Classic Poem

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!—
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!—
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:

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?”