Perrysburg Journal

THE CAPTAINS DRUM.
[Enfield, Connecticut, April, 1775.]

In Pilgrim land, one Sabbath day,
The winter lay like sheep about
The ragged pastures mullein gray;
The April sun shone in and out,
The showers swept by in fitful flocks.
And eaves ticked fast like mantel clocks:
And now and then a wealthy cloud
Would wear a ribbon broad and bright
And now and then a winged crowd
Of shivering azure flash in sight.
So rainbows bend and bluebirds fly
And violets show their bits of sky.

To Enfield church throng all the town,
In quilted hood and bombazine,
In beaver hat with flaring crown,
And quaint vandyke and victorine;
And buttoned boys in roundabout
From calyx collare blossom out:
Bandanas wave their feeble fire.
And foot stoves tinkle up the aisle;
A gray-haired elder leads the choir.
And girls in linsey-woolsey smile.
So back to life the beings glide
Whose very graves have ebbed and died.

One hundred years have waned, and yet
We call the roll, and not in vain,
For one whose flint-lock musket set
The echoes wild round Fort Duquesne,
And smelled the battle's powder smoke
Ere Revolution's thunders woke.
Lo. Thomas Abbe answers: " Here!"
Within the dull long-mcter place.
That day, upon the parson's ear,
And trampling down his words of grace,
A horseman's gallop rudely beat
Along the splashed and empty street.
The rider drew his dripping rein.
And then a letter, wasp-nest gray,
That ran The Concord minute men
And red-coats had a fight today!
To Capt. Abbe this with speed."
Twelve little words to tell the deed
The Captain read, struck out for home
The old quickstep of battle born.
Slung on once more a battered drum
That bore a painted unicorn.
Then right about, as whirls a torch,
He stood before the sacred porch.
And then a murmuring of bees
Broke in upon the house of prayer;
And then a wind-song swept the trees,
And then a snarl from wolfish lair;
And then a charge of grenadiers.
And then a flight of drum-beat cheers.
So drum and doctrine rudely blent.
The casements rattled strange accord;
No mortal knew what either meant:
Twas double-drag and Holy Word
Thus saith the drum, and thus the Lord.
The Captain raised so wild a rout
He drummed the congregation out.
The people gathered round amazed;
The soldier bared his head and spoke,
And every sentence burned and blazed,
An wrathful as a thunder-stroke:
Time to work the flint today,
To sling the knapsack, and away!
"The green of Lexington is red
With British red-coats, brothers' blood!
In rightful cause the earliest dead
Are always best beloved by God.
Mark time! Now let the march begin!
All bound for Boston fall right in!'
Then rub-a-dub the drum jarred on.
The throbbing roll of battle beat;
Fall in, my men, and follow on;
They rhymed the tune with heart and feet.
And so they made a Sabbath march
To glory 'neath the elm-tree arch.
The Continental line unwound
Along the churchyard's breathless sod,
And holier grew the hallowed ground
Where Virtue slept and Valor trod.
Two hundred strong that April day
They rallied out end marched away.
Brigaded there at Bunker Hill,
Their names are writ on Glory's page.
The brave old Captain's Sunday drill
Has drummed its way across the age
-Benj. F. Taylor, in May Atlantic.