Book + 

I + 

Jack Ellyat had been out all day alone, + 

Except for his new gun and Ned, the setter, + 

The old wise dog with Autumn in his eyes, + 

Who stepped the fallen leaves so delicately + 

They barely rustled. Ellyat trampled them down + 

Crackling, like cast-off skins of fairy snakes. + 

He’d meant to hunt, but he had let the gun + 

Rest on his shoulder. + 

It was enough to feel + 

The cool air of the last of Indian summer + 

Blowing continually across his cheek + 

And watch the light distill its water of gold + 

As the sun dropped. + 

Here was October, here + 

Was ruddy October, the old harvester, + 

Wrapped like a beggared sachem in a coat + 

Of tattered tanager and partridge feathers, + 

Scattering jack-o-lanterns everywhere + 

To give the field-mice pumpkin-colored moons. + 

His red clay pipe had trailed across the land + 

Staining the trees with colors of the sumach: + 

East, West, South, North, the ceremonial fume + 

Blue and enchanted as the soul of air + 

Drifted its incense. + 

Incense of the wild, + 

Incense of earth fulfilled, ready to sleep + 

The stupefied dark slumber of the bear + 

All winter, underneath a frozen star. + 

Jack Ellyat felt that turning of the year + 

Stir in his blood like drowsy fiddle-music + 

And knew he was glad to be Connecticut-born + 

And young enough to find Connecticut winter + 

Was a black pond to cut with silver skates + 

And not a scalping-knife against the throat. + 

He thought the thoughts of youth, idle and proud. + 

Since I was begotten + 

My father’s grown wise + 

But he has forgotten + 

The wind in the skies. + 

I shall not grow wise. + 

Since I have been growing + 

My uncle’s got rich. + 

He spends his time sowing + 

A bottomless ditch. + 

I will not grow rich. + 

For money is sullen + 

And wisdom is sly, + 

But youth is the pollen + 

That blows through the sky + 

And does not ask why. + 

O wisdom and money + 

How can you requite + 

The honey of honey + 

That flies in that flight? + 

The useless delight? + 

So, with his back against a tree, he stared + 

At the pure, golden feathers in the West + 

Until the sunset flowed into his heart + 

Like a slow wave of honeydropping dew + 

Murmuring from the other side of Sleep. + 

There was a fairy hush + 

Everywhere. Even the setter at his feet + 

Lay there as if the twilight had bewitched + 

His russet paws into two russet leaves, + 

A dog of russet leaves who did not stir a hair. + 

Then something broke the peace. + 

Like wind it was, the flutter of rising wind, + 

But then it grew until it was the rushing + 

Of winged stallions, distant and terrible, + 

Trampling beyond the sky. + 

The hissing charge + 

Of lightless armies of angelic horse + 

Galloping down the stars. + 

There were no words + 

In that implacable and feathery thunder, + 

And yet there must have been, or Ellyat’s mind + 

Caught them like broken arrows out of the air. + 

Thirteen sisters beside the sea, + 

(Have a care, my son.) + 

Builded a house called Liberty + 

And locked the doors with a stately key. + 

None should enter it but the free. + 

(Have a care, my son.) + 

The walls are solid as Plymouth Rock. + 

(Rock can crumble, my son.) + 

The door of seasoned New England stock. + 

Before it a Yankee fighting-cock. + 

Pecks redcoat kings away from the lock. + 

(Fighters can die, my son.) + 

The hearth is a corner where sages sit. + 

(Sages pass, my son.) + 

Washington’s heart lies under it. + 

And the long roof-beams are chiseled and split + 

From hickory tough as Jackson’s wit. + 

(Bones in the dust, my son.) + 

The trees in the garden are fair and fine. + 

(Trees blow down, my son.) + 

Connecticut elm and Georgia pine. + 

The warehouse groans with cotton and swine. + 

The cellar is full of scuppernong-wine. + 

(Wine turns sour, my son.) + 

Surely a house so strong and bold, + 

(The wind is rising, my son,) + 

Will last till Time is a pinch of mould! + 

There is a ghost, when the night is old. + 

There is a ghost who walks in the cold. + 

(The trees are shaking, my son.) + 

The sisters sleep on Liberty’s breast, + 

(The thunder thunders, my son,) + 

Like thirteen swans in a single nest. + 

But the ghost is naked and will not rest + 

Until the sun rise out of the West. + 

(The lightning lightens, my son.) + 

All night long like a moving stain, + 

(The trees are breaking, my son,) + 

The black ghost wanders his house of pain. + 

There is blood where his hand has lain. + 

It is wrong he should wear a chain. + 

(The sky is falling, my son.) + 

The warning beat at his mind like a bird and passed. + 

Ellyat roused. He thought: they are going South. + 

He stared at the sky, confused. It was empty and bleak. + 

But still he felt the shock of the hooves on his heart. + 

—The riderless horses never bridled or tamed⁠— + 

He heard them screaming like eagles loosed from a cloud + 

As they drove South to trample the indolent sun, + 

And darkness set in his mind like a shadow enthroned. + 

He could not read the riddle their flight had set + 

But he felt wretched, and glad for the dog’s cold nose + 

That now came nuzzling his hand. + 

Who has set you free? + 

Who has driven you out in the sky with an iron whip + 

Like blind, old thunders stubbornly marching abreast + 

To carry a portent high on shoulders of stone + 

The length and breadth of the Union? + 

The North and South are at peace and the East and West, + 

The tomahawk is buried in prairie-sod. + 

The great frontier rolls westward with the sun, + 

And the new States are crowding at the door, + 

The buckskin-States, the buffalo-horned, the wild + 

Mustangs with coats the color of crude gold. + 

Their bodies, naked as the hunter’s moon, + 

Smell of new grass and the sweet milk of the corn. + 

Defiant virgins, fiercely unpossessed + 

As the bird-stars that walk the night untrodden. + 

They drag their skies and sunsets after them + 

Like calico ponies on a rawhide rope, + 

And who would ride them must have iron thighs + 

And a lean heart, bright as a bowie-knife. + 

Were they not foaled with treasure in their eyes + 

Between the rattlesnake and the painted rock? + 

Are they not matches for vaquero gods? + 

Are they not occupation for the strength + 

Of a whole ruffian world of pioneers? + 

And must they wait like spayed mares in the rain, + 

While Carolina and Connecticut + 

Fight an old quarrel out before a ghost? + 

So Ellyat talked to his young indignation, + 

Walking back home with the October moon. + 

But, even as he mused, he tried to picture + 

The South, that languorous land where Uncle Toms + 

Groaned Biblically underneath the lash, + 

And grinning Topsies mopped and mowed behind + 

Each honeysuckle vine. + 

They called them niggers + 

And cut their ears off when they ran away, + 

But then they loved their mammies⁠—there was that⁠— + 

Although they sometimes sold them down the river⁠— + 

And when the niggers were not getting licked + 

Or quoting Scripture, they sang funny songs, + 

By the Swanee river, on the old plantation. + 

The girls were always beautiful. The men + 

Wore varnished boots, raced horses and played cards + 

And drank mint-juleps till the time came round + 

For fighting duels with their second cousins + 

Or tar-and-feathering some God-damn Yankee.⁠ ⁠… + 

The South⁠ ⁠… the honeysuckle⁠ ⁠… the hot sun⁠ ⁠… + 

The taste of ripe persimmons and sugar-cane⁠ ⁠… + 

The cloyed and waxy sweetness of magnolias⁠ ⁠… + 

White cotton, blowing like a fallen cloud, + 

And foxhounds belling the Virginia hills⁠ ⁠… + 

And then the fugitive slave he’d seen in Boston, + 

The black man with the eyes of a tortured horse.⁠ ⁠… + 

He whistled Ned. What do you think of it, Ned? + 

We’re abolitionists, I suppose, and Father + 

Talks about Wendell Phillips and John Brown + 

But, even so, that doesn’t have to mean + 

We’ll break the Union up for abolition, + 

And they can’t want to break it up for slavery⁠— + 

It won’t come to real fighting, will it, Ned? + 

But Ned was busy with a rabbit-track. + 

There was the town⁠—the yellow window of home. + 

Meanwhile, in Concord, Emerson and Thoreau + 

Talked of an ideal state, so purely framed + 

It never could exist. + 

Meanwhile, in Boston + 

Minister Higginson and Dr. Howe + 

Waited for news about a certain project + 

That had to do with pikes and Harper’s Ferry. + 

Meanwhile, in Georgia, Clay Wingate dreamed. + 

Settled more than a hundred year + 

By the river and county of St. Savier, + 

The Wingate held their ancestry + 

