go. 
 
 There's a nest for the doves which stay. 
 
 Some touch the Pole with their mittened hands 
 
 And haste to be first to fame — 
 We hold the goal on our household bands 
 
 And the heartstrings' surer aim. 
 This is the Pole the Earth rolls to, 
 
 O'ershined like the midnight day; 
 Glory be kind to them who go I 
 
 And home in the hearts which stay 1 
 
163 
 
 SHINGLE BILLET. 
 
 Shingle Billet sawed in the Cypress Swamp, 
 
 At the Cypress root he raised ; 
 Singing, he sawed till the sweat stood damp 
 
 On his head, and this oath he phrased: 
 "I'll be derned if I die in these juniper bogs 
 
 Where the ousel and pole cat dwell I 
 And saw and saw on these waterlogged logs 
 
 With a nigger as black as hell !" 
 
 He looked at the other end of the saw 
 
 Where the black man pulled it fro — 
 "My God I how black you have grown as you claw 
 
 That draw-saw, Hannibal Crow !" 
 "How I grow'd so black I do not know 
 
 And I feel like starting a fire; 
 I am black as hell," said Hannibal Crow, 
 
 "And to burn am my desire." 
 
 As they sawed again the flames shot out 
 
 And the negro went up in smoke. 
 And Shingle Billet all round about 
 
 Seemed roasting in blazing coke. 
 "I'll be blessed if I die till Hannibal Crow 
 
 Comes back in his chariot fire. 
 And I give him a Christian burial show 
 
 With his hard shell Baptist choir 1" 
 
 He sang right out as the negroes train 
 
 When they to Baptism go. 
 And a voice came down with a shower of rain 
 
 That washed white Hannibal Crow; 
 Out went hell fire in the Cypress camp. 
 
 The pair sawed, singing again: 
 "There is nowhere else where the head gets damp 
 
 That the devil runs from a rain." 
 
164 
 
 ZWAANENDAEL. 
 
 (Swan Dale.) 
 First Settlement in Delaware, 1631. 
 
 Below Henlopen's sand-blown hill. 
 
 From the Breakwater's pale, 
 O, can you see the crystal kill 
 
 That winds through Zwaanendael ? 
 And when the ocean lightning plays 
 
 Among the masts so still, 
 O, can you see the cattle graze 
 
 Along the green Hoor Kill ? 
 
 'Twas in the time when Wallenstein 
 
 No longer could prevail, 
 And great Gustavus broke his line, 
 
 They planted Zwaanendael; 
 From Amsterdam six months they sail, 
 
 To found a State their quest, 
 In six months more rose Zwaanendael, 
 
 The flying Dutchman's rest. 
 
 Within the bight the Walvis* ship 
 
 Surprised the forest fawns 
 And answered to the Walloon songs 
 
 The squawking of the swans. 
 Against the new fort's Holland flags 
 
 Flickers the windmill's flail, 
 And to the storehouse roll the kags 
 
 To cheer up Zwaanendael. 
 
 The rank tobacco midst the pines 
 
 A season has grown hale. 
 And tangled in the sailor's lines 
 
 Spouts fountain high the whale; 
 Bright Indian girls through Indian corn 
 
 Bring beaver furs for sale, 
 Not softer than their velvet skins, 
 
 To men of Zwaanendael. 
 
165 
 
 How fresh the oysters in the sound 
 
 They hardly wade to reach; 
 And in the autumn's rosy round 
 
 An oyster seems the peach. 
 The bees, in blossoms of its vines 
 
 Make honey o'er the yams, 
 And cooler than the brandy wines 
 
 In nectar from the clams. 
 
 Their herring salted and their traps 
 
 Set for the winter's sport, 
 Their pipes, their Bible and their schnapps 
 
 Are snug within the fort; 
 They'll teach the Minqua maids to skate. 
 
 Since all that's left are male. 
 And let the watchdog guard the gate 
 
 And fort of Zwaanendael. 
 
 Then, with a gun that from Cape May 
 
 In echoes spoke again. 
 The high-deck Walvis sailed away 
 
 And left there thirty men; 
 O, few they were to hold a zone, 
 
 But nothing made them pale, 
 Hid in the new world's vast alone 
 
 And snows of Zwaanendael. 
 
 A year was past. The ship once more 
 
 Dropped anchor and gave gun: 
 No welcome answered from the shore — 
 
 They perished, every one. 
 Their bones, their cattle bones laid bare — 
 
 Left like his shell the snail — 
 Whitened the cape of Delaware 
 
 And cove of Zwaanendael. 
 
 Think not, ye Western pioneers, 
 Our older East was spared I 
 For every tender colony 
 
/ 
 
 166 
 
 The savage was prepared ! 
 Our mighty State which built the mole 
 
 The storms to countervail, 
 Remembers not the tale of dole, 
 
 The wreck of Zwaanendael ! 
 
 *The Whale. 
 
 SECOND MOTHER. 
 
 Twas a little old lady, wearing specs, 
 
 In the town where I was born, 
 Her age past the line of time or sex, 
 
 But she eyed me like the morn; 
 Said I: "Something in your look, or gown 
 
 Seems natural;" Then she told: 
 *i know'd you first when you come to town — 
 
 When you wa'n't a minute old!" 
 
 "And now I am here to celebrate 
 
 And I see my oldest friend." 
 "Your mother and me was of early date; 
 
 Poor soul! she has had her end. 
 But i seem to see her looks in you, 
 
 Though you hadn't much of a mould, 
 I held you up on my thumb, so blue, 
 
 When you wa'n't a minute old." 
 
 "Well, old sweetheart^! There are left us two. 
 
 For I made your acquaintance young." 
 "You were crying hard when your voice I knew. 
 
 And you hadn't much of a tongue. 
 Son, women give their life that you live 
 
 And they die your span to enfold; 
 Let me give you the kiss your mother would give 
 
 When you wa'n't minute old!" 
 
 A 
 
167 
 
 "My second mother! Light of my morn, 
 
 And warmed by thy friendly breath I 
 O, could we see ourselves as born 
 
 We seldom would shake at death! 
 What can I do to remember you ?" 
 
 "Just read me this Book of gold, 
 Mr. Wesley writ when he left us it, 
 
 At most a hundred years old!" 
 
 CANNON AND HICKS. 
 
 Three States with slaves stood poised o'er Civil War, 
 
 Two governors had but to loose the prop — 
 
 Cannon and Hicks — and conflagration far 
 
 Would roll, none knowing where the flame would stop. 
 
 Then these two Men, with Law, shone a twin star, 
 
 Or harvest moon, on the tare-tangled crop 
 
 Of grain or fruit all ripe to burn or drop, 
 
 And people praying for restraining sense 
 
 To save their land, aside, Peninsular; 
 
 "Look up !" these said, "the flag, our long defence. 
 
