Under the blue South Mountain, Needwood, the home of the Lees,
Stands in the flowing springs and among the exotic trees;
An old gray house, mysterious, like a Zurbaran monk,
Cowling his face in the shadows that into his soul have sunk.
Once 'twas a school of learning, drawing the planters' youth
To the classical keeping of Reverend Bartholomew Booth:
He, a recusant rector, hewed him a school of logs
Out in this western exile, ancient of pedagogues;
Washington's nephew, Bushrod, under his Latin was drudge,
Here on the lawn of Needwood starting to be a judge;
Often in court he nodded, dreaming his brain was cooled
By the long verdurous mountain over his copybook ruled.
Thomas Sim Lee came sleighing over the fences and rigs,
From Prince George, with his lady, Mary of Melwood-Digges,
He was a second son's second, landless except in wife,
Almost as tall as a giant and born for the era of strife.
Soft as a glove are the Lees and corded in neck like the bull;
Wide were the lands of Needwood rolling and beautiful,
Let down between the mountains like an apron of flowers,
And the blue distance castled with Nature's battlement towers.
Thomas's kith in Virginia headed the war for a nation,
Thomas's lands and stature singled him out for a station;
He was domestic and settled but of such is the mastiff and ready one,
Maryland made him her governor after the war was a steady one.
He had a work to do after the South was invaded
And all the Chesapeake rivers British blockaded;
Shifted the base of the war to the Maryland mountains,
Flour and whiskey and beeves to be fed from their fountains;
Wagons and vessels to press with a tact and uprightness,
Noblesse of France to amuse and entreat with politeness;
Down at Annapolis day was all straining anxiety,
Night was all dancing and loveliness, state and society.
Thus, Cornwallis was taken and Needwood was home again;
Lee from his lands and his dear ones hoped never to roam again.
But to watch harvests' and winters' annual revolving,
And her blue floodgates of mountains Potomac dissolving.
But the old drums continental rolled his reilection.
Out in the West had the whiskey folks made insurrection;
Soldiery streamed through the State like the gold in a pennant,
Under his cousin, Hal Lee, the Commander's lieutenant.
Carroll of Carrollton, Hanson and Harper, his cronies,
Visited Needwood in coaches or canvassed on ponies;
Singly the Maryland Fed'ralists had to be baited,
Like the lone wild cats that lasted till exterminated.
Beat, then, the reveille over his lifetime of action,
Triumphed o'er Washington's friends the Virginia faction;
Of Madison's cabinet craven, the governor read would,
Chased from their burning metropolis, almost to Needwood.
But on his age and Tom Johnson's, his governor-neighbor,
Fell the sweet notes of the human birds piping to labor,
Building the road to the West and the Armorers merry,
Tinkering muskets and sabres close by, at the Ferry.
Far waved his wheat like his panther rugs yellowed by fire;
Stacked like the arms of his armies, his corn rows retire;
Dropped in his dozing the tinkle of church bells ancestral, —
Plenty and Liberty sang him their anthem orchestral.
Farms he divided from Needwood to daughters and sons;
Pure in their paths were his seed as their kinsfolk, the nuns;
So he passed out of the vista of life like a bird,
That in the deep vault grows lesser and, last, is not heard.
Cannon of civil war belching and squadrons like bees
(When on the South mountain passes the last of the Lees
Fought for he knew not what) wakened him never:
Thomas Sim Lee had passed over the blue bar forever!
Needwood, old manse! long neglected, thy shadows of trees,
Hug round thee of moonlight and mingle their ghosts in the breeze;
Thy form, antiquated, pieced out and partitioned and shrunk,
Seems the cells of a soul's transmigration, but ever a monk.
Stands in the flowing springs and among the exotic trees;
An old gray house, mysterious, like a Zurbaran monk,
Cowling his face in the shadows that into his soul have sunk.
Once 'twas a school of learning, drawing the planters' youth
To the classical keeping of Reverend Bartholomew Booth:
He, a recusant rector, hewed him a school of logs
Out in this western exile, ancient of pedagogues;
Washington's nephew, Bushrod, under his Latin was drudge,
Here on the lawn of Needwood starting to be a judge;
Often in court he nodded, dreaming his brain was cooled
By the long verdurous mountain over his copybook ruled.
Thomas Sim Lee came sleighing over the fences and rigs,
From Prince George, with his lady, Mary of Melwood-Digges,
He was a second son's second, landless except in wife,
Almost as tall as a giant and born for the era of strife.
Soft as a glove are the Lees and corded in neck like the bull;
Wide were the lands of Needwood rolling and beautiful,
Let down between the mountains like an apron of flowers,
And the blue distance castled with Nature's battlement towers.
Thomas's kith in Virginia headed the war for a nation,
Thomas's lands and stature singled him out for a station;
He was domestic and settled but of such is the mastiff and ready one,
Maryland made him her governor after the war was a steady one.
He had a work to do after the South was invaded
And all the Chesapeake rivers British blockaded;
Shifted the base of the war to the Maryland mountains,
Flour and whiskey and beeves to be fed from their fountains;
Wagons and vessels to press with a tact and uprightness,
Noblesse of France to amuse and entreat with politeness;
Down at Annapolis day was all straining anxiety,
Night was all dancing and loveliness, state and society.
Thus, Cornwallis was taken and Needwood was home again;
Lee from his lands and his dear ones hoped never to roam again.
But to watch harvests' and winters' annual revolving,
And her blue floodgates of mountains Potomac dissolving.
But the old drums continental rolled his reilection.
Out in the West had the whiskey folks made insurrection;
Soldiery streamed through the State like the gold in a pennant,
Under his cousin, Hal Lee, the Commander's lieutenant.
Carroll of Carrollton, Hanson and Harper, his cronies,
Visited Needwood in coaches or canvassed on ponies;
Singly the Maryland Fed'ralists had to be baited,
Like the lone wild cats that lasted till exterminated.
Beat, then, the reveille over his lifetime of action,
Triumphed o'er Washington's friends the Virginia faction;
Of Madison's cabinet craven, the governor read would,
Chased from their burning metropolis, almost to Needwood.
But on his age and Tom Johnson's, his governor-neighbor,
Fell the sweet notes of the human birds piping to labor,
Building the road to the West and the Armorers merry,
Tinkering muskets and sabres close by, at the Ferry.
Far waved his wheat like his panther rugs yellowed by fire;
Stacked like the arms of his armies, his corn rows retire;
Dropped in his dozing the tinkle of church bells ancestral, —
Plenty and Liberty sang him their anthem orchestral.
Farms he divided from Needwood to daughters and sons;
Pure in their paths were his seed as their kinsfolk, the nuns;
So he passed out of the vista of life like a bird,
That in the deep vault grows lesser and, last, is not heard.
Cannon of civil war belching and squadrons like bees
(When on the South mountain passes the last of the Lees
Fought for he knew not what) wakened him never:
Thomas Sim Lee had passed over the blue bar forever!
Needwood, old manse! long neglected, thy shadows of trees,
Hug round thee of moonlight and mingle their ghosts in the breeze;
Thy form, antiquated, pieced out and partitioned and shrunk,
Seems the cells of a soul's transmigration, but ever a monk.