As high as Taliaferro or Huger, + 

Maryland Carroll, Virginia Lee. + 

They had ill-spelt letters of Albemarle’s + 

And their first grant ran from the second Charles, + 

Clerkly inscribed upon parchmentries + 

“To our well-beloved John Wingate, these,” + 

Though envy hinted the royal mood + 

Held more of humor than gratitude + 

And the well-beloved had less applied + 

To honest John than his tall young bride, + 

At least their eldest to John’s surprise, + 

Was very like Monmouth about the eyes, + 

Till his father wondered if every loyalty + 

Was always so richly repaid by royalty, + 

But, having long found that the principal question + 

In a happy life is a good digestion + 

And the worst stomachic of all is jealousy + 

He gave up the riddle, and settled zealously + 

To farming his acres, begetting daughters, + 

And making a study of cordial waters + 

Till he died at ninety of pure senility + 

And was greatly mourned by the local gentility. + 

John the Second was different cloth. + 

He had wings⁠—but the wings of the moth. + 

Courtly, unlucky, clever and wise, + 

There was a Stuart in his eyes, + 

A gambler that played against loaded dice. + 

He could harrow the water and plough the sand, + 

But he could not do the thing at hand. + 

A fencing-foil too supple for use, + 

A racing colt that must run at loose. + 

And the Wingate acres had slipped away + 

If it had not been for Elspeth Mackay. + 

She was his wife, and her heart was bold + 

As a broad, bright guinea of Border gold. + 

Her wit was a tartan of colored weather. + 

Her walk was gallant as Highland heather. + 

And whatever she had, she held together. + 

It was she who established on Georgia soil + 

Wingate honor and Wingate toil + 

When John and his father’s neighbors stood + 

At swords’ points over a county feud + 

And only ill-fortune and he were friends. + 

—They prophesied her a dozen ends, + 

Seeking new ground for a broken man + 

Where only the deer and the rabbit ran + 

And the Indian arrow harried both, + 

But she held her word and she kept her troth, + 

Cleared the forest and tamed the wild + 

And gave the breast to the new-born child + 

While the painted Death went whooping by + 

—To die at last as she wished to die + 

In the fief built out of her blood and bone + 

With her heart for the Hall’s foundation-stone. + 

Deep in her sons, and the Wingate blood, + 

She stamped her sigil of fortitude. + 

Thrift and love for the house and the chief + 

And a scone on the hob for the son of grief. + 

But a knife in the ribs for the pleasant thief. + 

And deep in her sons, when she was gone, + 

Her words took root, and her ghost lived on. + 

The slow voice haunting the ocean-shell + 

To counsel the sons of her sons as well. + 

And it was well for the Wingate line + 

To have that stiffening set in its spine. + 

For once in each breeding of Wingate kin + 

There came a child with an olive skin + 

And the mouth of Charles, the merry and sad, + 

And the bright, spoilt charm that Monmouth had. + 

Luckily seldom the oldest born + 

To sow the nettle in Wingate corn + 

And let the cotton blight on its stalk + 

While he wasted his time in witty talk, + 

Or worse, in love with no minister handy, + 

Or feeding a spaniel on nuts and brandy + 

And taking a melancholy pride + 

In never choosing the winning side. + 

Clay Wingate was the last to feel + 

The prick of that spur of tarnished steel, + 

Gilt, but crossed with the dubious bar + 

Of arms won under the bastard’s star, + 

Rowel his mind, at that time or this, + 

With thoughts and visions that were not his. + 

A sorrow of laughter, a mournful glamor + 

And the ghostly stroke of an airy hammer + 

Shaking his heart with pity and pride + 

That had nothing to do with the things he eyed. + 

He was happy and young, he was strong and stout, + 

His body was hard to weary out. + 

When he thought of life, he thought of a shout. + 

But⁠—there was a sword in a blackened sheath, + 

There was a shape with a mourning wreath: + 

And a place in his mind was a wrestling-ring + 

Where the crownless form of an outlawed king + 

Fought with a shadow too like his own, + 

And, late or early, was overthrown. + 

It is not lucky to dream such stuff⁠— + 

Dreaming men are haunted men. + 

Though Wingate’s face looked lucky enough + 

To any eye that had seen him then, + 

Riding back through the Georgia Fall + 

To the white-pillared porch of Wingate Hall. + 

Fall of the possum, fall of the ’coon, + 

And the lop-eared hound-dog baying the moon. + 

Fall that is neither bitter nor swift + 

But a brown girl bearing an idle gift, + 

A brown seed-kernel that splits apart + 

And shows the Summer yet in its heart, + 

A smokiness so vague in the air + 

You feel it rather than see it there, + 

A brief, white rime on the red clay road + 

And slow mules creaking a lazy load + 

Through endless acres of afternoon, + 

A pine-cone fire and a banjo-tune, + 

And a julep mixed with a silver spoon. + 

Your noons are hot, your nights deep-starred, + 

There is honeysuckle still in the yard, + 

Fall of the quail and the firefly-glows + 

And the pot-pourri of the rambler-rose, + 

Fall that brings no promise of snows⁠ ⁠… + 

Wingate checked on his horse’s rein + 

With a hand as light as a butterfly + 

And drank content in body and brain + 

As he gazed for a moment at the sky. + 

This was his Georgia, this his share + 

Of pine and river and sleepy air, + 

Of summer thunder and winter rain + 

That spills bright tears on the windowpane + 

With the slight, fierce passion of young men’s grief, + 

Of the mockingbird and the mulberry-leaf. + 

For, wherever the winds of Georgia run, + 

It smells of peaches long in the sun, + 

And the white wolf-winter, hungry and frore, + 

Can prowl the North by a frozen door + 

But here we have fed him on bacon-fat + 

And he sleeps by the stove like a lazy cat. + 

Here Christmas stops at everyone’s house + 

With a jug of molasses and green, young boughs, + 

And the little New Year, the weakling one, + 

Can lie outdoors in the noonday sun, + 

Blowing the fluff from a turkey-wing + 

At skies already haunted with Spring⁠— + 

Oh Georgia⁠ ⁠… Georgia⁠ ⁠… the careless yield! + 

The watermelons ripe in the field! + 

The mist in the bottoms that tastes of fever + 

And the yellow river rolling forever⁠ ⁠… ! + 

So Wingate saw it, vision or truth, + 

Through the colored window of his own youth, + 

Building an image out of his mind + 

To live or die for, as Fate inclined. + 

He drank his fill of the air, and then, + 

Was just about to ride on again + 

When⁠—what was that noise beyond the sky, + 

That harry of unseen cavalry + 

Riding the wind? + 

His own horse stirred, + 

Neighing. He listened. There was a word. + 

He could not hear it⁠—and yet he heard. + 

It was an arrow from ambush flung, + 

It was a bell with a leaden tongue + 

Striking an hour. + 

He was young + 

No longer. He and his horse were old, + 

And both were bound with an iron band. + 

He slipped from the saddle and tried to stand. + 

He struck one hand with the other hand. + 

But both were cold. + 

The horses, burning-hooved, drove on toward the sea, + 

But, where they had passed, the air was troubled and sick + 

Like earth that the shoulder of earthquake heavily stirs. + 

There was a whisper moving that air all night, + 

A whisper that cried and whimpered about the house + 

Where John Brown prayed to his God, by his narrow bed. + 

Omnipotent and steadfast God, + 

Who, in Thy mercy, hath + 

Upheaved in me Jehovah’s rod + 

And his chastising wrath, + 

For fifty-nine unsparing years + 

Thy Grace hath worked apart + 

To mould a man of iron tears + 

With a bullet for a heart. + 

Yet, since this body may be weak + 

With all it has to bear, + 

Once more, before Thy thunders speak, + 

Almighty, hear my prayer. + 

I saw Thee when Thou did display + 

The black man and his lord + 

To bid me free the one, and slay + 

The other with the sword. + 

I heard Thee when Thou bade me spurn + 

Destruction from my hand + 

And, though all Kansas bleed and burn, + 

It was at Thy command. + 

I hear the rolling of the wheels, + 

The chariots of war! + 

I hear the breaking of the seals + 

And the opening of the door! + 

The glorious beasts with many eyes + 

Exult before the Crowned. + 

The buried saints arise, arise + 

Like incense from the ground! + 

Before them march the martyr-kings, + 

In bloody sunsets drest, + 

O, Kansas, bleeding Kansas, + 

You will not let me rest! + 

I hear your sighing corn again, + 