 Streams Godward ! Union is peace and right ! 
 
 The longest glory is Obedience ! 
 
 Our non-offence shall be our shield and might." 
 
 No scars of war here do their fames despite ! 
 
168 
 
 INDIAN'S CORN. 
 
 Indian's corn ! that thy growing we hear, 
 Keepst thou his history typed in thy ear ? 
 Past all antiquity, papyrus-rolled. 
 Tasseled for combat and columned in gold. 
 
 Stays the red Indian's spirit in thee. 
 Tall, like his stature, and simple as he, 
 Clothing our continent green as the waves. 
 Rolling in ranks over Indian graves ? 
 
 O'er thee the West wind sighs with a sound 
 Like the fife's music the distance has drowned, 
 And when the partridge's reveille comes 
 Almost we hear aboriginal drums. 
 
 Race stretching back to the hemisphere's morn 
 Thou hast receded to rise in thy corn 
 That was a maze till the plough broke the hoes 
 And taught thee tactics in squares and in rows. 
 
 Not the Egyptian maize was thy sire ! 
 Thou drank the suns while the rocks rose in fire- 
 Thou, North American, towered in green. 
 Shading the pumpkin and climbed by the bean 
 
 I was a boy in the parsonage born. 
 Earning first money by dropping the corn; 
 Thou, my godfather, when coppers were slack, 
 Dropped a gold coin in my Benjamin's sack ! — 
 
 Bought me a flag and a drum and a sword, 
 Mustered my squad by the house of the Lord, 
 Marched me to glory for which boys are born, 
 Armed with muskets of stalks of the corn. 
 
 I have seen War when the soldier and steed 
 Fared side by side on the Indian feed. 
 And when the fever foe struck us forlorn 
 Furloughed him far with the juice of the corn. 
 
169 
 
 Back of the battery's rifles of steel, 
 Manning the guns is the Indian meal, 
 While the spare horses quietly graze 
 On the corn fodder they tramp from the blaze. 
 
 Halts the whole camp and the bugles are still, 
 When the corn forage is ground at the mill; 
 When the corn pone and the Johnny cake steam, 
 See the white eyes at the Headquarters gleam M 
 
 Then the black cook for the General's sons 
 Pops some sweet corn like their miniaturejguns. 
 Butters the slappers beneath the tree, 
 And bakes brown crust on the hominy. 
 
 In the tent hospital's evening hush 
 List how the wounded lap corn in their mush ! 
 Proudly the surgeon and chaplain do march 
 Clothed in right minds by the corn in the starch I 
 
 Glucose in beer with the yeast foams high. 
 Here's to the corn starch we eat for pie ! 
 Homesick men feel your poor hearts throb 
 When lights the camp fire the luminous cob. 
 
 Note the chickens around the corn, 
 Stepping out clean like to soldiers born. 
 And their drum major, the Cock, strides free, 
 Arching his toes, like Terpsichore I 
 
 Stragglers that find but one ear to a stalk 
 Come on a scarecrow and startle and balk; 
 Red-tufted blackbirds pick into the sheath 
 To the corn rows like the Vivandier's teeth. 
 
 Meal for the scrapple is winter camp luck, 
 Butter and pork pack like fruit in the shuck. 
 Even the oysters grow fat on the meal 
 Which in his bait helps the fisherman 'sreel. 
 
 Cornfields, wave I and the nations feed I 
 Better than gold mines is thy seed ! 
 
170 
 
 Let us think as thy fife strains roll 
 Indian spirits are in thy soul. 
 
 Indian corn with one stalk to one ear. 
 Soldiers with cartridge boxes appear; 
 Piled in the shock for the air to dry, 
 Indian wigwams, they rustle the sky. 
 
 Rabbit and rat gnaw the shocks from the ground 
 Till bursts the bay of the nose-guided hound, 
 Then o'er the cornfield bounding they go, 
 Cawed at derisively by the safe crow. 
 
 How the shucked ears piled along the ploughed mould 
 Seem by the pumpkins like copper and gold: 
 Gold grains in rows as if lined by a rule, 
 Coined in a foundry and milled by a tool ! 
 
 O, if money could feed like the corn. 
 If duplicated like grains we were born, 
 God had pronounced the creation good. 
 Famine would never mildew the food ! 
 
 Blades and tassels would not mean strife. 
 Cartridge boxes fire rounds of life. 
 Muskets be stacked in the peaceful morn, 
 Cultivators would weed but corn ! 
 
 Over the wigwams smoky is born 
 Indian summer from Indian corn; 
 Stock in the winter subsists upon bran, 
 Man unsolders sweet corn from the can. 
 
 Beans and corn make the succulent hash, 
 Papooses suck in their succotash, 
 Tusks unto teeth as the teething dears 
 Bite to the cob in their roasting ears. 
 
 Cornfields, wave I and the nations feed I 
 Better than gold mines is thy seed 1 
 Let us think as thy fife strains roll 
 Indian spirits are in thy soul I 
 
171 
 
 ALIEN MUSIC. 
 
 The poet to the minstrel said: 
 
 "Your ancient harp prepare; 
 I want a tune to words for song; 
 
 Compose for me an air!" 
 "My minstrel's harp is out of tune, 
 
 Long since its chords I've pressed 
 Thousand pianos in the State 
 
 Have put my harp to rest." 
 
 "Minstrel, is there no lady fair 
 
 To turn to song my prose ? 
 Of all the ladies who perform 
 
 Can none an air compose ?" 
 "Poet, they only bang and clink 
 
 Some other minstrel's lay, 
 And copy lines they cannot think, 
 
 Like an aphasia." 
 
 "Where song is stale, unhappy State I 
 
 As tuneless as the bees; 
 The negro singing past my gate 
 
 Has native melodies. 
 Flutes the canary in the cage. 
 
 Only of speech immune, 
 The mocking bird requires but words 
 
 To give an anthem tune. 
 
 "In lands uneducated, song 
 
 The peasant's instinct learns; 
 Beranger's rhythm, airs from Moore, 
 
 And whistled strains of Burns; 
 The harpischord, the violin, 
 
 For human science sigh; 
 There is no way to make a tune 
 
 But to conceive and try 1 
 
172 
 
 "Of one octave all music comes, 
 
 Of seven days all time, 
 The fife companions to the drums 
 
 And bells but chime to rhyme; 
 Let home-made music lift our cares. 
 
 Life's interstices please. 
 Our nation's odes to Europe's airs 
 
 Are foreign marriages." 
 
 O, haste the time when business men 
 
 By hundreds sing in choirs; 
 And ladies, improvising, set 
 
 New music on their wires I 
 As when Tyrtaeus' trumpet led 
 
 And Sappho's lyre was strung 1 
 For poetry will next be dead 
 
 If it is never sung. 
 
