Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE RATTLE-WATCH OF NEW AMSTERDAM, by ARTHUR GUITERMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE RATTLE-WATCH OF NEW AMSTERDAM, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Hark to the rattle's discordant swell!
Last Line: If our patrolmen were paid in coal!
Subject(s): New England; New York City - Dutch Period; Night; Police; Sailing & Sailors; Bedtime; Seamen; Sails


Hark to the rattle's discordant swell!
"Ten is the hour and all is well!"
Musket on shoulder and dirk on thigh,
Forth from the fort, with a soulful sigh,
Wiping their lips of a parting dram,
Sally the Watch of New Amsterdam.
Smite with your rattles the startled ear!
Let every miscreant know you're near.
Bellow the hour to the sentry moon!
Some honest burgher might wake too soon.
Come, merry lover of sights and sounds,
Follow the Watch on their nightly rounds!

Marching as though to the roll of drums,
Here little Stoffel the tailor comes,
Drunk as a hero on musty ale,
Waving an arm like a windmill sail,
Threat'ning our lives with his weighty goose!
Bundle him off to the calaboose!

"Hola! Friend Watchman!" "Well, what's the need?"
"Sailors afighting! Oh, come with speed! --
Fighting with knives on the Water Street!"
"Down on the river? That's off my beat;
You go, young Joris; yet, hark ye, boy,
Meddling with tars is a mad employ.
Wait till they've done, like a youth of brains,
Then, to the lock-up with what remains!"

"Ho, Doktor Kierstede! I take my vow
Here on the highway I find thy sow,
Never a ring in her nose, I say,
Rooting the road in a shameful way,
Plainly defying the statute --" (Clink!)
"Hsh! her's the captain! -- No, I don't drink,
Not while on duty; it isn't right.
(Thank ye, Heer Doktor.) Good night! Good night!"

"Softly! We'll capture the wicked wight!
You to the left, Dirck, and Jan to right,
Pieter in front of him, I behind!
Ha! have we caught thee, thou varlet blind?
Little thou thoughtest our eyes would mark
Stealers of cabbages in the dark!
Now in the pillory shalt thou stand
Holding a cabbage in either hand,
Yea, and a third on thy cabbage head --
Thief of the Dominie's cabbage-bed!"

Thus in the days that are called "of yore,"
Terror of caitiffs, a gallant corps
Guarded our city for noble pay:
Twenty-four stuyvers per night or day
(Forty-eight cents to our modern thrift),
One or two beavers by way of gift,
And, in the winter, 'twas understood,
Three hundred fagots of firewood.
Wouldn't it stagger the budget-roll
If our patrolmen were paid in coal!





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