I smell your prairie-sky, + 

And I remember five dead men + 

By Pottawattamie. + 

Lord God it was a work of Thine, + 

And how might I refrain? + 

But Kansas, bleeding Kansas, + 

I hear her in her pain. + 

Her corn is rustling in the ground, + 

An arrow in my flesh. + 

And all night long I staunch a wound + 

That ever bleeds afresh. + 

Get up, get up, my hardy sons, + 

From this time forth we are + 

No longer men, but pikes and guns + 

In God’s advancing war. + 

And if we live, we free the slave, + 

And if we die, we die. + 

But God has digged His saints a grave + 

Beyond the western sky. + 

Oh, fairer than the bugle-call + 

Its walls of jasper shine! + 

And Joshua’s sword is on the wall + 

With space beside for mine. + 

And should the Philistine defend + 

His strength against our blows, + 

The God who doth not spare His friend, + 

Will not forget His foes. + 

They reached the Maryland bridge of Harper’s Ferry + 

That Sunday night. There were twenty-two in all, + 

Nineteen were under thirty, three not twenty-one, + 

Kagi, the self-taught scholar, quiet and cool, + 

Stevens, the cashiered soldier, Puritan-fathered, + 

A singing giant, gunpowder-tempered and rash. + 

Dauphin Thompson, the pippin-cheeked country-boy, + 

More like a girl than a warrior; Oliver Brown, + 

Married last year when he was barely nineteen; + 

Dangerfield Newby, colored and born a slave, + 

Freeman now, but married to one not free + 

Who, with their seven children, waited him South, + 

The youngest baby just beginning to crawl; + 

Watson Brown, the steady lieutenant, who wrote + 

Back to his wife, + 

“Oh, Bell, I want to see you + 

And the little fellow very much but must wait. + 

There was a slave near here whose wife was sold South. + 

They found him hanging in Kennedy’s orchard next morning. + 

I cannot come home as long as such things are done here. + 

I sometimes think that we shall not meet again.” + 

These were some of the band. For better or worse + 

They were all strong men. + 

The bearded faces look strange + 

In the old daguerreotypes: they should be the faces + 

Of prosperous, small-town people, good sons and fathers, + 

Good horse-shoe pitchers, good at plowing a field, + 

Good at swapping stories and good at praying, + 

American wheat, firm-rooted, good in the ear. + 

There is only one whose air seems out of the common, + 

Oliver Brown. That face has a masculine beauty + 

Somewhat like the face of Keats. + 

They were all strong men. + 

They tied up the watchmen and took the rifle-works. + 

Then John Brown sent a raiding party away + 

To fetch in Colonel Washington from his farm. + 

The Colonel was George Washington’s great-grand-nephew, + 

Slave-owner, gentleman-farmer, but, more than these, + 

Possessor of a certain fabulous sword + 

Given to Washington by Frederick the Great. + 

They captured him and his sword and brought them along + 

Processionally. + 

The act has a touch of drama, + 

Half costume-romance, half unmerited farce. + 

On the way, they told the Washington slaves they were free, + 

Or free to fight for their freedom. + 

The slaves heard the news + 

With the dazed, scared eyes of cattle before a storm. + 

A few came back with the band and were given pikes, + 

And, when John Brown was watching, pretended to mount + 

A slipshod guard over the prisoners. + 

But, when he had walked away, they put down their pikes + 

And huddled together, talking in mourning voices. + 

It didn’t seem right to play at guarding the Colonel + 

But they were afraid of the bearded patriarch + 

With the Old Testament eyes. + 

A little later + 

It was Patrick Higgins’ turn. He was the night-watchman + 

Of the Maryland bridge, a tough little Irishman + 

With a canny, humorous face, and a twist in his speech. + 

He came humming his way to his job. + 

“Halt!” ordered a voice. + 

He stopped a minute, perplexed. As he told men later, + 

“Now I didn’t know what ‘Halt!’ mint, any more + 

Than a hog knows about a holiday.” + 

There was a scuffle. + 

He got away with a bullet-crease in his scalp + 

And warned the incoming train. It was half-past-one. + 

A moment later, a man named Shepherd Heyward, + 

Free negro, baggage-master of the small station, + 

Well-known in the town, hardworking, thrifty and fated, + 

Came looking for Higgins. + 

“Halt!” called the voice again, + 

But he kept on, not hearing or understanding, + 

Whichever it may have been. + 

A rifle cracked. + 

He fell by the station-platform, gripping his belly, + 

And lay for twelve hours of torment, asking for water + 

Until he was able to die. + 

There is no stone, + 

No image of bronze or marble green with the rain + 

To Shepherd Heyward, free negro of Harper’s Ferry, + 

And even the books, the careful, ponderous histories, + 

That turn live men into dummies with smiles of wax + 

Thoughtfully posed against a photographer’s background + 

In the act of signing a treaty or drawing a sword, + 

Tell little of what he was. + 

And yet his face + 

Grey with pain and puzzled at sudden death + 

Stares out at us through the bookworm-dust of the years + 

With an uncomprehending wonder, a blind surprise. + 

“I was getting along,” it says, “I was doing well. + 

I had six thousand dollars saved in the bank. + 

It was a good town, a nice town, I liked the folks + 

And they liked me. I had a good job there, too. + 

On Sundays I used to dress myself up slick enough + 

To pass the plate in church, but I wasn’t proud + 

Not even when trashy niggers called me Mister, + 

Though I could hear the old grannies over their snuff + 

Mumbling along, ‘Look, chile, there goes Shepherd Heyward. + 

Ain’t him fine in he Sunday clo’es⁠—ain’t him sassy and fine? + 

You grow up decent and don’t play ball in the street, + 

And maybe you’ll get like him, with a gold watch and chain.’ + 

And then, suddenly⁠—and what was it all about? + 

Why should anyone want to kill me? Why was it done?” + 

So the grey lips. And so the hurt in the eyes. + 

A hurt like a child’s, at punishment unexplained + 

That makes the whole child-universe fall to pieces. + 

At the time of death, most men turn back toward the child. + 

Brown did not know at first that the first man dead + 

By the sword he thought of so often as Gideon’s sword + 

Was one of the race he had drawn that sword to free. + 

It had been dark on the bridge. A man had come + 

And had not halted when ordered. Then the shot + 

And the scrape of the hurt man dragging himself away. + 

That was all. The next man ordered to halt would halt. + 

His mind was too full of the burning judgments of God + 

To wonder who it had been. He was cool and at peace. + 

He dreamt of a lamb, lying down by a rushing stream. + 

So the night wore away, indecisive and strange. + 

The raiders stuck by the arsenal, waiting perhaps + 

For a great bell of jubilation to toll in the sky, + 

And the slaves to rush from the hills with pikes in their hands, + 

A host redeemed, black rescue-armies of God. + 

It did not happen. + 

Meanwhile, there was casual firing. + 

A townsman named Boerley was killed. Meanwhile, the train + 

Passed over the bridge to carry its wild news + 

Of abolition-devils sprung from the ground + 

A hundred and fifty, three hundred, a thousand strong + 

To pillage Harper’s Ferry, with fire and sword. + 

Meanwhile the whole countryside was springing to arms. + 

The alarm-bell in Charlestown clanged “Nat Turner has come.” + 

Nat Turner has come again, all smoky from Hell, + 

Setting the slave to murder and massacre!” + 

The Jefferson Guards fell in. There were boys and men. + 

They had no uniforms but they had weapons. + 

Old squirrel-rifles, taken down from the wall, + 

Shot guns loaded with spikes and scraps of iron. + 

A boy dragged a blunderbuss as big as himself. + 

They started for the Ferry. + 

In a dozen + 

A score of other sleepy, neighboring towns + 

The same bell clanged, the same militia assembled. + 

The Ferry itself was roused and stirring with dawn. + 

And the firing began again. + 

A queer, harsh sound + 

In the ordinary streets of that clean, small town, + 

A desultory, vapid, meaningless sound. + 

God knows why John Brown lingered! Kagi, the scholar, + 

Who, with two others, held the rifle-works, + 

All morning sent him messages urging retreat. + 

They had the inexorable weight of common sense + 

Behind them, but John Brown neither replied + 

Nor heeded, brooding in the patriarch-calm + 

Of a lean, solitary pine that hangs + 

On the cliff’s edge, and sees the world below + 

