Iii

On some wild crag he sees the dawn Unsheathe her scimitar. “Oh, if it be my mother-earth, And not a foreign star, Tell me the way to Boston, And is it near or far?”

One watchman lifts his lamp and laughs: “Ye’ve many a league to wend.” The next doth bless the sleeping boy From his mad father’s end; A third upon a drawbridge growls: “Bear ye to larboard, friend.”

Forward and backward, like a stone The tides have in their hold, He dashes east, and then distraught Darts west as he is told, (Peter Rugg the Bostonian, That knew the land of old!)

And journeying, and resting scarce A melancholy space, Turns to and fro, and round and round, The frenzy in his face, And ends alway in angrier mood, And in a stranger place,

Lost! lost in bayberry thickets Where Plymouth plovers run, And where the masts of Salem Look lordly in the sun; Lost in the Concord vale, and lost By rocky Wollaston!

Small thanks have they that guide him, Awed and aware of blight; To hear him shriek denial It sickens them with fright: “They lied to me a month ago With thy same lie to-night!”

To-night, to-night, as nights succeed, He swears at home to bide, Until, pursued with laughter Or fled as soon as spied, The weather-drenchèd man is known Over the country side!