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As She Saw It from the Belfry
’T IS like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembers | |
| All the achings and the quakings of “the times that tried men’s souls”; | |
| When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story, | |
| To you the words are ashes, but to me they ’re burning coals. | |
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| I had heard the muskets’ rattle of the April running battle; | 5 |
| Lord Percy’s hunted soldiers, I can see their red coats still; | |
| But a deadly chill comes o’er me, as the day looms up before me, | |
| When a thousand men lay bleeding on the slopes of Bunker’s Hill. | |
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| ’T was a peaceful summer’s morning, when the first thing gave us warning | |
| Was the booming of the cannon from the river and the shore: | 10 |
| “Child,” says grandma, “what ’s the matter, what is all this noise and clatter? | |
| Have those scalping Indian devils come to murder us once more?” | |
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| Poor old soul! my sides were shaking in the midst of all my quaking, | |
| To hear her talk of Indians when the guns began to roar: | |
| She had seen the burning village, and the slaughter and the pillage, | 15 |
| When the Mohawks killed her father with their bullets through his door. | |
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| Then I said, “Now, dear old granny, don’t you fret and worry any, | |
| For I ’ll soon come back and tell you whether this is work or play; | |
| There can’t be mischief in it, so I won’t be gone a minute”— | |
| For a minute then I started. I was gone the livelong day. | 20 |
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| No time for bodice-lacing or for looking-glass grimacing; | |
| Down my hair went as I hurried, tumbling half-way to my heels; | |
| God forbid your ever knowing, when there ’s blood around her flowing, | |
| How the lonely, helpless daughter of a quiet household feels! | |
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| In the street I heard a thumping; and I knew it was the stumping | 25 |
| Of the Corporal, our old neighbor, on that wooden leg he wore, | |
| With a knot of women round him,—it was lucky I had found him,— | |
| So I followed with the others, and the Corporal marched before. | |
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| They were making for the steeple,—the old soldier and his people; | |
| The pigeons circled round us as we climbed the creaking stair. | 30 |
| Just across the narrow river—oh, so close it made me shiver! | |
| Stood a fortress on the hill-top that but yesterday was bare. | |
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| Not slow our eyes to find it; well we knew who stood behind it, | |
| Though the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls were dumb: | |
| Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking wild upon each other, | 35 |
| And their lips were white with terror as they said, “The hour has come!” | |
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| The morning slowly wasted, not a morsel had we tasted, | |
| And our heads were almost splitting with the cannons’ deafening thrill, | |
| When a figure tall and stately round the rampart strode sedately; | |
| It was Prescott, one since told me; he commanded on the hill. | 40 |
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| Every woman’s heart grew bigger when we saw his manly figure, | |
| With the banyan buckled round it, standing up so straight and tall; | |
| Like a gentleman of leisure who is strolling out for pleasure, | |
| Through the storm of shells and cannon-shot he walked around the wall. | |
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| At eleven the streets were swarming, for the red-coats’ ranks were forming; | 45 |
| At noon in marching order they were moving to the piers; | |
| How the bayonets gleamed and glistened, as we looked far down, and listened | |
| To the trampling and the drum-beat of the belted grenadiers! | |
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| At length the men have started, with a cheer (it seemed faint-hearted), | |
| In their scarlet regimentals, with their knapsacks on their backs, | 50 |
| And the reddening, rippling water, as after a sea-fight’s slaughter, | |
| Round the barges gliding onward blushed like blood along their tracks. | |
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| So they crossed to the other border, and again they formed in order; | |
| And the boats came back for soldiers, came for soldiers, soldiers still: | |
| The time seemed everlasting to us women faint and fasting,— | 55 |
| At last they ’re moving, marching, marching proudly up the hill. | |
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| We can see the bright steel glancing all along the lines advancing,— | |
| Now the front rank fires a volley,—they have thrown away their shot; | |
| For behind their earthwork lying, all the balls above them flying, | |
| Our people need not hurry; so they wait and answer not. | 60 |
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| Then the Corporal, our old cripple (he would swear sometimes and tipple),— | |
| He had heard the bullets whistle (in the old French war) before,— | |
| Calls out in words of jeering, just as if they all were hearing,— | |
| And his wooden leg thumps fiercely on the dusty belfry floor:— | |
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| “Oh! fire away, ye villains, and earn King George’s shillin’s, | 65 |
| But ye ’ll waste a ton of powder before a ‘rebel’ falls; | |
| You may bang the dirt and welcome, they ’re as safe as Dan’l Malcolm | |
| Ten foot beneath the gravestone that you ’ve splintered with your balls!” | |
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| In the hush of expectation, in the awe and trepidation | |
| Of the dread approaching moment, we are wellnigh breathless all; | 70 |
| Though the rotten bars are failing on the rickety belfry railing, | |
| We are crowding up against them like the waves against a wall. | |
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| Just a glimpse (the air is clearer), they are nearer,—nearer,—nearer, | |
| When a flash—a curling smoke-wreath—then a crash—the steeple shakes— | |
| The deadly truce is ended; the tempest’s shroud is rended; | 75 |
