The alarum of drums swept past,
Of a bugle blast

From the camp on shore.

Then far away to the south uprose

A little feather of snow-white smoke, And we knew that the iron ship of our foes Was steadily steering its course

To try the force

Of our ribs of oak.

Down upon us heavily runs,

Silent and sullen, the floating fort; Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns, And leaps the terrible death,

With fiery breath,

From each open port.

We are not idle, but send her straight
Defiance back in a full broadside!
As hail rebounds from a roof of slate,
Rebounds our heavier hail

From each iron scale

Of the monster's hide.

"Strike your flag!" the rebel cries,

In his arrogant old plantation strain. "Never!" our gallant Morris replies;

"It is better to sink than to yield!"
And the whole air pealed

With the cheers of our men.

Then, like a kraken huge and black,

She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp! Down went the Cumberland all a wrack, With a sudden shudder of death,

And the cannon's breath

For her dying gasp.

Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay,

Still floated our flag at the mainmast head.

Lord, how beautiful was Thy day!

Every waft of the air

Was a whisper of prayer,
Or a dirge for the dead.

Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas!
Ye are at peace in the troubled stream;
Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,
Thy flag, that is rent in twain,
Shall be one again,

And without a seam!

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

MEANWHILE, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,

Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
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 Medford 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.

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.

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 for evermore!
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.

HAWTHORNE.

(MAY 23, 1864.)

How beautiful it was, that one bright day

In the long week of rain!

Though all its splendor could not chase away
The omnipresent pain.

The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,

And the great elms o'erhead

Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms
Shot through with golden thread.

Across the meadows by the gray old manse,
The historic river flowed:

I was as one who wanders in a trance,
Unconscious of his road.