Poems (Greenwood)/Putnam

by Grace Greenwood

PUTNAM.

Let the haughty smile, the low defame,
 The heartless worldling mock;
I thank my God my fathers came
 Of the good old Pilgrim stock!

I thank my God, through this heart bounds
 Blood from that hero band;
That my sire first opened his young eyes
 Where Northern plains expand;
That my mother's first breath was the air
 Of Putnam's glorious land!

Our own brave Putnam! worthy thou
 Such rare and knightly praise
As warrior bards of a warrior race
 Wove in their triumph-lays,
And sang aloud to their sounding harps,
 In the old heroic days.

When Freedom first her standard reared,
 Her sword first girded on,—
When her rally first from Concord rang,
 And pealed from Lexington,—
Thou heard'st with triumph in thine eye,
 And proud, uplifted brow,
And, like the patriot Roman, went
 To glory from the plough!

Thy voice rang like a clarion out
 On Bunker's trampled height;
Thy sword gleamed like a meteor through
 The thick cloud of the fight;
Where cannon boomed, where bayonets clashed,
 There was thy fiery way,
And thy blows came down, a storm of death,
 On the foe that fearful day.

Thy daring ride adown the rocks,—
 Have chivalry's bold days
A deed of wilder bravery
 In all their stirring lays?
The veteran loves to tell the tale,
 When night enwraps the earth,
And youthful forms all eager crowd
 Around the household hearth.

The listeners,—how, as with hushed breath
 They drink in every word,
Is the martial spirit through their veins
 Like a stream of lightning poured!
How eye meets eye in a kindred blaze,
 Like the flash of sword on sword!

The Briton, on the hill's high brow,
 With levelled arms, they see;
And thou below,—thy gray war-steed
 Dashing on gallantly,
A shout springs to their lips, their souls
 Go leaping down with thee!

Like Wolfe, upon the crimsoned turf
 It was not thine to lie,
The cannon's roar in thy dying ear,
 The strife in thy dying eye;
With thy country's banner o'er thy head,
 Unrolling broad and free,
And with thy passing spirit thrilled
 By shouts of "Victory!"

But by the hands of Peace and Love
 Thy white death-couch was spread;
And Hope unfurled her starry wing
 In glory o'er thy head.

In the sweet May-time, when flowers awoke,
 And earth was very fair,
To the bending heaven the soldier's soul
 Uprose on the breath of prayer,
And the shout of "Victory!"—here unheard—
 Was the soldier's welcome there.