Poems

LISTEN, my children, and you shall
hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-
five;

One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and
farm,

For the country folk to be up and to

arm.

Then he said, "Good night!" and with
muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings
lay

The Somerset, British man-of-war ;
A phantom ship, with each mast and
spar

Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was
magnified

By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley,
and street,

Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of
feet,

And the measured tread of the grena-
diers,

Marching down to their boats on the shore.

On the sombre rafters, that round him
made

Masses and moving shapes of shade, -
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look
down

Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

year.

He said to his friend, "If the British
march

By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal
light,-

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the

dead,

In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's
tread,

A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight

A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night;

And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,

And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,

Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders, that skirt its edge,

Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,

Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Med-
ford town.

He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank
and bare,

Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look

upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord
town.

He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning
breeze

Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to
fall,

Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

So through the night rode Paul Revere ; | And this perceiving, to appease
And so through the night went his cry

of alarm

To every Middlesex village and farm,
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the
door,

And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the
Past,

Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and
need,

The people will waken and listen to
hear

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul
Revere.

INTERLUDE.

THE Landlord ended thus his tale,
Then rising took down from its nail
The sword that hung there, dim with
dust,

And cleaving to its sheath with rust,
And said,This sword was in the
fight."

The Poet seized it, and exclaimed,
"It is the sword of a good knight,
Though homespun was his coat-of-mail;
What matter if it be not named
Joyeuse, Colada, Durindale,
Excalibar, or Aroundight,

Or other name the books record?
Your ancestor, who bore this sword
As Colonel of the Volunteers,
Mounted upon his old gray mare,
Seen here and there and everywhere,
To me a grander shape appears
Than old Sir William, or what not,
Clinking about in foreign lands
With iron gauntlets on his hands,
And on his head an iron pot!"

The Landlord's wrath, the others' fears,
The Student said, with careless ease,
"The ladies and the cavaliers,
The arms, the loves, the courtesies,
The deeds of high emprise, I sing!
Thus Ariosto says, in words
That have the stately stride and ring
Of armed knights and clashing swords.
Now listen to the tale I bring;
Listen though not to me belong
The flowing draperies of his song,
The words that rouse, the voice that
charms.

The Landlord's tale was one of arms,
Only a tale of love is mine,
Blending the human and divine,
A tale of the Decameron, told
In Palmieri's garden old,
By Fiametta, laurel-crowned,
While her companions lay around,
And heard the intermingled sound
Of airs that on their errands sped,
And wild birds gossiping overhead,
And lisp of leaves, and fountain's fall,
And her own voice more sweet than

all,

Telling the tale, which, wanting these,
Perchance may lose its power to please."

THE STUDENT'S TALE.

THE FALCON OF SER FEDERIGO.

ONE summer morning, when the sun
was hot,

Weary with labor in his garden-plot,
On a rude bench beneath his cottage
eaves,

Ser Federigo sat among the leaves
Of a huge vine, that, with its arms out-
spread,

Hung its delicious clusters overhead.
Below him, through the lovely valley,
flowed

All laughed; the Landlord's face grew The river Arno, like a winding road,

red

As his escutcheon on the wall;
He could not comprehend at all
The drift of what the Poet said;
For those who had been longest dead
Were always greatest in his eyes;
And he was speechless with surprise
To see Sir William's plumed head
Brought to a level with the rest,
And made the subject of a jest.

And from its banks were lifted high in

To woo and lose, since ill his wooing | I will not say he seems to see, he sees

sped,

Monna Giovanna, who his rival wed, Yet ever in his fancy reigned supreme, The ideal woman of a young man's dream.

Then he withdrew, in poverty and pain, To this small farm, the last of his domain,

His only comfort and his only care To prune his vines, and plant the fig and pear;

His only forester and only guest His falcon, faithful to him, when the rest,

Whose willing hands had found so light of yore

The brazen knocker of his palace door, Had now no strength to lift the wooden latch,

In the leaf-shadows of the trellises, Herself, yet not herself; a lovely child With flowing tresses, and eyes wide and wild,

Coming undaunted up the garden walk, And looking not at him, but at the hawk.

'Beautiful falcon !" said he, "would

that I

Might hold thee on my wrist, or see thee fly!"

The voice was hers, and made strange echoes start

Through all the haunted chambers of his heart,

As an æolian harp through gusty doors Of some old ruin its wild music pours.

"Who is thy mother, my fair boy?" he said,

That entrance gave beneath a roof of His hand laid softly on that shining

thatch.

head.

"Monna Giovanna. Will you let me

stay

A little while, and with your falcon

play?

We live there, just beyond your garden wall,

In the great house behind the poplars tall."

Monna Giovanna, widowed in her prime, Had come with friends to pass the summer time

In her grand villa, half-way up the hill, O'erlooking Florence, but retired and still;

With iron gates, that opened through long lines

Of sacred ilex and centennial pines, And terraced gardens, and broad steps of stone,

And sylvan deities, with moss o'ergrown,
And fountains palpitating in the heat,
And all Val d'Arno stretched beneath
its feet.

Here in seclusion, as a widow may,
The lovely lady whiled the hours away,
Pacing in sable robes the statued hall,
Herself the stateliest statue among all,
And seeing more and more, with secret
joy,

Her husband risen and living in her boy,
Till the lost sense of life returned again,
Not as delight, but as relief from pain.
Meanwhile the boy, rejoicing in his
strength,

Stormed down the terraces from length to length;

The screaming peacock chased in hot pursuit,

And climbed the garden trellises for fruit. But his chief pastime was to watch the flight

Of a gerfalcon, soaring into sight, Beyond the trees that fringed the garden wall,

Then downward stooping at some distant call;

And as he gazed full often wondered he Who might the master of the falcon be, Until that happy morning, when he found Master and falcon in the cottage ground.

And now a shadow and a terror fell

On the great house, as if a passing-bell The one, close-hooded, had the attractive Tolled from the tower, and filled each

grace

Which sorrow sometimes lends a woman's face;

Her dark eyes moistened with the mists that roll

From the gulf-stream of passion in the soul;

The other with her hood thrown back, her hair

Making a golden glory in the air, Her cheeks suffused with an auroral blush,

Her young heart singing louder than the

thrush.

So walked, that morn, through mingled light and shade,

Each by the other's presence lovelier made,

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