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1780
HERE ’s the spot. Look around you. Above on the height. | |
| Lay the Hessians encamped. By that church on the right | |
| Stood the gaunt Jersey farmers. And here ran a wall,— | |
| You may dig anywhere and you ’ll turn up a ball. | |
| Nothing more. Grasses spring, waters run, flowers blow, | 5 |
| Pretty much as they did ninety-three years ago. | |
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| Nothing more, did I say? Stay one moment; you ’ve heard | |
| Of Caldwell, the parson, who once preached the Word | |
| Down at Springfield? What, no? Come—that ’s bad, why he had | |
| All the Jerseys aflame! And they gave him the name | 10 |
| Of the “rebel high-priest.” He stuck in their gorge, | |
| For he loved the Lord God,—and he hated King George! | |
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| He had cause, you might say! When the Hessians that day | |
| Marched up with Knyphausen they stopped on their way | |
| At the “Farms,” where his wife, with a child in her arms, | 15 |
| Sat alone in the house. How it happened none knew | |
| But God—and that one of the hireling crew | |
| Who fired the shot! Enough!—there she lay, | |
| And Caldwell, the chaplain, her husband, away! | |
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| Did he bear it,—what way? Think of him as you stand | 20 |
| By the old church to-day;—think of him and that band | |
| Of militant ploughboys! See the smoke and the heat | |
| Of that reckless advance,—of that straggling retreat! | |
| Keep the ghost of that wife, foully slain, in your view,— | |
| And what could you, what should you, what would you do? | 25 |
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| Why, just what he did! They were left in the lurch | |
| For the want of more wadding. He ran to the church, | |
| Broke the door, stripped the pews, and dashed out in the road | |
| With his arms full of hymn-books, and threw down his load | |
| At their feet! then above all the shouting and shots, | 30 |
| Rang his voice,—“Put Watts into ’em,—Boys, give ’em Watts!” | |
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| And they did. That is all. Grasses spring, flowers blow | |
| Pretty much as they did ninety-three years ago. | |
| You may dig anywhere and you ’ll turn up a ball,— | |
| But not always a hero like this,—and that ’s all. | 35 |
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