| Like a morning mist it gathered, like a thunder-cloud it breaks! | |
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| Oh the sight our eyes discover as the blue-black smoke blows over! | |
| The red-coats stretched in windrows as a mower rakes his hay; | |
| Here a scarlet heap is lying, there a headlong crowd is flying | |
| Like a billow that has broken and is shivered into spray. | 80 |
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| Then we cried, “The troops are routed! they are beat—it can’t be doubted! | |
| God be thanked, the fight is over!”—Ah! the grim old soldier’s smile! | |
| “Tell us, tell us why you look so?” (we could hardly speak, we shook so;) | |
| “Are they beaten? Are they beaten? Are they beaten?” “Wait a while.” | |
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| Oh the trembling and the terror! for too soon we saw our error: | 85 |
| They are baffled, not defeated; we have driven them back in vain; | |
| And the columns that were scattered, round the colors that were tattered, | |
| Toward the sullen silent fortress turn their belted breasts again. | |
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| All at once, as we are gazing, lo the roofs of Charlestown blazing! | |
| They have fired the harmless village; in an hour it will be down! | 90 |
| The Lord in heaven confound them, rain his fire and brimstone round them,— | |
| The robbing, murdering red-coats, that would burn a peaceful town! | |
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| They are marching, stern and solemn; we can see each massive column | |
| As they near the naked earth-mound with the slanting walls so steep. | |
| Have our soldiers got faint-hearted, and in noiseless haste departed? | 95 |
| Are they panic-struck and helpless? Are they palsied or asleep? | |
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| Now! the walls they ’re almost under! scarce a rod the foes asunder! | |
| Not a firelock flashed against them! up the earthwork they will swarm! | |
| But the words have scarce been spoken, when the ominous calm is broken, | |
| And a bellowing crash has emptied all the vengeance of the storm! | 100 |
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| So again, with murderous slaughter, pelted backwards to the water, | |
| Fly Pigot’s running heroes and the frightened braves of Howe; | |
| And we shout, “At last they ’re done for, it ’s their barges they have run for: | |
| They are beaten, beaten, beaten; and the battle ’s over now!” | |
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| And we looked, poor timid creatures, on the rough old soldier’s features, | 105 |
| Our lips afraid to question, but he knew what we would ask: | |
| “Not sure,” he said; “keep quiet,—once more, I guess, they ’ll try it— | |
| Here ’s damnation to the cut-throats!”——then he handed me his flask, | |
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| Saying, “Gal, you ’re looking shaky; have a drop of old Jamaiky; | |
| I ’m afeard there ’ll be more trouble afore the job is done”: | 110 |
| So I took one scorching swallow; dreadful faint I felt and hollow, | |
| Standing there from early morning when the firing was begun. | |
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| All through those hours of trial I had watched a calm clock dial, | |
| As the hands kept creeping, creeping,—they were creeping round to four, | |
| When the old man said, “They ’re forming with their bagonets fixed for storming: | 115 |
| It ’s the death-grip that ’s a coming,—they will try the works once more.” | |
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| With brazen trumpets blaring, the flames behind them glaring, | |
| The deadly wall before them, in close array they come; | |
| Still onward, upward toiling, like a dragon’s fold uncoiling,— | |
| Like the rattlesnake’s shrill warning the reverberating drum! | 120 |
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| Over heaps all torn and gory—shall I tell the fearful story, | |
| How they surged above the breastwork, as a sea breaks over a deck; | |
| How driven, yet scarce defeated, our worn-out men retreated, | |
| With their powder-horns all emptied, like the swimmers from a wreck? | |
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| It has all been told and painted; as for me, they say I fainted, | 125 |
| And the wooden-legged old Corporal stumped with me down the stair. | |
| When I woke from dreams affrighted the evening lamps were lighted,— | |
| On the floor a youth was lying; his bleeding breast was bare. | |
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| And I heard through all the flurry, “Send for Warren! hurry! hurry! | |
| Tell him here ’s a soldier bleeding, and he ’ll come and dress his wound!” | 130 |
| Ah, we knew not till the morrow told its tale of death and sorrow, | |
| How the starlight found him stiffened on the dark and bloody ground. | |
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| Who the youth was, what his name was, where the place from which he came was, | |
| Who had brought him from the battle, and had left him at our door, | |
| He could not speak to tell us; but ’t was one of our brave fellows, | 135 |
| As the homespun plainly showed us which the dying soldier wore. | |
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| For they all thought he was dying, as they gathered round him crying,— | |
| And they said, “Oh, how they ’ll miss him!” and, “What will his mother do?” | |
| Then, his eyelids just unclosing like a child’s that has been dozing, | |
| He faintly murmured, “Mother!”——and—I saw his eyes were blue. | 140 |
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| —“Why, grandma, how you ’re winking!”—Ah, my child, it sets me thinking | |
| Of a story not like this one. Well, he somehow lived along; | |
| So we came to know each other, and I nursed him like a—mother, | |
| Till at last he stood before me, tall, and rosy-cheeked, and strong. | |
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| And we sometimes walked together in the pleasant summer weather; | 145 |
| —“Please to tell us what his name was?”—Just your own, my little dear,— | |
| There ’s his picture Copley painted: we became so well acquainted, | |
| That—in short, that ’s why I ’m grandma, and you children all are here! | |
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