A tiny pattern of toy fields and trees, + 

And only feels its roots gripping the rock + 

And the almighty wind that shakes its boughs, + 

Blowing from eagle-heaven to eagle-heaven. + 

Of course they were cut off. The whole attempt + 

Was fated from the first. + 

Just about noon + 

The Jefferson Guards took the Potomac Bridge + 

And drove away the men Brown posted there. + 

There were three doors of possible escape + 

Open to Brown. With this the first slammed shut. + 

The second followed it a little later + 

With the recapture of the other bridge + 

That cut Brown off from Kagi and the arsenal + 

And penned the larger body of the raiders + 

In the armory. + 

Again the firing rolled, + 

And now the first of the raiders fell and died, + 

Dangerfield Newby, the freed Scotch-mulatto + 

Whose wife and seven children, slaves in Virginia, + 

Waited for him to bring them incredible freedom. + 

They were sold South instead, after the raid. + 

His body lay where the townspeople could reach it. + 

They cut off his ears for trophies. + 

If there are souls, + 

As many think that there are or wish that there might be, + 

Crystalline things that rise on light wings exulting + 

Out of the spoilt and broken cocoon of the body, + 

Knowing no sorrow or pain but only deliverance, + 

And yet with the flame of speech, the patterns of memory, + 

One wonders what the soul of Dangerfield Newby + 

Said, in what terms, to the soul of Shepherd Heyward, + 

Both born slave, both freed, both dead the same day. + 

What do the souls that bleed from the corpse of battle + 

Say to the tattered night? + 

Perhaps it is better + 

We have no power to visage what they might say. + 

The firing now was constant, like the heavy + 

And drumming rains of summer. Twice Brown sent + 

Asking a truce. The second time there went + 

Stevens and Watson Brown with a white flag. + 

But things had gone beyond the symbol of flags. + 

Stevens, shot from a window, fell in the gutter + 

Horribly wounded. Watson Brown crawled back + 

To the engine house that was the final fort + 

Of Brown’s last stand, torn through and through with slugs. + 

A Mr. Brua, one of Brown’s prisoners, + 

Strolled out from the unguarded prison-room + 

Into the bullets, lifted Stevens up, + 

Carried him over to the old hotel + 

They called the Wager House, got a doctor for him, + 

And then strolled back to take his prisoner’s place + 

With Colonel Washington and the scared rest. + 

I know no more than this of Mr. Brua + 

But he seems curiously American, + 

And I imagine him a tall, stooped man + 

A little yellow with the Southern sun, + 

With slow, brown eyes and a slow way of talking, + 

Shifting the quid of tobacco in his cheek + 

Mechanically, as he lifted up + 

The dirty, bloody body of the man + 

Who stood for everything he most detested + 

And slowly carrying him through casual wasps + 

Of death to the flyspecked but sunny room + 

In the old hotel, wiping the blood and grime + 

Mechanically from his Sunday coat, + 

Settling his black string-tie with big, tanned hands, + 

And, then, incredibly, going back to jail. + 

He did not think much about what he’d done + 

But sat himself as comfortably as might be + 

On the cold bricks of that dejected guard-room + 

And slowly started cutting another quid + 

With a worn knife that had a brown bone-handle. + 

He lived all through the war and died long after, + 

This Mr. Brua I see. His last advice + 

To numerous nephews was “Keep out of trouble, + 

But if you’re in it, chew and don’t be hasty, + 

Just do whatever’s likeliest at hand.” + 

I like your way of talking, Mr. Brua, + 

And if there still are people interested + 

In cutting literary clothes for heroes + 

They might do worse than mention your string-tie. + 

There were other killings that day. On the one side, this, + 

Leeman, a boy of eighteen and the youngest raider, + 

Trying to flee from the death-trap of the engine-house + 

And caught and killed on an islet in the Potomac. + 

The body lay on a tiny shelf of rock + 

For hours, a sack of clothes still stung by bullets. + 

On the other side⁠—Fontaine Beckham, mayor of the town, + 

Went to look at Heyward’s body with Patrick Higgins. + 

The slow tears crept to his eyes. He was getting old. + 

He had thought a lot of Heyward. He had no gun + 

But he had been mayor of the town for a dozen years, + 

A peaceful, orderly place full of decent people, + 

And now they were killing people, here in his town, + 

He had to do something to stop it, somehow or other. + 

He wandered out on the railroad, half-distraught + 

And peeped from behind a water-tank at the raiders. + 

“Squire, don’t go any farther,” said Higgins. “It ain’t safe.” + 

He hardly heard him, he had to look out again. + 

Who were these devils with horns who were shooting his people? + 

They didn’t look like devils. One was a boy + 

Smooth-cheeked, with a bright half-dreamy face, a little + 

Like Sally’s eldest. + 

Suddenly, the air struck him + 

A stiff, breath-taking blow. “Oh,” he said, astonished. + 

Took a step and fell on his face, shot through the heart. + 

Higgins watched him for twenty minutes, wanting to lift him + 

But not quite daring. Then he turned away + 

And went back to the town. + 

The bars had been open all day, + 

Never to better business. + 

When the news of Beckham’s death spread from bar to bar, + 

It was like putting loco-weed in the whiskey, + 

The mob came together at once, the American mob, + 

They mightn’t be able to take Brown’s last little fort + 

But there were two prisoners penned in the Wager House. + 

One was hurt already, Stevens, no fun killing him. + 

But the other was William Thompson, whole and unwounded, + 

Caught when Brown tried to send his first flag of truce. + 

They stormed the hotel and dragged him out to the bridge, + 

Where two men shot him, unarmed, then threw the body + 

Over the trestle. It splashed in the shallow water, + 

But the slayers kept on firing at the dead face. + 

The carcass was there for days, a riven target, + 

Barbarously misused. + 

Meanwhile the armory yard + 

Was taken by a new band of Beckham’s avengers, + 

The most of Brown’s prisoners freed and his last escape cut off. + 

What need to tell of the killing of Kagi the scholar, + 

The wounding of Oliver Brown and the other deaths? + 

Only this remains to be told. When the drunken day + 

Reeled into night, there were left in the engine-house + 

Five men, alive and unwounded, of all the raiders. + 

Watson and Oliver Brown + 

Both of them hurt to the death, were stretched on the floor + 

Beside the corpse of Taylor, the young Canadian. + 

There was no light, there. It was bitterly cold. + 

A cold chain of lightless hours that slowly fell + 

In leaden beads between two fingers of stone. + 

Outside, the fools and the drunkards yelled in the streets, + 

And, now and then, there were shots. The prisoners talked + 

And tried to sleep. + 

John Brown did not try to sleep, + 

The live coals of his eyes severed the darkness; + 

Now and then he heard his young son Oliver calling + 

In the thirsty agony of his wounds, “Oh, kill me! + 

Kill me and put me out of this suffering!” + 

John Brown’s jaw tightened. “If you must die,” he said, + 

“Die like a man.” Toward morning the crying ceased. + 

John Brown called out to the boy but he did not answer. + 

“I guess he’s dead,” said John Brown. + 

If his soul wept + 

They were the incredible tears of the squeezed stone. + 

He had not slept for two days, but he would not sleep. + 

The night was a chained, black leopard that he stared down, + 

Erect, on his feet. One wonders what sights he saw + 

In the cloudy mirror of his most cloudy heart, + 

Perhaps God clothed in a glory, perhaps himself + 

The little boy who had stolen three brass pins + 

And been well whipped for it. + 

When he was six years old + 

An Indian boy had given him a great wonder, + 

A yellow marble, the first he had ever seen. + 

He treasured it for months but lost it at last, + 

Boylike. The hurt of the loss took years to heal. + 

He never quite forgot. + 

He could see it now, + 

Smooth, hard and lovely, a yellow, glistening ball, + 

But it kept rolling away through cracks of darkness + 

Whenever he tried to catch it and hold it fast. + 

If he could only touch it, he would be safe, + 

But it trickled away and away, just out of reach, + 

There by the wall⁠ ⁠… + 

Outside the blackened East + 

Began to tarnish with a faint, grey stain + 

