Classic Poem

Over the swarming river,
With its border of fretted piers,
Mile after mile the city
Its roofs and spires uprears,

But never a shaft or column
To mark the bitter day
When the blood of heroes stained the sod,
Fallen in hopeless fray.

Ah, well! the tide of progress
Has ever both ebb and flow,
And our gaining has been with losing
Since an hundred years ago.

Yet our losing has been with gaining,
For all these busy hills
Were then but barren woodlands,
With an idle ripple of rills;

And all the ground below them
Was meadow and creek and marsh,
And over and over beyond them
Were ridges ragged and harsh;

And through those ridges, three passes
Were guarded by night and day,
For the army that shielded Manhattan
On the heights of Brooklyn lay.

The watchful trembling city
Crouched on the flats below,
And out on the blue sea-border
Hovered the hawk-like foe.

Thrice in the midnight watches
The bivouac felt a thrill,
A whisper out of the darkness,
A spectral menace of ill;

But no man sought the phantom,
And no man knew its form,
Till madly the August morning
Rang with a double storm;

For, while the Hessian columns
Straight at the defile came,
Down on the rear Cornwallis
Swept like a prairie flame.

Then writhed the stricken army,
Wrapped in the coilings fell,
Till the woodland aisles and alleys
Seemed the columned halls of Hell;

For the smoke of the rapid muskets
Rose in a dismal veil,
And out of the hidden struggle
Came a constant clamor and wail,

Till at last the desperate remnant
A backward pathway cleft
Through the rushing crowds of foemen
That clung to them right and left.

Still by the bay Lord Stirling
Manfully held his own;
Like a pine-tree grand in a storm-swept land,
He clung to the ground alone.

Three regiments obeyed him
(Three States on their colors shine),
And a single trim battalion,—
The First of the Maryland line.

Firm was the slender column,
Firm as a lance in rest,
For the gallant State had given
Her noblest and her best.

From Dorchester and Arundel
Came the sons of the Puritan,
And Catholics from St. Mary's,
And Churchmen from old Queen Anne;

Came Calvert and Bowie and Paca,
Goldsborough, Addison,
Tilghman of Chester River,
And Carroll of Carrollton;

Proud of their lineage stainless,
Proud of their rural sway;
And the pride of Maryland held its own
With a royal might that day.

Now from the woodland conflict,
Nearer and yet more near,
Broke many a cry of horror
And many a British cheer;

And Stirling's brow grew anxious
As he turned to the rearward bridge,
And looked in vain for the summons
From the earthwork on the ridge.

In vain, till a mob of flying
Hurried across his gaze,
And, swift on their trail of panic,
The bridge burst into blaze.

Then Stirling sprang to action.
“Back to the works!” cried he;
“Men of Maryland, hold the crest
And guard the rear with me.”

The regiments turned, but lingered,
Doubtful and loth to go;
He waved them on right lordly,
And wheeled to meet the foe.

And the Maryland lads wheeled with him,
And he spake with a sudden thrill:
“Will you do less than the Yankees?
Give them a Bunker Hill.”

And he looked on the summer landscape,
And he looked in the depth of sky;
“There's little space between hill and marsh,
But there's room enough to die.”

Briton and Continental
Halted with startled stare,
For the Maryland battalion
Was facing two armies there.

No need for the hope fanatic
That thrilled the Vendean wars!
No need for Pallas Athene!
No need for mailéd Mars!

In the simple pride of manhood
They fronted the regulars then,
To fight till the death for their noble State,
And die like gentlemen.

Grand as the young slaveholders
Who filled the Trachian pass,
And walled with their ringing bucklers
The dead Leonidas!

Four times did Grant, pursuing,
Break on that stubborn crest
As clouds, by the wild wind driven,
Break on the mountain's breast.

Five times on Lord Cornwallis,
Striving to pass the hill,
They dashed like a bursting torrent,
And bore him back to the mill.

But ever their faces, turning,
Sought the remoter shore
And the marsh, all dotted with figures,
Where man never crossed before;

Where many a heart of valor
In the noisome quagmire sank,
With the mottled pools above him
And the reed-growth rustling rank.

But ever denser and heavier
Grew the foemen's constant press,
And the Maryland men grew weaker
And their numbers less and less.

The balls came plunging through them,
The musketry smote them down;
Half the battalion were lying
On the hill-side bare and brown.

But still in the scorching sunshine
They fought a hopeless fight,
With naught to aid but their lofty pride
And the consciousness of right.

Suddenly rose o'er the din of foes
A voice like an organ-blast:
“We have won the game through flood and flame!
Our men are over at last!

“Now!”—and the call was echoed
By a hoarse exultant cry—
“Now show the British yonder
How Maryland men can die!”

Over the hill they bounded
With a lion-like rush and roar,
The dead and dying behind them,
The flag and Stirling before.

Right at the British heartstrings
So dire a swoop they made
That the mighty mass was severed
Like flesh by a plunging blade.

Outward it rolled and backward
Like a torrent-buffeted tide,
And the rival banners wrestled
For a moment side by side;

And the rival nobles struggled
For a moment hand to hand,
With lunge and stroke and parry,
And clashing of brand on brand;

And it seemed for a moment that fortune
Might work a miracle yet,
And yield a grace to the pride of race
And the handful hard beset.

But the severed mass closed on them
Like flesh on a driven spear,
And Grant with his Tories and Scotchmen
Fell savagely on their rear.

As when some frightful chasm
Opens beneath the sea,
The turbid world of waters
Whirls down tumultuously,

Or the waterspout, uprearing,
Grapples the land of storms,
Till earth and heaven are peopled
With a chaos of circling forms,

Down they came, whirling and tossing
And crushing with main and might,
And the Maryland battalion
Had passed from human sight.

When the boats of the ruined army
From the island stole away,
The eyes of hope looked up and down
From river and sky and bay.

But the chieftain's brow was set and sad,
And moist was the chieftain's eye.
And now he turned to the hills behind,
And now to the midnight sky;

For he knew what dew on the sod was shed
In the hush of the summer night,
Where the flower of Maryland bloomed blood-red
Along the southern height.
Yes, the pride of Maryland held its ground
On the grim Gowanus Height.