Bunker Hill and Other Poems | Page 5

her classic hillsides rung
The Paynim's battle-cry,
And like a
red-cross knight he sprung
For her to live or die.
No trustier service claimed the wreath
For Sparta's bravest son;
No
truer soldier sleeps beneath
The mound of Marathon;
Yet not for him the warrior's grave
In front of angry foes;
To lift, to
shield, to help, to save,
The holier task he chose.
He touched the eyelids of the blind,
And lo! the veil withdrawn,
As
o'er the midnight of the mind
He led the light of dawn.
He asked not whence the fountains roll
No traveller's foot has found,

But mapped the desert of the soul
Untracked by sight or sound.
What prayers have reached the sapphire throne,
By silent fingers spelt,

For him who first through depths unknown
His doubtful pathway
felt,
Who sought the slumbering sense that lay
Close shut with bolt and
bar,
And showed awakening thought the ray
Of reason's morning
star
Where'er he moved, his shadowy form
The sightless orbs would seek,

And smiles of welcome light and warm
The lips that could not
speak.
No labored line, no sculptor's art,
Such hallowed memory needs;

His tablet is the human heart,
His record loving deeds.
III.
The rest that earth denied is thine,--
Ah, is it rest? we ask,
Or,
traced by knowledge more divine,
Some larger, nobler task?
Had but those boundless fields of blue
One darkened sphere like this;


But what has heaven for thee to do
In realms of perfect bliss?
No cloud to lift, no mind to clear,
No rugged path to smooth,
No
struggling soul to help and cheer,
No mortal grief to soothe!
Enough; is there a world of love,
No more we ask to know;
The
hand will guide thy ways above
That shaped thy task below.
JOSEPH WARREN, M. D.
TRAINED in the holy art whose lifted shield
Wards off the darts a
never-slumbering foe,
By hearth and wayside lurking, waits to throw,

Oppression taught his helpful arm to wield
The slayer's weapon :
on the murderous field
The fiery bolt he challenged laid him low,

Seeking its noblest victim. Even so
The charter of a nation must be
sealed!
The healer's brow the hero's honors crowned,
From lowliest
duty called to loftiest deed.
Living, the oak-leaf wreath his temples
bound;
Dying, the conqueror's laurel was his meed,
Last on the
broken ramparts' turf to bleed
Where Freedom's victory in defeat was
found.
June 11, 1875.
OLD CAMBRIDGE
JULY 3, 1875
AND can it be you've found a place
Within this consecrated space,

That makes so fine a show,
For one of Rip Van Winkle's race?
And
is it really so?
Who wants an old receipted bill?
Who fishes in the
Frog-pond still?
Who digs last year's potato hill?--
That's what he'd
like to know!
And were it any spot on earth
Save this dear home that gave him birth

Some scores of years ago,
He had not come to spoil your mirth

And chill your festive glow;
But round his baby-nest he strays,


With tearful eye the scene surveys,
His heart unchanged by changing
days,
That's what he'd have you know.
Can you whose eyes not yet are dim
Live o'er the buried past with
him,
And see the roses blow
When white-haired men were Joe and
Jim
Untouched by winter's snow?
Or roll the years back one by one

As Judah's monarch backed the sun,
And see the century just
begun?--
That's what he'd like to know!
I come, but as the swallow dips,
Just touching with her feather-tips

The shining wave below,
To sit with pleasure-murmuring lips
And
listen to the flow
Of Elmwood's sparkling Hippocrene,
To tread
once more my native green,
To sigh unheard, to smile unseen,--

That's what I'd have you know.
But since the common lot I've shared
(We all are sitting
"unprepared,"
Like culprits in a row,
Whose heads are down, whose
necks are bared
To wait the headsman's blow),
I'd like to shift my
task to you,
By asking just a thing or two
About the good old times
I knew,--
Here's what I want to know
The yellow meetin' house--can you tell
Just where it stood before it
fell
Prey of the vandal foe,--
Our dear old temple, loved so well,

By ruthless hands laid low?
Where, tell me, was the Deacon's pew?

Whose hair was braided in a queue?
(For there were pig-tails not a
few,)--
That's what I'd like to know.
The bell--can you recall its clang?
And how the seats would slam and
bang?
The voices high and low?
The basso's trump before he sang?

The viol and its bow?
Where was it old Judge Winthrop sat?

Who wore the last three-cornered hat?
Was Israel Porter lean or fat?--

That's what I'd like to know.
Tell where the market used to be
That stood beside the murdered tree?


Whose dog to church would go?
Old Marcus Reemie, who was he?

Who were the brothers Snow?
Does not your memory slightly fail

About that great September gale?--
Whereof one told a moving tale,

As Cambridge boys should know.
When Cambridge was a simple town,
Say just when Deacon William
Brown
(Last door in yonder row),
For honest silver counted down,

His groceries would bestow?--
For those were days when money
meant
Something that jingled as you went,--
No hybrid like the
nickel cent,
I'd have you all to know,
But quarter, ninepence, pistareen,
And fourpence hapennies in
between,
All metal fit to show,
Instead of rags in stagnant green,

The scum