And felt the damp of the river-fog, That rises when the sun goes down.
It was one by the village-clock, When he rode into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he pass'd,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village-clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, Pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read How the British regulars fired and fled,- How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farmyard wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo for evermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the past, Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness, and peril, and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
THE ARROW AND THE SONG.
I SHOT an arrow into the air; It fell to earth, I knew not where: For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth I knew not where : For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.
Wind of the summer night! Where yonder woodbine creeps Fold, fold thy pinions light! She sleeps! My lady sleeps! Sleeps!
Dreams of the summer night! Tell her, her lover keeps Watch! while in slumbers light She sleeps! My lady sleeps! Sleeps!
COME to me, 0 ye Children! For I hear you at your play, And the questions that perplex'd me Have vanished quite away.
open the eastern windows, That look towards the sun,
Where thoughts are singing swallows, And the brooks of morning run.
hearts are the birds and the sunshine, In your thoughts the brooklet's flow; But in mine is the wind of Autumn, And the first fall of the snow.
Ah! what would the world be to us, If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.
What the leaves are to the forest, With light and air for food, Ere their sweet and tender juices Have been harden'd into wood,-
That to the world are children; Through them it feels the glow Of a brighter and sunnier climate Than reaches the trunks below.
Come to me, 0 ye Children! And whisper in my ear
What the birds and the winds are singing In your sunny atmosphere.
For what are all our contrivings, And the wisdom of our books, When compared with your caresses, And the gladness of your looks?
Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all of the rest are dead.
THIS song of mine
Is a Song of the Vine, To be sung by the glowing embers Of wayside inns,
When the rain begins
To darken the drear Novembers.
It is not a song Of the Scuppernong,
From warm Carolinian valleys, Nor the Isabel
And the Muscadel
That bask in our garden alleys.
Nor the red Mustang, Whose clusters hang
O'er the waves of the Colorado,
And the fiery flood Of whose purple blood Has a dash of Spanish bravado.
For richest and best
Is the wine of the West,
That grows by the Beautiful River,— Whose sweet perfume
Fills all the room
With a benison on the giver.
And as hollow trees
Are the haunts of bees,
For ever going and coming;
So this crystal hive
Is all alive
With a swarming and buzzing and humming.
Very good in its way
Is the Verzenay,
Or the Sillery soft and creamy; But Catawba wine
Has a taste more divine,
More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.
There grows no vine By the haunted Rhine,
By Danube or Guadalquiver, Nor on island or cape,
That bears such a grape
As grows by the Beautiful River.
Drugg'd is their juice
For foreign use,
When shipp'd o'er the reeling Atlantic, To rack our brains
With the fever pains
That have driven the Old World frantic.
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