The complete poetical works of Oliver Wendell Holmes | ||
GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER-HILL BATTLE
AS SHE SAW IT FROM THE BELFRY
The story of Bunker Hill battle is told as literally in accordance with the best authorities as it would have been if it had been written in prose instead of in verse. I have often been asked what steeple it was from which the little group I speak of looked upon the conflict. To this I answer that I am not prepared to speak authoritatively, but that the reader may take his choice among all the steeples standing at that time in the northern part of the city. Christ Church in Salem Street is the one I always think of, but I do not insist upon its claim. As to the personages who made up the small company that followed the old corporal, it would be hard to identify them, but by ascertaining where the portrait by Copley is now to be found, some light may be thrown on their personality.
Daniel Malcolm's gravestone, splintered by British bullets, may be seen in the Copp's Hill burial-ground.
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.
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.
Was the booming of the cannon from the river and the shore:
“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?”
To hear her talk of Indians when the guns began to roar:
She had seen the burning village, and the slaughter and the pillage,
When the Mohawks killed her father with their bullets through his door.
For I'll soon come back and tell you whether this is work or play;
There can't be mischief in it, so I won't be gone a minute”—
For a minute then I started. I was gone the livelong day.
Down my hair went as I hurried, tumbling half-way to my heels;
God forbid your ever knowing, when there 's blood around her flowing,
How the lonely, helpless daughter of a quiet household feels!
Of the Corporal, our old neighbor, on that wooden leg he wore,
So I followed with the others, and the Corporal marched before.
The pigeons circled round us as we climbed the creaking stair.
Just across the narrow river—oh, so close it made me shiver!—
Stood a fortress on the hill-top that but yesterday was bare.
Though the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls were dumb:
Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking wild upon each other,
And their lips were white with terror as they said, The hour has come!
And our heads were almost splitting with the cannons' deafening thrill,
When a figure tall and stately round the rampart strode sedately;
It was Prescott, one since told me; he commanded on the hill.
With the banyan buckled round it, standing up so straight and tall;
Like a gentleman of leisure who is strolling out for pleasure,
Through the storm of shells and cannon-shot he walked around the wall.
At noon in marching order they were moving to the piers;
How the bayonets gleamed and glistened, as we looked far down, and listened
To the trampling and the drum-beat of the belted grenadiers!
In their scarlet regimentals, with their knapsacks on their backs,
And the reddening, rippling water, as after a sea-fight's slaughter,
Round the barges gliding onward blushed like blood along their tracks.
And the boats came back for soldiers, came for soldiers, soldiers still:
The time seemed everlasting to us women faint and fasting,—
At last they 're moving, marching, marching proudly up the hill.
Now the front rank fires a volley,—they have thrown away their shot;
For behind their earthwork lying, all the balls above them flying,
Our people need not hurry; so they wait and answer not.
He had heard the bullets whistle (in the old French war) before,—
Calls out in words of jeering, just as if they all were hearing,—
And his wooden leg thumps fiercely on the dusty belfry floor:—
But ye 'll waste a ton of powder afore a ‘rebel’ falls;
You may bang the dirt and welcome, they're as safe as Dan'l Malcolm
Ten foot beneath the gravestone that you 've splintered with your balls!”
Of the dread approaching moment, we are well-nigh breathless all;
Though the rotten bars are failing on the rickety belfry railing,
We are crowding up against them like the waves against a wall.
When a flash—a curling smoke-wreath—then a crash—the steeple shakes—
Like a morning mist it gathered, like a thundercloud it breaks!
The red-coats stretched in windrows as a mower rakes his hay;
Here a scarlet heap is lying, there a head-long crowd is flying
Like a billow that has broken and is shivered into spray.
God be thanked, the fight is over!”—Ah! the grim old soldier's smile!
“Tell us, tell us why you look so?” (we could hardly speak, we shook so),—
“Are they beaten? Are they beaten? Are they beaten?”—“Wait a while.”
They are baffled, not defeated; we have driven them back in vain;
And the columns that were scattered, round the colors that were tattered,
Toward the sullen, silent fortress turn their belted breasts again.
They have fired the harmless village; in an hour it will be down!
The Lord in heaven confound them, rain his fire and brimstone round them,—
The robbing, murdering red-coats, that would burn a peaceful town!
As they near the naked earth-mound with the slanting walls so steep.
Have our soldiers got faint-hearted, and in noiseless haste departed?
Are they panic-struck and helpless? Are they palsied or asleep?
Not a firelock flashed against them! up the earthwork they will swarm!
But the words have scarce been spoken, when the ominous calm is broken,
And a bellowing crash has emptied all the vengeance of the storm!
Fly Pigot's running heroes and the frightened braves of Howe;
And we shout, “At last they 're done for, it 's their barges they have run for:
They are beaten, beaten, beaten; and the battle 's over now!”
Our lips afraid to question, but he knew what we would ask:
“Not sure,” he said; “keep quiet,—once more, I guess, they'll try it—
Here 's damnation to the cut-throats!”—then he handed me his flask,
I'm afeard there 'll be more trouble afore the job is done;”
So I took one scorching swallow; dreadful faint I felt and hollow,
Standing there from early morning when the firing was begun.
As the hands kept creeping, creeping,—they were creeping round to four,
When the old man said, “They 're forming with their bagonets fixed for storming:
It's the death-grip that's a-coming,—they will try the works once more.”
The deadly wall before them, in close array they come;
Still onward, upward toiling, like a dragon's fold uncoiling,—
Like the rattlesnake's shrill warning the reverberating drum!
How they surged above the breastwork, as a sea breaks over a deck;
With their powder-horns all emptied, like the swimmers from a wreck?
And the wooden-legged old Corporal stumped with me down the stair:
When I woke from dreams affrighted the evening lamps were lighted,—
On the floor a youth was lying; his bleeding breast was bare.
Tell him here 's a soldier bleeding, and he'll come and dress his wound!”
Ah, we knew not till the morrow told its tale of death and sorrow,
How the starlight found him stiffened on the dark and bloody ground.
Who had brought him from the battle, and had left him at our door,
He could not speak to tell us; but 't was one of our brave fellows,
As the homespun plainly showed us which the dying soldier wore.
And they said, “Oh, how they'll miss him!” and, “What will his mother do?”
Then, his eyelids just unclosing like a child's that has been dozing,
He faintly murmured, “Mother!”—and—I saw his eyes were blue.
Of a story not like this one. Well, he somehow lived along;
So we came to know each other, and I nursed him like a—mother,
Till at last he stood before me, tall, and rosy-cheeked, and strong.
“Please to tell us what his name was?” Just your own, my little dear,—
There 's his picture Copley painted: we became so well acquainted,
That—in short, that's why I'm grandma and you children all are here!
The complete poetical works of Oliver Wendell Holmes | ||