 
173 
 
 iEastern B^nrt 
 
 SASSAFRAS RIVER. 
 
 O, Sassafras! thou lakelet tide 
 
 That touches on our bounds 
 Like unto her who touched His side 
 
 And oped our Saviour's wounds; 
 Thou little bay that like the trout, 
 
 All gilled and finned, does flow, 
 And to thy mother bay swims out, 
 
 Thou art her true born roe. 
 
 Sure of the deluge Time thou keepst, 
 
 In notches on thy stock, 
 And up thy coves and pondlets sleepst 
 
 O'ershadowed by no rocks; 
 Beneath the dragon-headed bay. 
 
 Protruding like a tongue. 
 Thou laps the mill seats on thy way 
 
 The fruity capes among. 
 
 Thou leapest like a racing horse, 
 A greater stretch to win, 
 
 Up to thy flank in turf and gorse 
 His hoofs take imprint in; 
 
 We seem to sail upon thy sky, 
 Yet taste the ocean brine. 
 
 As in some balloon flying high 
 O'er the horizon line. 
 
174 
 
 Pair of old towns like dimming eyes 
 
 Thy navigation ends, 
 Like that fond pair in Paradise, 
 
 Dissevered, but yet friends: 
 These did the Briton's pirates fire 
 
 A hundred years gone past, 
 But left to feed his funeral pyre 
 
 Their Commodore aghast. 
 
 A generation further went 
 
 The tall ships of the line 
 To land the red King's armament 
 
 That marched to Brandy wine; 
 The distance shows the bars of clay 
 
 That like a mill breast stood 
 And swerved the waters of the Bay 
 
 From Susquehanna's flood. 
 
 The old Dutch Labadists thy banks 
 
 O'erferried in Lang Syne, 
 What time they played conventual pranks 
 
 On Herman's Landgravine, 
 When Bassett was the Manor's heir 
 
 And Bayard was his son, 
 And moulded Federal Delaware 
 
 In lines of Hamilton. 
 
 By Sassafras the Priest revered 
 
 His scions sent afar, 
 And Henry Winter Davis steered 
 
 The Congress of the war; 
 The while his cousin did ascend 
 
 The Bench high justice for, 
 And David Davis, Lincoln's friend, 
 
 Was his executor. 
 
 And Alfred Pierce's curls did glide 
 By Lincoln's pine-like form 
 
 On his inauguration ride 
 
 When Union was in storm. 
 
175 
 
 Here Shippen, judge, in love's first flame, 
 
 Companion found for life. 
 Mother to her who young became 
 
 Benedict Arnold's wife. 
 
 In nooks nearby the Jesuit school 
 
 From long intolerance hid, 
 Till Bishop Carroll of its rule 
 
 For Independence bid; 
 And Quaker Fox, Lord Baltimore, 
 
 And wife here heard to preach 
 With William Penn, their host, beside, 
 
 Hearing the straight, plain speech. 
 
 How pure a face had Levi Scott 
 
 To lead his Wesleyan class I 
 And Father Hersey cooled hell hot 
 
 In pleasant Sassafras. 
 In Shrewsbury graveyard lie the bones 
 
 Of them respect begot, 
 Speaking as white as their gravestones 
 
 Of lives without a spot. 
 
 Immigrant tides not hither pass, 
 
 Though offspring westward stray, 
 Scarce more reside on Sassafras 
 
 Than in Colonial day; 
 Railway supplants of ships the masts 
 
 But keeps its distance still; 
 A single crime in lore outlasts 
 
 Wars which their thousands kill. 
 
 In dear old times I saw thy start 
 
 Between my father's knees; 
 Thy watered garden touched my heart 
 
 With Eden memiories; 
 Though stronger barns and heavier wains 
 
 Across the line may pass, 
 Like the wild duck my down retains 
 
 The brine of Sassafras. 
 
176 
 
 THE PENINSULA. 
 
 When Penn, to save his capital 
 
 From Calvert's chartered right, 
 Bought from the Duke of York his all 
 
 Along the river Zuydt, 
 The people of the inner bay 
 
 Pushed out to taste the fare,— 
 Maria-land, Virginia 
 
 Edged to the Delaware. 
 
 And long departed Dutch and Swedes 
 
 Came to the ocean loams 
 And settling in the fens and reeds. 
 
 Resumed their former homes; 
 The Quakers from Patuxent move, 
 
 The lawyers quit the bay, 
 A freer Commonwealth to prove — 
 
 Wider Peninsula. 
 
 After long years, adown the pines 
 
 Surveyors ran with care 
 The angles and the circle lines 
 
 To coop the Delaware; 
 And overflowing thing with thing, 
 
 Possession old and late, 
 Swede, Dutch and English conquering 
 
 Give title to a State. 
 
 Till Independence signet put 
 
 O'er all that ruse and stealth 
 First in the constellation's fruit. 
 
 Declared the Commonwealth. 
 A chestnut sucker, healthy, free. 
 
 From other States it starts, 
 And stands in graceful unity 
 
 On mutilated parts. 
 
 And all our rivers backward flow, 
 With only creeks before. 
 
177 
 
 To Penn, we saved, our products go, 
 
 What's left to Baltimore. 
 Three States comprise the Eastern Shore, 
 
 Court houses five times three, 
 Diffusing issues, law and lore. 
 
 Spangling society. 
 
 The Bassetts unto Bayards drew 
 
 Both Herman's deed and land 
 Virginia Mifflins join with Chew 
 
 From mainland Maryland. 
 John Custis, landlord of King Charles, 
 
 In Holland, boils his malt 
 Collector midst the shelly sands 
 
 And boils the ocean salt. 
 
 A hundred years and Custis' work 
 
 Mount Vernon's heir has won. 
 And sees his kin from far New York 
 
 Neighbor on Washington: 
 Clarendon's son McKemie fines, 
 
 Drummond meets Bacon's fate 
 And Quaker Upshur, burst by mines. 
 
 Falls, minister of State. 
 
 Both capes the slaver Dutchmen sold 
 
 The first black tares afield, 
 The Puritan struck loud and bold 
 
 On Henry Wise's shield; 
 But, like our oysters under sea. 
 
 We heard the strife elsewhere — 
 Only Domestic slavery 
 
 Grew on the Delaware. 
 
 Between great seaports we are cast 
 
 That head and feet informs. 
 The inlets and the islands fast 
 
 Hold us from rage and storms. 
 We flourish like the vine that climbs 
 
 Toward the light always. 
 And nurse the calm Colonial times 
 
 Between the pleasant bays. 
 
178 
 
 TELL-TALE RECORDS. 
 