That caught on the fixed bayonets of the marines. + 

Lee of Virginia, Light Horse Harry’s son, + 

Observed it broaden, thinking of many things, + 

But chiefly wanting to get his business done, + 

A curious, wry, distasteful piece of work + 

For regular soldiers. + 

Therefore to be finished + 

As swiftly and summarily as possible + 

Before this yelling mob of drunk civilians + 

And green militia once got out of hand. + 

His mouth set. Once already he had offered + 

The honor of the attack to the militia, + 

Such honor as it was. + 

Their Colonel had + 

Declined with a bright nervousness of haste. + 

“Your men are paid for doing this kind of work. + 

Mine have their wives and children.” Lee smiled briefly, + 

Remembering that. The smile had a sharp edge. + 

Well, it was time. + 

The whooping crowd fell silent + 

And scattered, as a single man walked out + 

Toward the engine-house, a letter in his hand. + 

Lee watched him musingly. A good man, Stuart. + 

Now he was by the door and calling out. + 

The door opened a crack. + 

Brown’s eyes were there + 

Over the cold muzzle of a cocked carbine. + 

The parleying began, went on and on, + 

While the crowd shivered and Lee watched it all + 

With the strict commonsense of a Greek sword + 

And with the same sure readiness. + 

Unperceived, + 

The dawn ran down the valleys of the wind, + 

Coral-footed dove, tracking the sky with coral⁠ ⁠… + 

Then, sudden as powder flashing in a pan, + 

The parleying was done. + 

The door slammed shut. + 

The little figure of Stuart jumped aside + 

Waving its cap. + 

And the marines came on. + 

Brown watched them come. One hand was on his carbine. + 

The other felt the pulse of his dying son. + 

“Sell your lives dear,” he said. The rifle-shots + 

Rattled within the bricked-in engine-room + 

Like firecrackers set off in a stone jug, + 

And there was a harsh stink of sweat and powder. + 

There was a moment when the door held firm. + 

Then it was cracked with sun. + 

Brown fired and missed. + 

A shadow with a sword leaped through the sun. + 

“That’s Ossawattomie,” said the tired voice + 

Of Colonel Washington. + 

The shadow lunged + 

And Brown fell to his knees. + 

The sword bent double, + 

A light sword, better for parades than fighting, + 

The shadow had to take it in both hands + 

And fairly rain his blows with it on Brown + 

Before he sank. + 

Now two marines were down, + 

The rest rushed in over their comrades’ bodies, + 

Pinning one man of Brown’s against the wall + 

With bayonets, another to the floor. + 

Lee, on his rise of ground, shut up his watch. + 

It had been just a quarter of an hour + 

Since Stuart gave the signal for the storm, + 

And now it was over. + 

All but the long dying. + 

Cudjo, the negro, watched from the pantry + 

The smooth glissades of the dancing gentry, + 

His splay-feet tapping in time to the tune + 

While his broad face beamed like a drunken moon + 

At candles weeping in crystal sconces, + 

Waxed floors glowing like polished bronzes, + 

Sparkles glinting on Royal Worcester + 

And all the stir and color and luster + 

Where Miss Louisa and Miss Amanda, + 

Proud dolls scissored from silver paper, + 

With hoopskirts wide as the front veranda + 

And the gypsy eyes of a caged frivolity, + 

Pointed their toes in a satin caper + 

To the nonchalant glory of the Quality. + 

And there were the gentlemen, one and all, + 

Friends and neighbors of Wingate Hall⁠— + 

Old Judge Brooke from Little Vermilion + 

With the rusty voice of a cracked horse-pistol + 

And manners as stiff as a French cotillion. + 

Huger Shepley and Wainscott Bristol, + 

Hawky arrogant sons of anger + 

Who rode like devils and fought like cocks + 

And watched, with an ineffable languor + 

Their spoilt youth tarnish a dicing-box. + 

The Cazenove boys and the Cotter brothers, + 

Pepperalls from Pepperall Ride. + 

Cummings and Crowls and a dozen others, + 

Every one with a name and a pride. + 

Sallow young dandies in shirts with ruffles, + 

Each could dance like a blowing feather, + 

And each had the voice that Georgia muffles + 

In the lazy honey of her May weather. + 

Cudjo watched and measured and knew them, + 

Seeing behind and around and through them + 

With the shrewd, dispassionate, smiling eye + 

Of the old-time servant in days gone by. + 

He couldn’t read and he couldn’t write, + 

But he knew Quality, black or white, + 

And even his master could not find + 

The secret place in the back of his mind + 

Where witch-bones talked to a scarlet rag + 

And a child’s voice spoke from a conjur-bag. + 

For he belonged to the hidden nation, + 

The mute, enormous confederation + 

Of the planted earth and the burden borne + 

And the horse that is ridden and given corn. + 

The wind from the brier-patch brought him news + 

That never went walking in white men’s shoes + 

And the grapevine whispered its message faster + 

Than a horse could gallop across a grave, + 

Till, long ere the letter could tell the master, + 

The doomsday rabbits had told the slave. + 

He was faithful as bread or salt, + 

A flawless servant without a fault, + 

Major-domo of Wingate Hall, + 

Proud of his white folks, proud of it all. + 

They might scold him, they might let him scold them, + 

And he might know things that he never told them, + 

But there was a bond, and the bond would hold, + 

On either side until both were cold. + 

So he didn’t judge, though he knew, he knew, + 

How the yellow babies down by the Slough, + 

Had a fourth of their blood from old Judge Brooke, + 

And where Sue Crowl got her Wingate look, + 

And the whole, mad business of Shepley’s Wager, + 

And why Miss Harriet married the Major. + 

And he could trace with unerring ease + 

A hundred devious pedigrees + 

Of man and horse, from the Squire’s Rapscallion + 

Back to the stock of the Arab stallion, + 

And the Bristol line through its baffling dozens + 

Of doubly-removed half-second-cousins, + 

And found a creed and a whole theology + 

On the accidents of human geology. + 

He looked for Clay in the dancing whirl, + 

There he was, coming down the line, + 

Hand in hand with a dark, slim girl + 

Whose dress was the color of light in wine + 

Sally Dupré from Appleton + 

Where the blackshawled ladies rock in the sun + 

And young things labor and old things rule, + 

A proud girl, taught in a humbling school + 

That the only daughters of misalliance + 

Must harden their hearts against defiance + 

Of all the uncles and all the aunts + 

Who succour such offspring of mischance + 

And wash them clean from each sinful intention + 

With the kindliest sort of incomprehension. + 

She had the Appleton mouth, it seemed, + 

And the Appleton way of riding, + 

But when she sorrowed and if she dreamed, + 

Something came out from hiding. + 

She could sew all day on an Appleton hem + 

And look like a saint in plaster, + 

But when the fiddles began to play + 

And her feet beat fast but her heart beat faster + 

An alien grace inhabited them + 

And she looked like her father, the dancing-master, + 

The scapegrace elegant, “French” Dupré, + 

Come to the South on a luckless day, + 

With bright paste buckles sewn on his pumps. + 

A habit of holding the ace of trumps, + 

And a manner of kissing a lady’s hand + 

Which the county failed to understand. + 

He stole Sue Appleton’s heart away + 

With eyes that were neither black nor grey, + 

And broke the heart of the Brookes’ best mare + 

To marry her safely with time to spare + 

While the horsewhip uncles toiled behind⁠— + 

He knew his need and she knew her mind. + 

And the love they had was as bright and brief + 

As the dance of the gilded maple-leaf, + 

Till she died in Charleston of childbed fever + 

Before her looks or his heart could leave her. + 

It took the flavor out of his drinking + 

And left him thoughts he didn’t like thinking, + 

So he wrapped his child in the dead girl’s shawl + 

And sent her politely to Uncle Paul + 

With a black-edged note full of grief and scruples + 

And half the money he owed his pupils, + 

Saw that Sue had the finest hearse + 

That I. O. U.’s could possibly drape her + 

And elegized her in vile French verse + 

While his hot tears spotted the borrowed paper. + 

He still had manners, he tried to recover, + 

But something went when he buried his lover. + 

No women with eyes could ever scold him + 

But he would make places too hot to hold him, + 

He shrugged his shoulders and kept descending⁠— + 

Life was a farce, but it needed ending. + 

