V

Where shall he see his own town Once dear unto his feet? The psalms, the tankard to the King, The beacon’s cliffy seat, The gabled neighborhood, the stocks Set in the middle street?

How shall he know his own town If now he clatters thro’? Much men and cities change that have Another love to woo; And things occult, incredible, They find to think and do.

With such new wonders since he went A broader gossip copes, Across the crowded triple hills, And up the harbor slopes, Tradition’s self for him no more Remembers, watches, hopes.

But ye, O unborn children! (For many a race must thrive And drip away like icicles Ere Peter Rugg arrive,) If of a sudden to your ears His plaint is blown alive;

If nigh the city, folding in A little lad that cries, A wet and weary traveller Shall fix you with his eyes, And from the crazy carriage lean To spend his heart in sighs:--

“That I may enter Boston, Oh, help it to befall! There would no fear encompass me, No evil craft appall; Ah, but to be in Boston, GOD WILLING, after all!”--

Ye children, tremble not, but go And lift his bridle brave In the one Name, the dread Name, That doth forgive and save, And lead him home to Copp’s Hill ground, And to his fathers’ grave.

A Ballad of Kenelm

“In Clent cow-batch, Kenelm King born Lieth under a thorn.”

IT was a goodly child, Sweet as the gusty May; It was a knight that broke On his play, A fair and coaxing knight: “O little liege!” said he, “Thy sister bids thee come After me.

“A pasture rolling west Lies open to the sun, Bright-shod with primroses Doth it run; And forty oaks be nigh, Apart, and face to face, And cow-bells all the morn In the space.

“And there the sloethorn bush Beside the water grows, And hides her mocking head Under snows; Black stalks afoam with bloom, And never a leaf hath she: Thou crystal of the realm, Follow me!”

Uplooked the undefiled: “All things, ere I was born My sister found; now find Me the thorn.” They travelled down the lane, An hour’s dust they made: The belted breast of one Bore a blade.

The primroses were out, The aislèd oaks were green, The cow-bells pleasantly Tinked between; The brook was beaded gold, The thorn was burgeoning, Where evil Ascobert Slew the King.

He hid him in the ground, Nor washed away the dyes, Nor smoothed the fallen curls From his eyes. No father had the babe To bless his bed forlorn; No mother now to weep By the thorn.

There fell upon that place A shaft of heavenly light; The thorn in Mercia spake Ere the night: “Beyond, a sister sees Her crownèd period, But at my root a lamb Seeth God.”

Unto each, even so. As dew before the cloud, The guilty glory passed Of the proud. Boy Kenelm has the song, Saint Kenelm has the bower; His thorn a thousand years Is in flower!

Vergniaud in the Tumbril