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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


SONNET: 2, 19 by FREDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN

First Line: AND FACES, FORMS AND PHANTOMS, NUMBERED NOT
Last Line: OR SILENT SAGAMORE, SHAUG OR WASSAHOALE.

And faces, forms and phantoms, numbered not,
Gather and pass like mist upon the breeze,
Jading the eye with uncouth images:
Women with muskets, children dropping shot
By fields half harvested or left in fear
Of Indian inroad, or the Hessian near;
Disaster, poverty, and dire disease.
Or from the burning village, through the trees
I see the smoke in reddening volumes roll,
The Indian file in shadowy silence pass
While the last man sets up the trampled grass,
The Tory priest declaiming, fierce and fat,
The Shay's man with the green branch in his hat,
Or silent sagamore, Shaug or Wassahoale.



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