The tag-line found him too tired to dread it + 

And he died as he lived, with an air, on credit, + 

In his host’s best shirt and a Richmond garret, + 

Talking to shadows and drinking claret. + 

He passed when Sally was barely four + 

And the Appleton kindred breathed once more + 

And, with some fervor, began to try + 

To bury the bone of his memory + 

And strictly expunge from his daughter’s semblance + 

All possible traces of a resemblance. + 

Which system succeeded, to outward view, + 

As well as most of such systems do + 

And resulted in mixing a martyr’s potions + 

For “French” Dupré in his daughter’s notions. + 

And slander is sinful and gossip wrong, + 

But country memories are long, + 

The Appleton clan is a worthy clan + 

But we remember the dancing-man. + 

The girl is pretty, the girl seems wise, + 

The girl was born with her father’s eyes. + 

She will play with our daughters and know our sons, + 

We cannot offend the Appletons. + 

Bristols and Wingates, Shepleys and Crowls, + 

We wouldn’t hurt her to save our souls. + 

But after all⁠—and nevertheless⁠— + 

For one has to think⁠—and one must confess⁠— + 

And one should admit⁠—but one never knows⁠— + 

So it has gone, and so it goes, + 

Through the sun and the wind and the rainy weather + 

Whenever ladies are gathered together, + 

Till, little by little and stitch by stitch, + 

The girl is put in her proper niche + 

With all the virtues that we can draw + 

For someone else’s daughter-in-law, + 

A girl to be kind to, a girl we’re lucky in, + 

A girl to marry some nice Kentuckian, + 

Some Alabaman, some Carolinian⁠— + 

In fact, if you ask me for my opinion, + 

There are lots of boys in the Northern sections + 

And some of them have quite good connections⁠— + 

She looks charming this evening, doesn’t she? + 

If she danced just a little less dashingly! + 

Cudjo watched her as she went by, + 

“She’s got a light foot,” thought Cudjo, “Hi! + 

A light, swif’ foot and a talkin’ eye! + 

But you’ll need more’n dat, Miss Sally Dupré + 

Before you proposals with young Marse Clay. + 

And as soon as de fiddles finish slewin’ + 

Dey’s sixteen things I ought to be doin’. + 

The Major’s sure to be wantin’ his dram, + 

We’ll have to be cuttin’ a second ham, + 

And dat trashy high-yaller, Parker’s Guinea, + 

Was sayin’ some Yankee name Old John Brown + 

Has raised de Debil back in Virginny + 

And freed de niggers all over town, + 

He’s friends with de ha’nts and steel won’t touch him + 

But the paterollers is sure to cotch him. + 

How come he want to kick up such a dizziness! + 

Nigger-business ain’t white-folks’ business.” + 

There was no real moon in all the soft, clouded night, + 

The rats of night had eaten the silver cheese, + 

Though here and there a forgotten crumb of old brightness + 

Gleamed and was blotted. + 

But there was no real moon, + 

No bowl of nacre, dripping an old delusive + 

Stain on the changed, strange grass, making faces strange; + 

There was only a taste of warm rain not yet fallen, + 

A wine-colored dress, turned black because of no moon, + 

—It would have been spangled in moon⁠—and a broadcloth coat, + 

And two voices talking together, quite softly, quite calmly. + 

The dance. Such a lovely dance. But you dance so lightly. + 

Amanda dances so well. But you dance so lightly. + 

Louisa looks so pretty in pink, don’t you think? + 

Are you fond of Scott? Yes, I’m very fond of Scott. + 

Elegant extracts from gilt-edged volumes called Keepsakes + 

And Godey’s Lady’s Book words. + 

If I were a girl, + 

A girl in a Godey’s Lady’s Book steel-engraving, + 

I would have no body or legs, no aches or delusions. + 

I would know what to do. I would marry a man called Mister. + 

We would live in a steel-engraving, in various costumes + 

Designed in the more respectable Paris modes, + 

With two little boys in little plush hats like muffins, + 

And two little girls with pantalettes to their chins. + 

I must do that, I think. + 

But now my light feet know + 

That they will be tired and burning with all my dancing + 

Before I cool them in the exquisite coolness + 

Of water or the cool virginal sheets of virgins, + 

And a face comes swimming toward me out of black broadcloth + 

And my heart knocks. + 

Who are you, why are you here? + 

Why should you trouble my eyes? + 

No, Mr. Wingate, + 

I cannot agree with you on the beauties of Byron. + 

But why should something melt in the stuff of my hand, + 

And my voice sound thin in my ears? + 

This face is a face + 

Like any other face. Did my mother once + 

Hear thin blood sing in her ears at a voice called Mister? + 

And wish for⁠—and not wish for⁠—and when the strange thing + 

Was consummate, then, and she lay in a coil of darkness, + 

Did she feel so much changed? What is it to be + 

A woman? + 

No, I must live in a steel-engraving. + 

His voice said. But there was other than his voice. + 

Something that heard warm rain on unopened flowers + 

And spoke or tried to speak across swimming blackness + 

To the slight profile and the wine-colored dress. + 

Her hair was black. Her eyes might be black or grey. + 

He could not remember, it irked him not to remember. + 

But she was just Sally Dupré from Appleton + 

Only she was not. Only she was a shadow + 

And a white face⁠—a terrible, white shut face + 

That looked through windows of inflexible glass + 

Disdainfully upon the beauties of Byron + 

And every puppy that ever howled for the moon + 

To brush warm raindrops across the unopened flower + 

And so quiet the heart with⁠—what? + 

But you speak to her aunts. + 

You are Wingate of Wingate Hall. You are not caught + 

Like a bee drunk with the smell of honey, the smell of sleep, + 

In a slight flower of glass whose every petal + 

Shows eyes one cannot remember as black or grey. + 

You converse easily on elegant subjects + 

Suitable for young ladies. + 

You do not feel + 

The inexorable stairs of the flesh ascended + 

By an armed enemy with a naked torch. + 

This has been felt before, this has been quenched + 

With fitting casualness in flesh that has + 

A secret stain of the sun. + 

It is not a subject + 

Suitable for the converse of young ladies. + 

“My God, My God, why will she not answer the aching? + 

My God, My God, to lie at her side through the darkness!” + 

And yet⁠—is it real⁠—do I really⁠— + 

The wine-colored dress + 

Rose. Broadcloth rose and took her back to the dance. + 

The nickeled lamp threw a wide yellow disk + 

On the red tablecloth with the tasseled fringes. + 

Jack Ellyat put his book down with a slight + 

Impatient gesture. + 

There was mother, knitting + 

The same grey end of scarf while Father read + 

The same unaltered paper through the same + 

Old-fashioned spectacles with the worn bows. + 

Jane with one apple-cheek and one enshadowed, + 

Soundlessly conjugated Latin verbs, + 

“Amo, amas, amat,” through sober lips, + 

“Amamus, amatis, amant,” and still no sound. + 

He glanced at the clock. On top of it was Phaëton + 

Driving bronze, snarling horses down the sharp, + 

Quicksilver, void, careening gulfs of air + 

Until they smashed upon a black-marble sea. + 

The round spiked trophy of the brazen sun + 

Weighed down his chariot with its heavy load + 

Of ponderous fire. + 

To be like Phaëton + 

And drive the trophy-sun! + 

But he and his horses + 

Were frozen in their attitude of snarling, + 

Frozen forever to the tick of a clock. + 

Not all the broomstick witches of New England + 

Could break that congealed motion and cast down + 

The huge sun thundering on the black marble + 

Of the mantelpiece, streaked with white veins of foam. + 

If once such things could happen, all could happen, + 

The snug, safe world crack up like broken candy + 

And the young rivers, roaring, rush to the sea; + 

White bulls that caught the morning on their horns + 

And shook the secure earth until they found + 

Some better recompense for life than life, + 

The untamed ghost, the undiminished star. + 

But it would not happen. Nothing would ever happen. + 

He had been here, like this, ten thousand times, + 

He would be here, like this, ten thousand more, + 

Until at last the little ticks of the clock + 

Had cooled what had been hot, and changed the thin, + 

Blue, forking veins across the back of his hand + 

Into the big, soft veins on Father’s hand. + 

And the world would be snug. + 

And he would sit + 

Reading the same newspaper, after dinner, + 

Through spectacles whose bows were getting worn + 

While a wife knitted on an endless scarf + 

