Every age on him who strays
From its broad and beaten ways
Pours its seven-fold vial.

Happy he whose inward ear
Angel comfortings can hear,

O'er the rabble's laughter;

And while Hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter.

Knowing this, that never yet
Share of Truth was vainly set

In the world's wide fallow°;

After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead

Reap the harvests yellow.

Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,
Must the moral pioneer

From the Future borrow;

Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And, on midnight's sky of rain,

Paint the golden morrow!

BARBARA FRIETCHIE

Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

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Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,

Fair as the garden of the Lord

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

5

On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain-wall; 10

Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

Bravest of all in Frederick town,

She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.

Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.

'Halt!' the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
'Fire!'-out blazed the rifle-blast.

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20

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It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
'Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag,' she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word;

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'Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog! March on!' he said.

All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:

All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.

Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;

And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.

Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,

And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

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Honor to her! and let a tear

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.

Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;

And ever the stars above look down

On thy stars below in Frederick town! 60

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER
HILL BATTLE

AS SHE SAW IT FROM THE BELFRY

'Tis like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembers

All the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's souls°;'

When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel

story,

To you the words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals.

I had heard the muskets' rattle of the April running

battle°;

5

Lord Percy's hunted soldiers, I can see their red coats

still;

But a deadly chill comes o'er me, as the day looms up before me,

When a thousand men lay bleeding on the slopes of Bunker's Hill.

'Twas a peaceful summer's morning, when the first thing gave us warning

Was the booming of the cannon from the river and the shore:

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"Child," says grandma, "what's the matter, what is all this noise and clatter?

Have those scalping Indian devils come to murder us once more?