 At Eastville, in Virginia, 
 
 I opened in my hand 
 The Records of the dawn of day — 
 
 The oldest in the land; 
 "Here," thought I, "shall I find great things,- 
 
 Court revels, garter tricks. 
 The wigs and shoes of Stuart Kings 
 
 And much imported bricks." 
 
 Before me sat the first clerk's heir — 
 
 Obedience Robins sire — 
 Who named Northamptons county there 
 
 For his, the English shire; 
 Here old descent and heraldry 
 
 Outlasted Jamestown's wreck. 
 And Berkeley hanged, in Bacon's war. 
 
 Sir Drummond by the neck. 
 
 I oped the book, wrote clear and brief; 
 
 What wonders did I see ? 
 Only good wives a'slandering, 
 
 And fines of bastardy. 
 "I called Dame Stout a slut — or more, 
 
 I thought she slandered mine, 
 I hope that God will look it o'er 
 
 When I have paid my fine." 
 
 "This child I lay to Marmion Scott- 
 He knows where it began; 
 
 He ne'er complained when it was got 
 And is a gentleman.' 
 
 "I stand in church to take it back — 
 I said that Misses More 
 
 Looked no more like her little Jack 
 Than did the Governor; 
 
 God heard me — it was quite a smirch— 
 And rather out of bounds. 
 
 My fines and tithes I pay in church 
 
179 
 
 In good tobacco pounds.' 
 
 Ah 1 when there is no other news 
 
 And country has no town, 
 The only news is still abuse: 
 
 We call our neighbor down! 
 Much of ancestors must we hear, 
 
 Beware when them we call ! 
 The witch of Endor was the seer 
 
 That seared the heart of Saul. 
 
 LAND OF POCOMOKE. 
 
 One day, worn out with head andpen, 
 And the debate of public men, 
 
 I said aloud, "O 1 if there were 
 Some place to make me young awhile, 
 
 I would go there, I would go there. 
 And if it were a many a mile 1" 
 
 Then something cried — perhaps my map, 
 That not in vain I oft invoke — 
 
 "Go seek again your mother's lap. 
 
 The dear old soil that gave you sap, 
 And see the land of Pocomoke 1" 
 
 A sense of shame that never yet 
 My foot on that old shore was set. 
 
 Though prodigal in wandering, 
 Arose; and with a tingled cheek. 
 
 Like some late wild duck on the wing, 
 I started down the Chesapeake. 
 
 The morning sunlight, silvery calm, 
 From basking shores of woodland broke, 
 
 And capes and inlets breathing balm, 
 
 And lovely islands clothed in palm. 
 Closed round the sound of Pocomoke. 
 
180 
 
 The pungy boats at anchor swing, 
 The long canoes were oystering, 
 
 And moving barges played the seine 
 Along the beaches of Tangiers; 
 
 I heard the British drums again 
 As in their predatory years, 
 
 When Kedge's Straits the Tories swept. 
 And Ross's campfires hid in smoke. 
 
 They plundered all the coasts except 
 
 The camp the Island Parson kept 
 For praying men of Pocomoke. 
 
 And when we thread in quaint intrigue 
 Onancock Creek and Pungoteague, 
 
 The world and wars behind us stop. 
 On God's frontiers we seem to be 
 
 As at Rehoboth wharf we drop, 
 And see the Kirk of Mackemie: 
 
 The first he was to teach the creed 
 The rugged Scotch will ne'er revoke; 
 
 His slaves he made to work and read. 
 
 Nor powers Episcopal to heed. 
 That held the glebes on Pocomoke. 
 
 But quiet nooks like these unman 
 The grim predestinarian, 
 
 Whose soul expands to mountain views; 
 And Wesley's tenets, like a tide. 
 
 These level shores with love suffuse. 
 Where'er his patient preachers ride. 
 
 The landscape quivered with the swells 
 And felt the steamer's paddle stroke. 
 
 That tossed the hollow gum tree shells, 
 
 As if some puffing craft of hell's 
 The fisher chased in Pocomoke. 
 
 Anon the river spreads to coves. 
 And in the tides grow giant groves. 
 
 The water shines like ebony, 
 And odors resinous ascend 
 
181 
 
 From many an old balsamic tree, 
 Whose roots the terrapin befriend; 
 
 The great ball cypress, fringed with beard, 
 Presides above the water oak, 
 
 As doth its shingles, well revered. 
 
 O'er many a happy home endeared 
 To thousands far from Pocomoke. 
 
 And solemn hemlocks drink the dew. 
 Like that old Socrates they slew; 
 
 The piny forests moan and moan, 
 And in the marshy splutter docks. 
 
 As if they grazed on sky alone. 
 Rove airily the herds of ox. 
 
 Then, like a narrow strait of light, 
 The banks draw close, the long trees yoke, 
 
 And strong old manses on the height 
 
 Stand overhead, as to invite 
 To good old cheer on Pocomoke. 
 
 And cunning baskets midstream lie 
 To trap the perch that gambol by; 
 
 In coves of creek the sawmills sing. 
 And trim the spar and hew the mast; 
 
 And the gaunt loons dart on the wing , 
 To see the steamer looming past. 
 
 Now timber shores and massive piles 
 Repel our hull with friendly stroke. 
 
 And guide us up the long defiles, 
 
 Till, after many fairy miles 
 We reach the head of Pocomioke. 
 
 Is it Snow Hill that greets me back 
 To this old loamy cul-de-sac ? — 
 
 Spread on the level river shore, 
 Beneath the bending willow trees 
 
 And speckled trunks of sycamore. 
 All moist with airs of rival seas ? 
 
 Are these old men who gravely bow, 
 As if a stranger alia woke. 
 
182 
 
 The same who heard my parents vow, 
 — Ah well ! in simpler days than now — 
 To love and serve by Pocomoke ? 
 
 Does Chincoteague, as then, produce 
 These rugged ponies, lean and spruce ? 
 
 Are these the steers of Accomack 
 That do the negro's drone obey ? 
 
 The things of childhood all come back: 
 The wonder tales of mother day ! 
 
 The jail, the inn, the ivy vines 
 That yon old English churchside cloak, 
 
 Wherein we read the stately lines 
 
 Of Addison, writ in his signs, 
 Above the dead of Pocomoke. 
 
 The world in this old nook may peep, 
 And think it listless and asleep; 
 
 But I have seen the world enough 
 To think its grandeur something dull; 
 
 And here were men of serling stuff. 
 In their own era wonderful: 
 
 Young Luther Martin's wayward race, 
 And William Winder's core of oak, 
 
 The lion heart of Samuel Chase, 
 
 And great Decatur's royal face. 
 And Henry Wise of Pocomoke. 
 
 When we have raged our little part, 
 And weary out of strife and art. 
 
 Oh I could we bring to these still shores 
 The peace they have who harbor here. 
 