And a child slowly formed with quiet lips + 

“Amo, amas, amat,” and still no sound. + 

And it would be over. Over without having been. + 

His father turned a creaking page of paper + 

And cleared his throat, “The Tribune calls,” he said, + 

“Brown’s raid the work of a madman. Well, they’re right, + 

But⁠—” + 

Mrs. Ellyat put her knitting down. + 

“Are they going to hang him, Will?” + 

“It looks that way.” + 

“But, Father, when⁠—” + 

“They have the right, my son, + 

He broke the law.” + 

“But, Will! You don’t believe⁠—” + 

A little spark lit Mr. Ellyat’s eyes. + 

“I didn’t say I thought that he was wrong. + 

I said they had the right to hang the man, + 

But they’ll hang slavery with him.” + 

A quick pulse + 

Beat in Jack Ellyat’s wrist. Behind his eyes + 

A bearded puppet creaked upon a rope + 

And the sky darkened because he was there. + 

Now it was Mother talking in a strange + 

Iron-bound voice he’d never heard before. + 

“I prayed for him in church last Sunday, Will. + 

I pray for him at home here every night. + 

I don’t know⁠—I don’t care⁠—what laws he broke. + 

I know that he was right. I pray to God + 

To show the world somehow that he was right + 

And break these Southern people into knowing! + 

And I know this⁠—in every house and church, + 

All through the North⁠—women are praying for him, + 

Praying for him. And God will hear those prayers.” + 

“He will, my dear,” said Mr. Ellyat gently, + 

“But what will be His answer?” + 

He took her hand, + 

Smoothing it for a moment. Then she sighed + 

And turned back to the interminable scarf. + 

Jack Ellyat’s pulse beat faster. + 

Women praying, + 

Praying at night, in every house in the North, + 

Praying for old John Brown until their knees + 

Ached with stiff cold. + 

Innumerable prayers + 

Inexorably rising, till the dark + 

Vault of the midnight was so thronged and packed + 

The wild geese could not arrow through the storm + 

Of terrible, ascendant, women’s prayers.⁠ ⁠… + 

The clock struck nine, and Phaëton still stood + 

Frozenly urging on his frozen horses, + 

But, for a moment, to Jack Ellyat’s eyes, + 

The congealed hoofs had seemed to paw the air + 

And the bronze car roll forward. + 

On Saturday, in Southern market towns, + 

When I was a boy with twenty cents to spend, + 

The carts began to drift in with the morning, + 

And, by the afternoon, the slipshod Square + 

And all Broad Center Street were lined with them; + 

Moth-eaten mules that whickered at each other + 

Between the mended shafts of rattletrap wagons, + 

Mud-spattered buggies, mouldy phaëtons, + 

And, here and there, an ox-cart from the hills + 

Whose solemn team had shoulders of rough, white rock, + 

Innocent noses, black and wet as snailshells, + 

And that inordinate patience in their eyes. + 

There always was a Courthouse in the Square, + 

A cupolaed Courthouse, drowsing Time away + 

Behind the grey-white pillars of its porch + 

Like an old sleepy judge in a spotted gown; + 

And, down the Square, always a languid jail + 

Of worn, uneven brick with moss in the cracks + 

Or stone weathered the grey of weathered pine. + 

The plump jail-master wore a linen duster + 

In summer, and you used to see him sit + 

Tilted against the wall in a pine-chair, + 

Spitting reflectively in the warm dust + 

While endless afternoons slowly dissolved + 

Into the longer shadow, the dust-blue twilight. + 

Higgledy-piggledy days⁠—days that are gone⁠— + 

The trotters are dead, all the yellow-painted sulkies + 

Broken for firewood⁠—the old Courthouse grin + 

Through new false-teeth of Alabama limestone⁠— + 

The haircloth lap-robe weeps on a Ford radiator⁠— + 

But I have seen the old Courthouse. I have seen + 

The flyspecked windows and the faded flag + 

Over the judge’s chair, touched the scuffed walls, + 

Spat in the monumental brass spittoons + 

And smelt the smell that never could be aired, + 

Although one opened windows for a year, + 

The unforgettable, intangible + 

Mixture of cheap cigars, worm-eaten books, + 

Sweat, poverty, negro hair-oil, grief and law. + 

I have seen the long room packed with quiet men, + 

Fit to turn mob, if need were, in a flash⁠— + 

Cocked-pistol men, so lazily attentive + 

Their easy languor knocked against your ribs + 

As, hour by hour, the lawyers droned along, + 

And minute on creeping minute, your cold necknape + 

Waited the bursting of the firecracker, + 

The flare of fury. + 

And yet, that composed fury + 

Burnt itself out, unflaring⁠—was held down + 

By a dry, droning voice, a faded flag. + 

The kettle never boiled, the pistol stayed + 

At cock but the snake-head hammer never fell.⁠ ⁠… + 

The little boys climbed down beyond the windows.⁠ ⁠… + 

So, in the cupolaed Courthouse there in Charlestown, + 

When the jail-guards had carried in the cot + 

Where Brown lay like a hawk with a broken back, + 

I hear the rustle of the moving crowd, + 

The buzz outside, taste the dull, heavy air, + 

Smell the stale smell and see the country carts + 

Hitched in the streets. + 

For a long, dragging week + 

Of market-Saturdays the trial went on. + 

The droning voices rise and fall and rise. + 

Stevens lies quiet on his mattress, breathing + 

The harsh and difficult breath of a dying man, + 

Although not dying then. + 

Beyond the Square + 

The trees are dry, but all the dry leaves not fallen⁠— + 

Yellow leaves falling through a grey-blue dusk, + 

The first winds of November whirl and scatter them.⁠ ⁠… + 

Read as you will in any of the books, + 

The details of the thing, the questions and answers, + 

How sometimes Brown would walk, sometimes was carried, + 

At first would hardly plead, half-refused counsel, + 

Accepted later, made up witness-lists, + 

Grew fitfully absorbed in his defense, + 

Only to flare in temper at his first lawyers + 

And drive them from the case. + 

Questions and answers, + 

Wheels creaking in a void. + 

Sometimes he lay + 

Quiet upon his cot, the hawk-eyes staring. + 

Sometimes his fingers moved mechanically + 

As if at their old task of sorting wool, + 

Fingertips that could tell him in the dark + 

Whether the wool they touched was from Ohio + 

Or from Vermont. They had the shepherd’s gift. + 

It was his one sure talent. + 

Questions creaking + 

Uselessly back and forth. + 

No one can say + 

That the trial was not fair. The trial was fair, + 

Painfully fair by every rule of law, + 

And that it was made not the slightest difference. + 

The law’s our yardstick, and it measures well + 

Or well enough when there are yards to measure. + 

Measure a wave with it, measure a fire, + 

Cut sorrow up in inches, weigh content. + 

You can weigh John Brown’s body well enough, + 

But how and in what balance weigh John Brown? + 

He had the shepherd’s gift, but that was all. + 

He had no other single gift for life. + 

Some men are pasture Death turns back to pasture, + 

Some are fire-opals on that iron wrist, + 

Some the deep roots of wisdoms not yet born. + 

John Brown was none of these, + 

He was a stone, + 

A stone eroded to a cutting edge + 

By obstinacy, failure and cold prayers. + 

Discredited farmer, dubiously involved + 

In lawsuit after lawsuit, Shubel Morgan + 

Fantastic bandit of the Kansas border, + 

Red-handed murderer at Pottawattomie, + 

Cloudy apostle, whooped along to death + 

By those who do no violence themselves + 

But only buy the guns to have it done, + 

Sincere of course, as all fanatics are, + 

And with a certain minor-prophet air, + 

That fooled the world to thinking him half-great + 

When all he did consistently was fail. + 

So far one advocate. + 

But there is this. + 

Sometimes there comes a crack in Time itself. + 

Sometimes the earth is torn by something blind. + 

Sometimes an image that has stood so long + 

It seems implanted as the polar star + 

Is moved against an unfathomed force + 

That suddenly will not have it any more. + 

Call it the mores, call it God or Fate, + 

Call it Mansoul or economic law, + 

That force exists and moves. + 

And when it moves + 

It will employ a hard and actual stone + 

To batter into bits an actual wall + 

And change the actual scheme of things. + 

John Brown + 

Was such a stone⁠—unreasoning as the stone, + 

Destructive as the stone, and, if you like, + 

Heroic and devoted as such a stone. + 

He had no gift for life, no gift to bring + 

Life but his body and a cutting edge, + 

But he knew how to die. + 

And yardstick law + 

Gave him six weeks to burn that hoarded knowledge + 

In one swift fire whose sparks fell like live coals + 

