Lines in Pleasant Places :: :: University of Virginia Library

That most men feel
A warlike zeal
And glory in feathers and glistening steel,
Is scarce to be doubted, for everywhere,
In cities or plains,
We hear the strains
Of martial music upon the air,
And the measured tread,
In war's parade,
Of soldiers marching here and there.
That is, at seasons when comfort prevails,
And zeal isn't killed by wintry gales,
Like those at Valley Forge which we read of,
Where the soldiers everything were in need of,
But courage, which never a moment ran low,
E'en though their life-blood crimsoned the snow!
I have a good story
Of drums, guns, and glory;
Which, if you please, I would fain lay before ye.

271

It has always been a Nantucket boast,
Whenever war has threatened the coast,
That taking no arms for the right or the wrong
In her own defencelessness she was strong;
A theory which I think a fact is,
And wish 'twere oftener put in practice.
But the tap of the drum
Touched the tympanum
Of the younger brood of the “Island Home,”
Who pricked up their ears with pride to hear it
In the glow of an un-Nantucket spirit—
A place supposed, because so greaseful,
It couldn't be anything but peaceful,
Like a homo very fat and lardy,
Who to quarrel is always tardy.

So the young men talked, and then they voted
That they'd be armed, and plumed, and coated,
That they would march, in summer weather,
About the peaceful isle together,
With gleaming arms and banners gay
In the custom-sanctioned soldierly way.
Then they arose
And bought their clo'es,
And guns, and all such traps as those,
Little dreaming, so well things sped,
Of such a thing as breakers ahead!
Breakers!
Hard and unbending as granite ledges
That rive the ships with their spiteful wedges,
The Quakers!

272

They're always somehow in the way:
We remember in Pennsylvania,
How the Quaker vote was looked for to win
The game for some one, but it didn't come in!
And up they stood
In Friend-ly mood,
While indignation trembling sat
On the spacious brim of every hat,
And swore a few,
As Quakers do,
That an arméd band were a thing of sin
And shouldn't, with their consent, come in!

They said, “Shall we,
In the midst of the sea,
Oppose ourselves to the enemy,”
And all affirmed, “Nay, verily;
For invading foes would soon despoil
All that we prize upon our soil,
And burn with vengeance and burn our oil,
And that wouldn't be according to Hoyle!
Nay, verily,
We'll let them be,
And not have any soldieree.”

Confusion seized the bosoms then
Of those bold, warlike island men,
Their wish rejected;
For the “Quaker vote” was the biggest there,
And, through the force that numbers bear,
Must be respected.

273

But one, the boldest of the whole,
With no despondency of soul,
Did thus advise:
To win the thing they had in view
And put the corps in triumph through
By compromise!

A very Daniel, all of them said,
Nantucket Island had visited!
And the wise plan
Of the astute man
Somehow in this line of argument ran:
That they'd seek a charter,
Agreeing that, arter,
When war called upon them to slay and to slaughter,
They'd throw down their arms with consciences tender,
And disband themselves with a graceful surrender!

And thus grew the corps
On Nantucket shore
As peaceful inclined as ever before,
E'en though the drum,
And the waving plume,
And the banner, were known round the island home.