 And rest upon our echoing oars. 
 And float adown this tranquil sphere 1 
 
 Then, might yon stars shine down on me, 
 With all the hope those lovers spoke. 
 
 Who walked these tranquil streets I see. 
 
 And thought God's love nowhere so free, 
 Nor life so good, as Pocomoke. 
 
183 
 
 THE PARSONAGE CIRCUS. 
 
 For one thing must the Conference 
 
 Be aye by us called down; 
 The preachers' sons, on no pretence, 
 
 When the Circus comes to town 
 Must see the barebacked lady leap, 
 
 The clown go through the hoops, 
 Nor the moral beasts eat nuts asleep 
 
 Within their caged coops! 
 
 All people but the preachers' boys 
 
 Could come to town that day. 
 Some to play monk, some to get drunk, 
 
 But We must stay away. 
 Wei well aware that Paul made tents 
 
 And Zaccheus climbed a tree, 
 Must see them through the parsonage fence 
 
 Monk-locked from the gay mon-key. 
 
 O, that Collection, full of dimes 
 
 For the Missionary cause I 
 We wished we could handle it sometimes 
 
 When the circus broke the laws. 
 For when the grand entree played loud, 
 
 If we could the choice replevin. 
 We would rather go in with the circus crowd 
 
 Than squeeze with the saints into Heaven. 
 
 There were no boys with a motive less 
 
 Than we, for to raise such fuss; 
 We wanted to prove the Roman dress 
 
 And the beasts of Ephesus. 
 Tickets we earned for our Scripture lore. 
 
 But not to the show, I grant, 
 (We earned them several times before, 
 
 As a smart Itinerant.) 
 
 No doubts my soul would a zebra scorch, 
 My morals an ostrich claw, 
 
184 
 
 But the show bills on the tavern porch, 
 They taught me how to draw, 
 
 And if I had looked with but one eye 
 On them with their shins in flights, 
 
 It might have saved me, bye and bye, 
 From the ladies in higher tights. 
 
 Ah 1 not all things did the Circus bolt 
 That the loud bands' music drank I 
 
 The preacher's mare had a piebald colt 
 With a white stripe down its flank; 
 
 And that was the Monkey's mighty grin. 
 As he left by the light of stars: 
 
 "You might have let the boys come in 
 
 Eer they let down the parsonage bars I 
 
 PRODIGAL'S DREAM. 
 
 The preacher's family must spend 
 
 A week day at the rich man's feast ; 
 Of eating supper was no end, 
 
 The table groaned to please the priest; 
 Turkey and ducks and oysters cooked 
 
 And Sally Lunn and Federal pone — / 
 
 The preacher carved and learned looked, / 
 
 The while he told howjt was done. 
 
 O'erfed, o'erlaughed, the preacher's son 
 
 Stole from the table, still to be 
 And in the parlor read alone 
 
 /Books from a little library — 
 Books not like the^fi the parsonage kept. 
 Books that the Sunday-schools would brand 
 And there he revelled till he slept, 
 A pirate story in his hand. 
 
185 
 
 Night fell; the boy around him looks; 
 
 What is that voice that softly purled 
 "How would you like to live those books 
 
 "And quit the parsonage for the world ?" 
 •'Can I ?" "Sign here, my tender bud, 
 
 Thy name so bold it will not blur 1" 
 The boy, he signed it with his blood: 
 
 The parchment was a Newspaper 1 
 
 The boy awoke. "O, what a dream ! 
 
 I thought the end would never come — 
 Do they still eat ? Where is our team ?" 
 
 It must be time for going home." 
 "It is past time. No boy art thou. 
 
 Thy dream's thy life, lived page by page ; 
 Thy Diood is witness on thy vow. 
 
 Thou'rt drawing near the parsonage." 
 
 JANE SEWELL. 
 
 Old Jane Sewell, still as a mouse, 
 Often came to my mother's house. 
 Sat and sat and nothing told; 
 She was comely even when old; 
 Husband fled her and children away. 
 Old Jane Sewell had nothing to say. 
 
 "Mother, why is so plump a dame 
 So deserted, with nothing to blame ?" 
 
 "Son, ask not 1 What is to be told 
 God has forgiven, it is so old." 
 
 Still, Jane Sewell came to our house. 
 Children worldly and absent spouse; 
 She like a dove, with an affluent breast, 
 Face submissive and welcome guest. 
 
 13 
 
188 
 
 "Mother, tell me what sorrow she had 1 
 What has Jane Sewell done to be sad ?" 
 
 "Son, there are some who start with a slip, 
 Not like men, who conceal when they trip; 
 In our town, where all slips are known, 
 Jane was the beauty, as all would own; 
 Peerless, gentle, and only poor. 
 Suitors early pressed to her door. 
 
 "Beauty has wants to adorn itseir — 
 Beautiful goods on the merchant's shelf. 
 
 "It was the merchant the poor defiled: 
 Jane one morning mothered a child. 
 
 "Then the town had a theme to nurse; 
 Better had Jane gone dead on her hearse. 
 But the Lord, who gives weeds thei^ will. 
 Left Jane Sewell beautiful still. 
 
 Every suitor came back to woo. 
 
 Child, or no child, to her charms they were true. 
 
 Life abounded and bloomed new pride: 
 
 Josephs were many at Mary's side, 
 
 Jesus was one to the Magdalene, 
 
 Poor Jane Sewell was rich again. 
 
 "One she pitied, his suit was so strong, 
 Pleaded and worshipped and bided so long, 
 Jane said at last, in her tone so mild: 
 'Will you never mention the child ?' 
 'No, by Heaven 1' and then she wed — 
 Nothing else, but that child, he said. 
 
 "Children beautiful came again, 
 
 Girls and boys with the glory of Jane; 
 
 Only he spoke of the slip before. 
 
 Called her names that were shameful o'er — 
 
 O, my son, when we live our best 
 
 Can the past and its blame never rest ? 
 
187 
 
 "Nature restored her in children like Eve, 
 
 Nor did the sin by the serpent deceive: 
 
 To her first offspring the merchant gave brain, 
 
 He is the son that is filial to Jane; 
 
 He like a merchant mechanic well thrives, 
 
 Holds up his head and is happy, and wives; 
 
 Jane has her daughters plucked from her afar 
 By their hard father, who knows where thet are; 
 Like him, they look on their mother with scorn. 
 Give her no comfort and leave her forlorn. 
 
 "Still, oh, my son I that poor creature reviled 
 Never worse fruit gave the world than a child: 
 Like a young graft early summer has crost, 
 Smote by the hail storm but spared by the frost." 
 
 CIRCUIT RIDING. 
 
