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From an Unpublished Poem.
AND still her gray rocks tower above the sea | |
| That murmurs at their feet, a conquer’d wave; | |
| ’T is a rough land of earth, and stone, and tree, | |
| Where breathes no castled lord or cabined slave; | |
| Where thoughts, and tongues, and hands, are bold and free, | 5 |
| And friends will find a welcome, foes a grave; | |
| And where none kneel, save when to heaven they pray, | |
| Nor even then, unless in their own way. | |
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| Theirs is a pure republic, wild, yet strong, | |
| A “fierce democracie,” where all are true | 10 |
| To what themselves have voted—right or wrong— | |
| And to their laws denominated blue; | |
| (If red, they might to Draco’s code belong;) | |
| A vestal state, which power could not subdue, | |
| Nor promise win—like her own eagle’s nest, | 15 |
| Sacred—the San Marino of the west. | |
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| A justice of the peace, for the time being, | |
| They bow to, but may turn him out next year; | |
| They reverence their priest, but disagreeing | |
| In price or creed, dismiss him without fear; | 20 |
| They have a natural talent for foreseeing | |
| And knowing all things;—and should Park appear | |
| From his long tour in Africa, to show | |
| The Niger’s source, they’d meet him with—“we know.” | |
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| They love their land, because it is their own, | 25 |
| And scorn to give aught other reason why; | |
| Would shake hands with a king upon his throne, | |
| And think it kindness to his majesty; | |
| A stubborn race, fearing and flattering none. | |
| Such are they nurtured, such they live and die: | 30 |
| All—but a few apostates, who are meddling | |
| With merchandise, pounds, shillings, pence, and peddling; | |
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| Or wandering through southern countries, teaching | |
| The A. B. C. from Webster’s spelling-book; | |
| Gallant and godly, making love and preaching, | 35 |
| And gaining, by what they call “hook and crook,” | |
| And what the moralists call overreaching, | |
| A decent living. The Virginians look | |
| Upon them with as favorable eyes | |
| As Gabriel on the devil in paradise. | 40 |
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| But these are but their outcasts. View them near | |
| At home, where all their worth and pride is placed; | |
| And there their hospitable fires burn clear, | |
| And there the lowliest farm-house hearth is graced | |
| With manly hearts, in piety sincere, | 45 |
| Faithful in love, in honor stern and chaste, | |
| In friendship warm and true, in danger brave, | |
| Beloved in life, and sainted in the grave. | |
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| And minds have there been nurtured, whose control | |
| Is felt even in their nation’s destiny; | 50 |
| Men who swayed senates with a statesman’s soul, | |
| And look’d on armies with a leader’s eye; | |
| Names that adorn and dignify the scroll, | |
| Whose leaves contain their country’s history, | |
| And tales of love and war—listen to one, | 55 |
| Of the Green-Mountaineer—the Stark of Bennington. | |
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| When on that field his band the Hessians fought, | |
| Briefly he spoke before the fight began— | |
| “Soldiers! those German gentlemen are bought | |
| For four pounds eight and seven pence per man, | 60 |
| By England’s king—a bargain, as is thought. | |
| Are we worth more? Let ’s prove it now we can— | |
| For we must beat them, boys, ere set of sun, | |
| Or Mary Stark ’s a widow.”—It was done. | |
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| Hers are not Tempe’s nor Arcadia’s spring, | 65 |
| Nor the long summer of Cathayan vales, | |
| The vines, the flowers, the air, the skies, that fling | |
| Such wild enchantment o’er Boccaccio’s tales | |
| Of Florence and the Arno—yet the wing | |
| Of life’s best angel, Health, is on her gales | 70 |
| Through sun and snow—and in the autumn time | |
| Earth has no purer and no lovelier clime. | |
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| Her clear, warm heaven at noon,—the mist that shrouds | |
| Her twilight hills,—her cool and starry eves, | |
| The glorious splendor of her sunset clouds, | 75 |
| The rainbow beauty of her forest leaves, | |
| Come o’er the eye, in solitude and crowds, | |
| Where’er his web of song her poet weaves; | |
| And his mind’s brightest vision but displays | |
| The autumn scenery of his boyhood’s days. | 80 |
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| And when you dream of woman, and her love; | |
| Her truth, her tenderness, her gentle power; | |
| The maiden, listening in the moonlight grove, | |
| The mother smiling in her infant’s bower; | |
| Forms, features, worshipp’d while we breathe or move, | 85 |
| Be by some spirit of your dreaming hour | |
| Borne, like Loretto’s chapel, through the air | |
| To the green land I sing, then wake, you ’ll find them there. | |
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