Clattering and battering and shattering,
And gleaming and streaming and skimming and beaming,
And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,
And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,
And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,
Retreating and meeting and beating and sheeting,
Delaying and straying and spraying and playing,
Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling,
And thumping and bumping and flumping and jumping,
And thrashing and clashing and flashing and splashing
And so never ending,
Sounds and motions forever and ever are blending,
All at once and all o'er,
With a mighty uproar ;—
And this way the water comes down at Lodore.
Here's the spot. Look around you.
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
Pretty much as they did ninety-three years ago.
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
Of "the rebel high-priest." He stuck in their gorge,
For he loved the Lord God, and he hated King George!
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,
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!
Did he preach-did he pray? Think of him, as you stand
By the old church, to-day; think of him, and that band
Of militant plowboys! See the smoke and that 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?
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
Rang his voice-"Put Watts into 'em boys! give 'em Watts!"
And they did. That is all. Grasses spring, flowers blow,
Prettry much as they did ninety-three years ago.
You may dig anywhere and turn up a ball,
But not always a hero like this--and that's all.
Belubbed fellow trabelers, in holden forth to-day,
I doesn't quote no special verse for what I has to say;
De sermon will be bery short, an' dis here am the tex':
Dat half way doin's aint no 'count in this worl' nor de nex'.
Dis worl' dat we's a libbin' in is like a cotton row,
Where ebery cullud gentleman has got his line to hoe;
An' ebery time a lazy nigger stops to take a nap,
De grass keeps on a-growin' for to smudder up the crap
When Moses led the Jews acrost de waters of de sea,
Dey had to keep a goin' jus' as fas' as fas' could be;
Do you suppose dey could eber hab succeeded in dere wish,
And reached de promised land at last, if they had stopped to fish?
My frien's, dere was a garden once, where Adam libbed wid Eve,
Wid no one roun' to bodder dem, no neighbors for to thieve;
An' ebery day was Christmas, an' dey had dere rations free,
An' everyting belonged to dem except an apple-tree.
You all know 'bout de story,-how de snake come snookin' 'round,
A stump-tail, rusty moccasin, a crawlin' on de ground,
How Eve an' Adam ate de fruit, an went an' hid dere face,
Till the angel oberseer came an' drove dem off de place.
Now, s'pose dis man an' 'ooman, too, hadn't 'tempted for to shirk,
But had gone about dere gardenin', an' tended to dere work,
Dey wouldn't have been loafin' whar' dey had no business to,
An' de debble nebber'd got a chance to tell 'em what to do.
No half-way doin's, bredren, 'twill neber do, I say!
Go at your task, an finish it, and den's de time to play;
For even if de crap is good, de rain will spoil de bolls,
Unless you keeps a pickin' in de garden ob your souls.
Keep a-plowin', an' a-hoein'; an' a-scrapin' ob de rows;
An' when de ginnin's ober you can pay up what you owe
But if you quits a-workin' ebery time de sun is hot,
De sheriff gwine to leby upon eberyting you's got.
Whateber you's a-dribin' at, he sure an' dribe it t'ro',
An' don't let nothin' stop you, but do what you's gwine to do;
For when you see a nigger foolin', den, sure as you are born,
You's gwine to see him comin' out de small end ob de horn.
THE APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.
[Lord George Gordon Byron was born in London January 23, 1788, and died in Greece April 20, 1824. His poetry is acknowledged to be of the highest literary order. This poem should be delivered in the orotund quality of voice, effusive form, with slow time and long quantity. The reader should fully realize the emotions which animated the author at the time he wrote it.]
Oh! that the desert were my dwelling place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye elements! in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted-can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though, with them to converse, can rarely be our lot.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but nature more
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore;—upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remai
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain;
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, unconffin'd, and unknown.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole; or in the torrid clime
Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime
The image of eternity-the throne
Of the Invisible, even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
And I have lov'd thee, ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports, was, on thy breast to be
Born, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers;-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear;
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.
My task is done-my song has ceased-my theme
Hath died into an echo; 'tis fit
The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ,—
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been-and my visions flit
Less palpably before me, and the glow
"Which in my spirit dwelt, is fluttering faint and low.
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