Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NEW ENGLAND'S CHEVY CHASE, by EDWARD EVERETT HALE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NEW ENGLAND'S CHEVY CHASE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Twas the dead of night. By the pine-knot's red light
Last Line: Has the old bay state seen such a hunting again.
Subject(s): American Revolution; Lexington, Battle Of (1775); Concord, Battle Of


'T WAS the dead of the night. By the pine-knot's red light
Brooks lay, half-asleep, when he heard the alarm, --
Only this, and no more, from a voice at the door:
"The Red-Coats are out, and have passed Phips's farm."

Brooks was booted and spurred; he said never a word;
Took his horn from its peg, and his gun from its rack;
To the cold midnight air he led out his white mare,
Strapped the girths and the bridle, and sprang to her back.

Up the North Country road at her full pace she strode,
Till Brooks reined her up at John Tarbell's to say,
"We have got the alarm, -- they have left Phips's farm;
You rouse the East Precinct, and I'll go this way."

John called his hired man, and they harnessed the span;
They roused Abram Garfield, and Abram called me:
"Turn out right away; let no minute-man stay;
The Red-Coats have landed at Phips's," says he.

By the Powder-House Green seven others fell in;
At Nahum's, the men from the Saw-Mill came down;
So that when Jabez Bland gave the word of command,
And said, "Forward, march!" there marched forward THE TOWN.

Parson Wilderspin stood by the side of the road,
And he took off his hat, and he said, "Let us pray!
O Lord, God of might, let thine angels of light
Lead thy children to-night to the glories of day!
And let thy stars fight all the foes of the Right
As the stars fought of old against Sisera."

And from heaven's high arch those stars blessed our march,
Till the last of them faded in twilight away;
And with morning's bright beam, by the bank of the stream,
Half the county marched in, and we heard Davis say:

"On the King's own highway I may travel all day,
And no man hath warrant to stop me," says he;
"I've no man that's afraid, and I'll march at their head."
Then he turned to the boys, -- "Forward, march! Follow me."

And we marched as he said, and the Fifer he played
The old "White Cockade," and he played it right well.
We saw Davis fall dead, but no man was afraid;
That bridge we'd have had, though a thousand men fell.

This opened the play, and it lasted all day.
We made Concord too hot for the Red-Coats to stay;
Down the Lexington way we stormed, black, white, and gray;
We were first in the feast, and were last in the fray.

They would turn in dismay, as red wolves turn at bay.
They levelled, they fired, they charged up the road.
Cephas Willard fell dead; he was shot in the head
As he knelt by Aunt Prudence's well-sweep to load.

John Danforth was hit just in Lexington Street,
John Bridge at that lane where you cross Beaver Falls,
And Winch and the Snows just above John Munroe's, --
Swept away by one swoop of the big cannon-balls.

I took Bridge on my knee, but he said, "Don't mind me;
Fill your horn from mine, -- let me lie where I be.
Our fathers," says he, "that their sons might be free,
Left their king on his throne, and came over the sea;
And that man is a knave or a fool who, to save
His life for a minute, would live like a slave."

Well, all would not do! There were men good as new, --
From Rumford, from Saugus, from towns far away, --
Who filled up quick and well for each soldier that fell;
And we drove them, and drove them, and drove them, all day.
We knew, every one, it was war that begun,
When that morning's marching was only half done.

In the hazy twilight, at the coming of night,
I crowded three buckshot and one bullet down.
'T was my last charge of lead; and I aimed her and said,
"Good luck to you, lobsters, in old Boston Town."

In a barn at Milk Row, Ephraim Bates and Munroe
And Baker and Abram and I made a bed.
We had mighty sore feet, and we'd nothing to eat;
But we'd driven the Red-Coats, and Amos, he said:
"It's the first time," says he, "that it's happened to me
To march to the sea by this road where we've come;
But confound this whole day, but we'd all of us say
We'd rather have spent it this way than to home."

The hunt had begun with the dawn of the sun,
And night saw the wolf driven back to his den.
And never since then, in the memory of men,
Has the Old Bay State seen such a hunting again.





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