 I sat between my father's knees 
 
 On Sundays in the sulky. 
 And watched the full persimmon trees 
 
 And snowdrifts that, so bulky, 
 Made all the gates a job to ope. 
 
 The while my father cheered me. 
 His holy smile but fun and hope. 
 
 His praise that so endeared me. 
 
 My toes beneath the buffalo. 
 
 My mits my mother knitted. 
 Sometimes were cold as Sunday snow — 
 
 His face warmed while it pitied. 
 Oh, have I ever found in life 
 
 A comrade or a brother, 
 A son, a sweetheart or a wife 
 
 As loving as my father ? 
 
188 
 
 How moaned with cold the old pine trees 
 
 While waiting for the meeting I 
 How did the sleigh bells' music freeze, 
 
 Around the graveyard bleating ! 
 The red-hot stove now roared, now chilled, 
 
 And, the black loft a'cresting. 
 The swallows warmed to chirp and build, 
 
 Not knowing Seventh-day resting. 
 
 How long the sermon and the prayer 
 
 And hard my knees a'kneeling. 
 Except when with me cat's eyes there 
 
 Some little girl was stealing! 
 The singing was a feat at arms, 
 
 The tunes all common metre. 
 But when they broke, that sweetheart's charms 
 
 Laughed on me all the sweeter. 
 
 And after meeting, when her home 
 
 Took boy and man to dinner. 
 It seemed with her like Christmas come 
 
 And both my socks a winner. 
 Three times we preached from kirk to kirk, 
 
 And three stout meals a'heaping. 
 The stern Commandment not to work 
 
 I kept in church a'sleeping. 
 
 Then back to town by moonlight glow 
 
 The preacher hymns a'humming, 
 I pushed away the gold-edged snow 
 
 And muttered, "bed's a'coming." 
 Oh, what is life to one and each — 
 
 One Sunday like another ? 
 We travel far to work and preach. 
 
 Then slumber with Our Father. 
 
189 
 
 THE CIRCUIT PREACHER. 
 
 His thin wife's cheek grows pinched and pale with anxiousness intense; 
 He sees the brethren's prayerful eyes o'er all the Conference; 
 He hears the Bishop slowly call the long "Appointment" rolls, 
 Where in his vineyard God would place these gatherers of souls. 
 
 Apart, austere, the knot of grim Presiding Elders sit; 
 He wonders if some city "Charge" may not for him have writ ? 
 Certes ! could they his sermon hear on Paul and Luke awreck, 
 Then had his talent ne'er been hid on Annomessix Neck ! 
 
 Poor rugged heart 1 be still a pause, and you, worn wife, be meek ! 
 Two years of banishment they read far down the Chesapeake 1 
 Though Brother Bates, less eloquent, by Wilmington is wooed, 
 The Lord that counts the sparrows fall shall feed his little brood. 
 
 "Cheer up, my girl ! Here Brother Riggs our circuit knows 'twill please. 
 He raised three hundred dollars there, beside the marriage fees. 
 What ! tears from us who preached the word these thirty years or so ? 
 Two years on barren Chincoteague, and two in Tuckahoe ? 
 
 "The schools are good, the brethren say, and our Church holds the wheel; 
 The Presbyterians lost their house; the Baptists lost their zeal. 
 The parsonage is clean and dry; the town has friendly folk — ■ 
 Not as Rehoboth half so dull, nor proud like Pocomoke. 
 
 "Oh I thy just will, our Lord I be done, though these eight seasons more. 
 We see our ague-crippled boys pine on the Eastern Shore, 
 While we, thy steward, journey out our dedicated years 
 Midst foresters of Nanticoke, or heathen of Tangiers 1 
 
 "Yea 1 some must serve on God's frontiers, and I shall fail, perforce. 
 To sow upon some better ground my most select discourse; 
 At Sassafras, or Smyrna, preach my argument on 'Drink,' 
 My series on the Pentateuch, at Appoquinimink. 
 
 "Gray am I, brethren, in the work, though tough to bear my part; 
 It is these drooping little ones that sometimes wring my heart. 
 And cheat me with the vain conceit the cleverness is mine 
 To fill the churches of the Elk, and pass the Brandywine. 
 
190 
 
 "These hairs were brown, when, full of hope, ent'ring these holy lists, 
 
 Proud of my Order as a knight — the shouting Methodists — 
 
 I made the pine woods ring with hymns, with prayer the night winds 
 
 shook. 
 And preached from Assawaman Light far North as Bombay Hook. 
 
 "My nag was gray, my gig was new; fast went the sandy miles; 
 The eldest Trustees gave me praise, the fairest sisters smiles; 
 Still I recall how Elder Smith of Worten Heights averred 
 My Apostolic Parallels the best he ever heard. 
 
 "All winter long I rode the snows, rejoicing on my way; 
 At midnight our Revival hymns rolled o'er the sobbing bay; 
 Three Sabbath sermons, every week, should tire a man of brass — 
 And still our fervent membership must have their extra Class ! 
 
 ''Aggressive with the zeal of youth, in many a warm requite 
 1 terrified Immersionists, and scourged the Millerite; 
 But larger, tenderer charities such vain debates supplant, 
 When the dear wife, saved by my zeal, loved the Itinerant. 
 
 '*No cooing dove of storms afeared, she shared my life's distress, 
 A singing Miriam, alway, in God's poor wilderness; 
 The wretched at her footstep smiled, the frivolous were still; 
 A bright path marked her pilgrimage, from Blackbird to Snowhill. 
 
 *\ new face in the parsonage, at church a double pride ! — 
 Like Joseph's Mary and her babe they filled the 'Amen-side' — 
 Crouched at my feet in the old gig, my boy, so fair and frank, 
 Naswongo's darkest marshes cheered, or sluices of Choptank. 
 
 "My cloth drew close; too fruitful love my fruitless life outran; 
 The townfolk marvelled, when we moved, at such a caravan ! 
 I wonder not my lads grew wild when, bright without the door 
 Spread the ripe, luring, wanton world — and we, within, so poor I 
 
 For, down the silent cypress aisles came shapes even me to scout. 
 Mocking the lean flanks of my mare, my boy's patched roundabout, 
 And saying: 'Have these starveling stocks, thy congregation, souls, 
 That on their dull heads Heaven and thou pour forth such living coals?" 
 
191 
 
 "Then prayer brought hopes, half secular, like seers by Endor's witch: 
 Beyond our barren Maryland God's folks were wise and rich; 
 Where climbing spires and easy pews showed how the preacher thrived, 
 And all old brethren paid their rents, and many young ones wived I 
 
 "I saw the ships Henlopen pass with chaplains fat and sleek; 
 From Bishopshead with fancy's sails I crossed the Chesapeake; 
 In velvet pulpits of the North said my best sermons o'er — 
 And that on Paul to Patmos driven, drew tears in Baltimore. 
 
