| |
| ’T WAS a little brass half-circlet, | |
| Deep gnawed by rust and stain, | |
| That the farmer’s urchin brought me, | |
| Ploughed up in old Monmouth’s plain; | |
| On that spot where the hot June sunshine | 5 |
| Once a fire more deadly knew, | |
| And a bloodier color reddened | |
| Where the red June roses blew;— | |
| |
| Where the moon of the early harvest | |
| Looked down through the shimmering leaves, | 10 |
| And saw where the reaper of battle | |
| Had gathered his human sheaves: | |
| Old Monmouth, so touched with glory, | |
| So tinted with burning shame, | |
| As Washington’s pride we remember, | 15 |
| Or Lee’s long-tarnished name. | |
| |
| ’T was a little brass half-circlet; | |
| And knocking the rust away, | |
| And clearing the ends and the middle | |
| From their burial-shroud of clay, | 20 |
| I saw, through the damp of ages, | |
| And the thick, disfiguring grime, | |
| The buckle-heads and the rowel | |
| Of a spur of the olden time. | |
| |
| And I said, “What gallant horseman, | 25 |
| Who revels and rides no more, | |
| Perhaps twenty years back, or fifty, | |
| On his heel that weapon wore? | |
| Was he riding away to his bridal, | |
| When the leather snapped in twain? | 30 |
| Was he thrown, and dragged by the stirrup, | |
| With the rough stones crushing his brain?” | |
| |
| Then I thought of the Revolution, | |
| Whose tide still onward rolls; | |
| Of the free and the fearless riders, | 35 |
| Of the “times that tried men’s souls.” | |
| What if, in the day of battle | |
| That raged and rioted here, | |
| It had dropped from the foot of a soldier, | |
| As he rode in his mad career? | 40 |
| |
| What if it had ridden with Forman, | |
| When he leaped through the open door, | |
| With the British dragoon behind him, | |
| In his race o’er the granary-floor? | |
| What if—but the brain grows dizzy | 45 |
| With the thoughts of the rusted spur— | |
| What if it had fled with Clinton, | |
| Or charged with Aaron Burr? | |
| |
| But bravely the farmer’s urchin | |
| Had been scraping the rust away; | 50 |
| And, cleaned from the soil that swathed it, | |
| The spur before me lay. | |
| Here are holes in the outer circle; | |
| No common heel it has known, | |
| For each space, I see by the setting, | 55 |
| Once held some precious stone. | |
| |
| And here, not far from the buckle— | |
| Do my eyes deceive their sight?— | |
| Two letters are here engraven, | |
| That initial a hero’s might!— | 60 |
| “G. W.!” Saints of heaven!— | |
| Can such things in our lives occur? | |
| Do I grasp such a priceless treasure? | |
| Was this George Washington’s spur? | |
| |
| Did the brave old Pater Patriæ | 65 |
| Wear that spur, like a belted knight,— | |
| Wear it, through gain and disaster, | |
| From Cambridge to Monmouth fight? | |
| Did it press his steed in hot anger | |
| On Long Island’s day of pain? | 70 |
| Did it drive him at terrible Princeton | |
| ’Tween two streams of leaden rain? | |
| |
| And here did the buckles loosen, | |
| And no eye look down to see, | |
| When he rode to blast with the lightning | 75 |
| The defiant eyes of Lee? | |
| Did it fall, unfelt and unheeded, | |
| When that fight of despair was won, | |
| And Clinton, worn and discouraged, | |
| Crept away at the set of the sun? | 80 |
| |
| The lips have long been silent | |
| That could send an answer back; | |
| And the spur, all broken and rusted, | |
| Has it forgotten its rider’s track? | |
| I only know that the pulses | 85 |
| Leap hot, and the senses reel, | |
| When I think that the Spur of Monmouth | |
| May have clasped George Washington’s heel! | |
| |
