Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PARSON CALDWELL OF SPRINGFIELD, by CHARLES DAVIS PLATT



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PARSON CALDWELL OF SPRINGFIELD, by                    
First Line: See the red-coats in the distance!
Last Line: Put to flight those red dragoons.
Subject(s): American Revolution


See the Red-coats in the distance!
Here they come! To arms! To arms!
Get your powder-horn and musket!
Call the neighbors from their farms!

Fire the roaring eighteen-pounder
Signal gun from Prospect Hill!
Light the blazing black tar-barrel!
Fight we must and fight we will!

Jump the stone wall by the roadside!
Hide behind it! Prime your gun!
Now we're ready! See them gather!
Farmers coming on the run!

Who's that riding in on horseback?
Parson Caldwell, boys; Hooray!
Red-coats call him "Fighting Chaplain";
How they hate him! well they may!

When he preaches to us Sundays,
Gathered in the Old Red Store,
Down he lays his cavalry pistols,
Sets his sentinels at the door.

Boys, remember how the British,
Passing through Connecticut Farms,
Shot the parson's wife! That murder
Stirs us more than wild alarms.

Hah! The fight's begun! They're firing!
See the flash of British steel!
Hear the crack of Jersey muskets!
Doomed to make the Red-coats wheel!

Who's that riding on the gallop,
Stopping by the meetin'-house door?
In he goes -- comes out with arms full
Piled with hymn-books by the score.

Parson Caldwell! -- Will he sing now,
While the bullets round him hum?
Will he hold another meetin',
Set the hymns to fife and drum?

Hear him shouting, "Give 'em Watts, Boys!
Put Watts into 'em, my men!"
Ah! I see they're out of wadding;
That's the tune! We'll all join in!

Then the worn old hymn-books fluttered,
And their pages wildly flew,
Hither, thither, torn and dirty,
On an errand strange and new.

Making Short Partic'lar meter
Parson Caldwell pitched the tunes;
Jersey farmers joined the chorus,
Put to flight those red dragoons.





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