 "Well ! well ! my brethren, it is true we should not preach for pelf — 
 (I would my sermon on Saint Paul the Bishop heard himself !) 
 But this crushed wife — these boys — these hairs ! they cut me to the core' 
 Is it not hard, year after year, to ride the Eastern Shore ? 
 
 "Next year ? Yes ! yes ! I thank you much ! Then, my reward 
 
 may fall. 
 (That is a downright fine discourse on Patmos and St. Paul 1) 
 So, Brother Riggs, once more my voice shall ring in the old lists. 
 Cheer up, sick heart I who would not die among these Methodists ?" 
 
 THE BAY FERRY. 
 
 "The Western Shore i will not stand 
 
 And in its mudholes flounder. 
 But try the hard alluvial sand: 
 
 The Eastern Shore is sounder" 
 So Washington, the President, 
 
 His stablemen commanded; 
 Down the Peninsula he went. 
 
 His gallant coach, four-handed. 
 
 Chester and Wilmington turned out 
 To see the Chieftain travel ; 
 
 He found the road not roundabout. 
 Quite level and quite gravel. 
 
 At Christeen bridge he laid him down, 
 
192 
 
 The bull frogs serenaded; 
 
 Next night he was at Chestertown 
 
 And not a muscle jaded. 
 
 They burnt a bonfire on the Green, 
 
 The black band played in bold time, 
 Where more than once the mimic scene 
 
 The players gave in old time. 
 And Charley Peale, the saddler's lad, 
 
 The General's coach had varnished. 
 And Mistress Turbutt's son-in-law bad* 
 
 The patriot roll had tarnished. 
 
 The General's youth Peale painted best 
 
 From home made art and knowledge. 
 And Chestertown upon its crest 
 
 Raised Washington a college; 
 How calm upon the river street 
 
 The old brick mansions lined them 1 
 Around the Court House, crimped and sweet, 
 
 The lawyers' daughters wind them 1 
 
 Sweet water from the cool marsh spring 
 
 The slave girls balanced, toting. 
 And round the new Republic's King 
 
 Sweet whispers aye were floating: 
 "How good 1 How great 1 And what a smile 
 
 "I wish that he would kiss us I" 
 "This road has saved him many a mile 1" 
 
 "I knew he would not miss us !" 
 
 Ice cream was every student's treat, 
 
 The sassafras beer was popping 
 With ginger cakes; the market stree<- 
 
 That night did royal shopping. 
 Next afternoon the coach and all 
 
 Upon the bay were tossing, 
 They ferried over from Rock Haul, 
 
 By Anne Arundel crossing. 
 
 The periauger was a scow. 
 
 With masts and sails at endings; 
 
193 
 
 Midships the coach was edged somehow, 
 The horses strained at bendings; 
 
 Sidewise they sailed; the wind shrieked high, 
 The waves the craft were tossing — 
 
 The General murmured, with a sigh: 
 "This beats the Trenton crossing 1" 
 
 Next, fog and dark hid bow from stern; 
 
 They sounded and they cast lead. 
 Barely they saw the lantern burn 
 
 A'swinging gainst the masthead. 
 Gulls flew aboard with panic screams. 
 
 The lamp a wild duck shivered; 
 The periauger oped her seams 
 
 And eke the State Coach quivered. 
 
 Whinnied the horses in their fright. 
 
 The mainsail split and scalloped; 
 The General said: "This beats the night 
 
 We crossed at Hell Gate, walloped 1" 
 The gale burst over, in the slop 
 
 The coach and steeds half floated 
 And counter blasts brought to a stop 
 
 The ark, no longer boated. 
 
 Anon the muffled lightning shoots 
 
 And zigzag winds recruited; 
 The General said: "Pull off your boots 
 
 And exercise, web-footed !" 
 She lifts; all shifts; she drifts; fog rifts 
 
 Then closes like a vision; 
 Ghost voices near made seaman fear 
 
 They'll perish in collision. 
 
 The General slept in his great coat 
 
 Coached, and the coach boys told him: 
 
 "Dar is no Jonah in dis boat; 
 
 Dar is no fish will hold him I" 
 
 "What's that ?" The old man broke his spell- 
 Turned up his ear to ponder. 
 
194 
 
 "I dreamed I heard the State House bell: 
 Annapolis is yonder 1" 
 
 The fog he baffled went before, 
 
 The cove-bound mart resigning, 
 And like his flag, the Eastern Shore 
 
 Red, white and blue was shining; 
 "Farewell I" waved Washington his hand, 
 
 "I found you gay and merry; 
 But till you build a rainbow bridge 
 
 I cannot cross your ferry 1" 
 
 * Benedict Arnold married the daughter of Miss Turbutt, whose 
 mother lived in Chestertown, Md. Peale, the painter, lived there. 
 
 OLD KENT. 
 
 1870. 
 
 I am back in the court-house village; 
 
 The houses remain as before; 
 One or two old roofs may have perished. 
 
 But the neighbors have builded no more; 
 The river creeps under the drawbridge, 
 
 The wharves are a little more rotten. 
 The streets are as grassy and sandy. 
 
 And the college more lone and forgotten. 
 
 It is sad that the faces are stranger 
 
 When the place so familiar appears ! 
 I came with my heart expectant — 
 
 It is only twenty years; 
 But the big boys stare at me queerly. 
 
 And the little boys flatter my tailor, 
 While the old men look suspicious 
 
 From the constable down to the jailer. 
 
195 
 
 Only the innkeeper greets me 
 
 Like the long-expected one, 
 And makes me believe a little 
 
 In the tale of the prodigal son; 
 The fatted calf he slaughters, 
 
 The calf that is tough and arid. 
 Like the townsfolk's beauteous daughters, 
 
 Who have all "gone off and got married." 
 
 There is Mary, with seven children. 
 
 And Marion, jilted and wan, 
 Saffronia gone to the shambles. 
 
 And Emma, gone under the lawn* 
 Proud Sally, an editor's conquest — 
 
 What a fate for an exquisite creature 1 
 And Margie, whose husband is richest, 
 
 A note-shaving Methodist preacher. 
 
 Not so were the old-time preachers, 
 
 Who rode on this Eastern Shore; 
 I seek out the grim brick parsonage — 
 
 Two years 'twas my father's door; 
 I see blink northward the window. 
 
 In the gable so broad and bulky, 
 The lot of grass for the old gray mare. 
 
 And the stable for saddle and sulky. 
 
