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.
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
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.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
To the peace that passeth knowing,
And the light that is not of day!
All alone on the hill-top!
Nothing but God and me,
And the spring-time's resurrection,
Far shinings of the sea,
The river's laugh in the valley,
Hills dreaming of their past;
And all things silently opening,
Opening into the vast!
Eternities past and future
Seem clinging to all I see, And things immortal cluster Around my bended knee.
That pebble-is older than Adam! Secrets it hath to tell;
These rocks they cry out history,
Could I but listen well.
That pool knows the ocean-feeling Of storm and moon-led tide;
The sun finds its east and west therein,
And the stars find room to glide.
That lichen's crinkled circle
Still creeps with the Life Divine, Where the Holy Spirit loitered
On its way to this face of mine,
On its way to the shining faces
Where angel-lives are led;
And I am the lichen's circle,
That creeps with tiny tread.
I can hear these violets chorus
To the sky's benediction above;
And we all are together lying
On the bosom of Infinite Love.
I—I am a part of the poem,
Of its every sight and sound,
For my heart beats inward rhymings
To the Sabbath that lies around.
Oh, the peace at the heart of Nature!
Oh, the light that is not of day!
Why seek it afar forever,
When it cannot be lifted away?
William Channing Gannett.
IKE spectral hounds across the sky,
The splite clouds stud before the storm;
And naked in the howling night
The red-eyed lighthouse lifts its form.
The waves with slippery fingers clutch
The massive tower, and climb and fall,
And, muttering, growl with baffled rage
Their curses on the sturdy wall.
Up in the lonely tower he sits,
The keeper of the crimson light :
Silent and awestruck does he hear
The imprecations of the night.
The white spray beats against the panes
Like some wet ghost that down the air
Is hunted by a troop of fiends,
And seeks a shelter anywhere.
He prays aloud, the lonely man,
For every soul that night at sea,
But more than all for that brave boy
Who used to gayly climb his knee,
Young Charlie, with his chestnut hair
And hazel eyes and laughing lip.
"May Heaven look down," the old man cries, "Upon my son, and on his ship!"
While thus with pious heart he prays,
Far in the distance sounds a boom:
He pauses; and again there rings
That sullen thunder through the room.
A ship upon the shoals to-night!
She cannot hold for one half-hour ;
But clear the ropes and grappling-hooks,
And trust in the Almighty Power!
On the drenched gallery he stands,
Striving to pierce the solid night :
Across the sea the red eye throws
A steady crimson wake of light;
And, where it falls upon the waves,
He sees a human head float by,
With long drenched curls of chestnut hair,
And wild but fearless hazel eye.
Out with the hooks! One mighty fling!
Adown the wind the long rope curls.
Oh, will it catch? Ah, dread suspense!
While the wild ocean wilder whirls.
A steady pull; it tightens now:
Oh! his old heart will burst with joy,
As on the slippery rocks he pulls
The breathing body of his boy.
Still sweep the spectres through the sky; Still scud the clouds before the storm; Still naked in the howling night
The red-eyed lighthouse lifts its form.
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