Classic Poem

Round all the wide horizon's bar
There lay no growing cloud to mar
The brightness of the autumn day;
And yet the soft air felt the jar
Of thunder rolling from afar,
And shuddered in its pale dismay.

Berkley, with anxious eye and ear,
Stood on the southern porch to hear,
Disturbed with many a doubt and fear,
As rolled the distant roaring in;
Then to his tower he mounted high,
And searched through all the cloudless sky:
All, all was clear, while still came by
The rumble of the constant din.

Was direful war the sudden source?
Was it for this the rebel force
Had ta'en but now their southward course?
The sound his fears too well define!
It is, it is the cannon's mouth!
Its awful answer from the south
Bears tidings of the roaring ranks
That crash upon the trembling banks,
The crimson banks, of Brandy wine.

Pale Esther, in that gloomy tower,
Strained her sad vision's fruitless power:
On every sound she seemed to hear
The shout and groan together swell;
At every burst that came more clear,
She deemed her hero Edgar fell, —
Fell, and perchance had breathed his last
Long ere the death-announcing blast,
Speeding through miles of frighted air,
His dying sigh to her could bear.

Still hearkening, gazing far abroad,
Some sign of triumph to discover,
All day she poured her prayer to God
To shield her country and her lover.

And Berkley, listening to the fight,
Remembered Trenton's direful night,
And that it was the same fierce train
Whose lengthy line he saw of late
Pour from the city o'er the plain,
Led by a leader bold and great,
Who now upon that roaring field
Might cause once more their flag to yield.

His heart, misgiving, sank away,
Shuddering through the doubtful day:
And should the rebels win, what then? —
The troops were bold and desperate men:
And he remembered with affright
The terrors of that startling night
What time a rude and lawless crew
(All such he deemed the patriot lines)
Intruded on his midnight view
And drank his dearest, noblest wines:
His frame was agued through and through
Lest that wild scene should come anew.

" Ho! gardener, hostler, coachman! — ho!
Each man whose hand can wield a spade!
A place of safety must be made:
Bring shovels, hoes, and picks, and show
How you can ply the digging trade. "
When Berkley's will was thus conveyed,
Down came the gardener and his man,
The hostler and the hostler's lad,
The coachman and the footman ran,
And each his delving orders had.

" Dig me a pit! " the master cried,
" And let it be both deep and wide,
As 'twere a grave that might contain
A score or more of rebels slain.
But they for whom this grave is made
Belong unto a nobler grade,
With better blood than ever ran
In purple veins of outlaw clan.
Their royal genealogic lines
Come down the Old World's antique vines:
Ho, butler! my good sacristan,
Bear out our monarch king of wines,
Old Port, in all his purple pride,
With queenly Sherry at his side,
Followed by all their loyal train,
The brave, light-hearted German knights
Whose birth was on the Rhenish heights,
The well-beloved of Charlemagne,
And all those maids whose bright eyes glance
In memory of their native France.
Here, give them to their parent mould
Till peace has stilled this rebel strife;
Then doubly bright and doubly bold
Shall be their renovated life. "

Sir Hugh, thus making mournful mirth,
That poorly cloaked his trembling fear, —
It may be with a secret tear, —
Consigned his precious wines to earth:
'Twas midnight ere they smoothed away
All traces where his treasures lay.

'Twas midnight, and a moon in heaven,
And silence over stream and hill,
Save where the lone bird's song was given,
Or aspens, with a whispering thrill.
Seemed sheltering some young wind benighted,
Late from the battle-field affrighted.
The moon which through the window gazed
Saw Esther 'gainst her harp reclining,
Her pale and prayerful face upraised.
And each eye with a tear-drop shining.
Her prophet-heart foreboding well
The fate which to that field befell,
Her fingers trembled on the string,
And thus her prayerful song took wing.

SONG .

I.

O God, o'er all this blooming earth
Is it with thine approving eye
That every flower of noble birth
Must bow to poisonous weeds, or die?

II.

Through all our pastures must there run
The bramble which no fruitage bears?
Must every field which loves the sun
Be arrogant with choking tares?

III.

Must every tree whose leaves divine
Were made in Freedom's air to spread
Be clasped by the obnoxious vine
Until its boughs are sapped and dead?

IV.

Wilt thou not send some mighty hand
To sweep through these entangled walks,
To root the proud weeds from the land
And burn the rank and thorny stalks?

A moment now she paused, and sighed,
Her hand still on the quivering cords,
As waiting the ensuing words,
When, at the open casement wide,
A voice in patriot tones replied: —

" Yes, God hath sent that arm of wrath:
It sweeps the land with sword of fire:
The poisonous weeds but strew his path
To build Oppression's funeral pyre! "

Sweet is the sound when pardon calls
The prisoner from his dreary walls;
And sweet the succoring voice must be
Which hails a sinking ship at sea;
And dear the water's light when first
It greets the desert-pilgrim's thirst,
Or from he friendly helmet drips
To cool a fainting patriot's lips:
But not more sweet or dear than when
A fond heart hears and meets again
The voice and the responding eye
Of one, the dearest 'neath the sky,
Whom picturing fancy saw but now
With drooping head and bleeding brow,
Or heard the last-drawn sigh of pain
Which laid him with his comrades slain:
Her arm was round her hero prest,
Her head was on his happy breast.