On that pleasant morn of the early Fall, Over the mountains winding down, Forty flags with their silver stars, Flapp'd in the morning wind: the sun Bravest of all in Frederick town, In her attic-window the staff she set, Up the street came the rebel tread, Under his slouch'd hat left and right It shiver'd the window-pane and sash, "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, The nobler nature within him stirr'd "Who touches a hair of yon gray head All day long that free flag toss'd On the loyal winds that loved it well; And the rebel rides on his raids no more. ICHABOD. So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn The glory from his gray hairs gone Revile him not !—the Tempter hath And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, O! dumb be passion's stormy rage, Have lighted up and led his age, Scorn! Would the angels laugh, to mark Let not the land, once proud of him, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, But let its humbled sons, instead, A long lament, as for the dead, Of all we loved and honour'd, nought A fallen angel's pride of thought, All else is gone; from those great eyes When faith is lost, when honour dies, Then, pay the reverence of old days Walk backward, with averted gaze, TELLING THE BEES.* HERE is the place; right over the hill You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. *See Note 15. There is the house, with the gate red-barr'd, And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'er-run, A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze; Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, I mind me how with a lover's care From my Sunday coat I brush'd off the burrs, and smooth'd my hair, Since we parted, a month had pass'd, To love, a year; Down through the beeches I look'd at last On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. I can see it all now,-the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves, The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, Just the same as a month before,— The house and the trees, The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,— Before them, under the garden wall, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, For I knew she was telling the bees of one Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away." But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, The old man sat; and the chore-girl still And the song she was singing ever since 66 Stay at home, pretty bees! fly not hence: THE RIVER PATH. No bird-song floated down the hill, For from us, ere the day was done, But on the river's farther side |