 There was his study lattice 
 
 Where often he wrote and prayed; 
 And there the garden wicket 
 
 Whence he came to promenade; 
 And bowed to white and to negro — 
 
 A pastor, no partisan — 
 The women said: "He is handsome 1" 
 
 And the men said: "A gentleman 1" 
 
 By starlight on Sunday morning 
 
 He kissed my mother adieu, 
 And threaded the Necks of the Chesapeake, 
 
 In the snow storm or the dew; 
 Old cross roads chapels grew temples 
 
196 
 
 While he lit with his radiant face, 
 The truest and longest sermons 
 
 That ever brought sinners to grace. 
 
 No priest of the Roman conclave 
 
 Had tact or bonhommie more; 
 No brigand, armed to the gorget. 
 
 Felt safer the wild woods o'er; 
 Priest, friend, Franciscan and doctor. 
 
 At length his renown appears — 
 A spirit of civilization, 
 
 A statesman on man's frontiers ! 
 
 And so, I shall quit the village. 
 
 Content my escutcheon to show; 
 Content that nothing is stirring. 
 
 But the worm that's at work below. 
 And the soul of the seed, hence wafted, 
 
 Which the Lord of the Harvest must seek, 
 In the little old-fashioned places. 
 
 That doze by the Chesapeake. 
 
 HYMN OF THE TORIES. 
 
 (1780.) 
 
 IN TANGIER SOUND. 
 
 Plash of the swell on the spit's barren marge. 
 Scream of the fish hawk disturbed by our barge, 
 Muffled our oars from the fierce shores, 
 Tories we are and our trust is King George 1 
 
 Low chorus: 
 
 Homeless we row; 
 
 God wills it so ! 
 
 Praise Him that giveth the rivers to flow ! 
 
197 
 
 Pine trees to grow, starlight to glow, 
 Isles in the mist where we refugees row 
 
 Yesterday, neighbors we took by the hand, 
 Homestakes we had from old time in the land, 
 Sweethearts and brides graves side by side. 
 Now we have nowhere to love and abide. 
 
 Low chorus: 
 
 Homeless we row; 
 
 God wills it so ! 
 
 Praise Him that giveth the rivers to flow ! 
 
 Pine trees to grow, starlight to glow. 
 
 Isles in the mist where we refugees row ! 
 
 Friends preaching peace, were our forefathers, when 
 Twas to lie down by the bay. Englishmen; 
 Asked we a cause; who broke the laws ? — 
 It was Rebellion and Death should we pause. 
 
 Low chorus: 
 
 Homeless we row; 
 
 God wills it so 1 
 
 Praise Him that giveth the rivers to flow 
 
 Pine trees to grow, starlight to glow, 
 
 Isles in the mist where we refugees row ! 
 
 Long is the strife and perhaps we were wrong. 
 What seemed the weakest now waxes the strong 
 Where shall we turn ? O, how we yearn 
 To come to land, though it be to our urn ! 
 
 Low chorus: 
 
 Homeless we row; 
 
 God wills it so ! 
 
 Praise Him that giveth the rivers to flow 
 
 Pine trees to grow, starlight to glow. 
 
 Isles in the mist where we refugees row ! 
 
198 
 
 A BILL OF LIFE. 
 
 Do no errand with another ! — mind composed and Nature tal<e ! 
 
 Tell no dreams when thou arisest 1 — thy realities they shake, 
 
 Sleep at once without romancing ! Leave thy bed when well awake I 
 
 Women wish but men endeavor; wish not anything that's small I 
 Affectations ne'er are clever; clear thy mind of one and all 1 
 Love the few things that forever shall enlarge thy heart and hall ! 
 
 Women cultivate in leisure ! See beneath their swimming eyes ! 
 
 Animally take thy pleasure in strong sleep and exercise 1 
 
 If at last thy father's measure thou can'st match, it may suffice. 
 
 Conscience is what sleep disturbeth; debt will do it like to crime. 
 Have thy treasure aye in motion: earth is moving all the time. 
 Sometimes let another earn thee with his talents things sublime I 
 
 Gently fan the public spirit like thy hearthstone's moderate light I 
 
 When thy love of country falters, it, not thou, is in the right. 
 
 Be not rigid with thy statesman I Trust them farther than thy sight 1 
 
 Be thou just but not severely ! Who made thee his justice first ? 
 
 He who would act God austerely is of all the devils worst. 
 
 Thou whose harvests ripen yearly, cannot say that earth is curst. 
 
 Hope not Heaven will all reveal thee, 'tis revealing makes Earth heaven; 
 In the Pleiades the spyglass shows the stars there more than seven, 
 Always something's left that's hidden for the future to replevin. 
 
 If thy prim ideals draggle, think how earth itself was slime I 
 As thy generations waggle, think how young they are in time I 
 Dust of thine shall quicken often ere our satellite's in prime. 
 
199 
 
 Marry I that thyself transmitted, shall the planet twice inherit ! 
 Thou art walking on the waters in thy ante-parents' spirit. 
 Thou Shalt die unless parental in thy persevering merit. 
 
 Let thy newsman not o'errule thee; he the bustler of a day ! 
 
 Let thy priest but seldom fool thee, nor too oft thy wife soothsay I 
 
 Thou art home's revered example; when thou strayest home may stray. 
 
 Thou who yearned for light on all things, have thy mind a crystal prism ! 
 All defects old age makes monstrous: rally from thy cynicism ! 
 Give the world that entertained thee, unction from thy parting chrism 1 
 
 Higher than the Nation's Ruler is the Neighborhood's clear guide. 
 They who need divinest friendship are the bridegroom and the bride. 
 Not a hector, nor Elector, but a Gentleman abide ! 
 
 GRAVEYARD HORSES. 
 
 I love to see at Drummondtown 
 
 Where the pines reply to the waves, 
 The kitchens stretch to the graveyard down 
 
 And the horses eat on the graves ; 
 The grass that sprouts on the happy corse, 
 
 Is sweeter than jowl and greens. 
 And the dead men loved to eat on the horse 
 
 That the dead men's marrow gleans. 
 
 How social Death when we fear no graves 
 
 And the kitchen steams and sings. 
 And about the graveyard, court the slaves, 
 
 Forgetting the mournful things. 
 We banish far by a ghoulish force 
 
 Them who built our family seats; 
 Let the rider lie by his faithful horse 
 
 That sees no spooks while he eats I 
 
200 
 
 The Court House cluster where they heard 
 
 The pleas where they patient lie, 
 No more expels the nesting bird 
 
 Than the nesting dead near by; 
 And it sounds so good to the dead who lay 
 
 Under their date and name, 
 To hear their horses graze and neigh 
 
 As they did when their masters came. 
 
 There is no peace like the earth they put, 
 
 Our coverlet, warm and last; 
 Buried beneath his Chariot, 
 
 Old Homer's Kings go past; 
 And the steeds which eat at Drummondtown 
 
 On the graves that never cloy 
 Are like the prints in the Iliad 
 
 Or the chariot steeds of Troy. 
 
 
1913