On every State in the Union. + 

Listen now, + 

Listen, the bearded lips are speaking now, + 

There are no more guerilla-raids to plan, + 

There are no more hard questions to be solved + 

Of right and wrong, no need to beg for peace, + 

Here is the peace unbegged, here is the end, + 

Here is the insolence of the sun cast off, + 

Here is the voice already fixed with night. + 

I have, may it please the Court, a few words to say. + 

In the first place I deny everything but what I have all along admitted: of a design on my part to free slaves.⁠ ⁠… + 

Had I interfered in the matter which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved⁠ ⁠… had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, or the so-called great⁠ ⁠… and suffered and sacrificed, what I have in this interference, it would have been all right. Every man in this Court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. + 

I see a book kissed which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do unto me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done. + 

Let me say one word further. I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all the circumstances, it has been more generous than I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the first what was my intention and what was not. I never had any design against the liberty of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason or incite slaves to rebel or make any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so but always discouraged any idea of that kind. + 

Let me say also, in regard to the statements made by some of those connected with me, I hear it has been stated by some of them that I have induced them to join with me. But the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. Not one but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part at their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with, till the day they came to me, and that was for the purpose I have stated. + 

Now I have done. + 

The voice ceased. There was a deep, brief pause. + 

The judge pronounced the formal words of death. + 

One man, a stranger, tried to clap his hands. + 

The foolish sound was stopped. + 

There was nothing but silence then. + 

No cries in the court, + 

No roar, no slightest murmur from the thronged street, + 

As Brown went back to jail between his guards. + 

The heavy door shut behind them. + 

There was a noise of chairs scraped back in the court-room, + 

And that huge sigh of a crowd turning back into men. + 

A month between the sentence and the hanging. + 

A month of endless visitors, endless letters. + 

A Mrs. Russell came to clean his coat. + 

A sculptor sketched him. + 

In the anxious North, + 

The anxious Dr. Howe most anxiously + 

Denied all godly connection with the raid, + 

And Gerrit Smith conveniently went mad + 

For long enough to sponge his mind of all + 

Memory of such an unsuccessful deed. + 

Only the tough, swart-minded Higginson + 

Kept a grim decency, would not deny. + 

Pity the portly men, pity the pious, + 

Pity the fool who lights the powder-mine, + 

They need your counterfeit penny, they will live long. + 

In Charlestown meanwhile, there were whispers of rescue. + 

Brown told them, + 

“I am worth now infinitely more to die than to live.” + 

And lived his month so, busily. + 

A month of trifles building up a legend + 

And letters in a pinched, firm handwriting + 

Courageous, scriptural, misspelt and terse, + 

Sowing a fable everywhere they fell + 

While the town filled with troops. + 

The Governor came, + 

Enemies, friends, militia-cavaliers, + 

Old Border Foes. + 

The month ebbed into days, + 

The wife and husband met for the last time, + 

The last letter was written: + 

“To be inscribed on the old family Monument at North Elba. + 

Oliver Brown born 1839 was killed at Harpers Ferry, Va. Nov. 17th 1859 + 

Watson Brown born 1835 was wounded at Harpers Ferry Nov. 17th and died Nov. 19th 1859 + 

(My Wife can) supply blank dates to above + 

John Brown born May 9th 1800 was executed at Charlestown Va. December 2nd 1859.” + 

At last the clear warm day, so slow to come. + 

The North that had already now begun + 

To mold his body into crucified Christ’s, + 

Hung fables about those hours⁠—saw him move + 

Symbolically, kiss a negro child, + 

Do this and that, say things he never said, + 

To swell the sparse, hard outlines of the event + 

With sentimental omen. + 

It was not so. + 

He stood on the jail-porch in carpet-slippers, + 

Clad in a loose ill-fitting suit of black, + 

Tired farmer waiting for his team to come. + 

He left one last written message: + 

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away: but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.” + 

They did not hang him in the jail or the Square. + 

The two white horses dragged the rattling cart + 

Out of the town. Brown sat upon his coffin. + 

Beyond the soldiers lay the open fields + 

Earth-colored, sleepy with unfallen frost. + 

The farmer’s eye took in the bountiful land. + 

“This is a beautiful country,” said John Brown. + 

The gallows-stairs were climbed, the death-cap fitted. + 

Behind the gallows, + 

Before a line of red-and-grey cadets, + 

A certain odd Professor T. J. Jackson + 

Watched disapprovingly the ragged militia + 

Deploy for twelve long minutes ere they reached + 

Their destined places. + 

The Presbyterian sabre of his soul + 

Was moved by a fey breath. + 

He saw John Brown, + 

A tiny blackened scrap of paper-soul + 

Fluttering above the Pit that Calvin barred + 

With bolts of iron on the unelect; + 

He heard the just, implacable Voice speak out + 

“Depart ye wicked to eternal fire.” + 

And sternly prayed that God might yet be moved + 

To save the predestined cinder from the flame. + 

Brown did not hear the prayer. The rough black cloth + 

Of the death-cap hid his eyes now. He had seen + 

The Blue Ridge Mountains couched in their blue haze. + 

Perhaps he saw them still, behind his eyes⁠— + 

Perhaps just cloth, perhaps nothing any more. + 

“I shall look unto the hills from whence cometh my help.” + 

The hatchet cut the cord. The greased trap fell. + 

“So perish all such enemies of Virginia, + 

All such enemies of the Union, + 

All such foes of the human race.” + 

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. + 

He will not come again with foolish pikes + 

And a pack of desperate boys to shadow the sun. + 

He has gone back North. The slaves have forgotten his eyes. + 

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. + 

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. + 

Already the corpse is changed, under the stone, + 

The strong flesh rotten, the bones dropping away. + 

Cotton will grow next year, in spite of the skull. + 

Slaves will be slaves next year, in spite of the bones. + 

Nothing is changed, John Brown, nothing is changed. + 

“There is a song in my bones. There is a song + 

In my white bones.” + 

I hear no song. I hear + 

Only the blunt seeds growing secretly + 

In the dark entrails of the preparate earth, + 

The rustle of the cricket under the leaf, + 

The creaking of the cold wheel of the stars. + 

“Bind my white bones together⁠—hollow them + 

To skeleton pipes of music. When the wind + 

Blows from the budded Spring, the song will blow.” + 

I hear no song. I only hear the roar + 

Of the Spring freshets, and the gushing voice + 

Of mountain-brooks that overflow their banks, + 

Swollen with melting ice and crumbled earth. + 

“That is my song. + 

It is made of water and wind. It marches on.” + 

No, John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering, + 

A-mouldering. + 

“My bones have been washed clean + 

And God blows through them with a hollow sound, + 

And God has shut his wildfire in my dead heart.” + 

I hear it now, + 

Faint, faint as the first droning flies of March, + 

Faint as the multitudinous, tiny sigh + 

Of grasses underneath a windy scythe. + 

“It will grow stronger.” + 

It has grown stronger. It is marching on. + 

It is a throbbing pulse, a pouring surf, + 

It is the rainy gong of the Spring sky + 

Echoing, + 

John Brown’s body, + 

John Brown’s body. + 

But still it is not fierce. I find it still + 

More sorrowful than fierce. + 

“You have not heard it yet. You have not heard + 

The ghosts that walk in it, the shaking sound.” + 

Strong medicine, + 

Bitter medicine of the dead, + 

I drink you now. I hear the unloosed thing, + 

The anger of the ripe wheat⁠—the ripened earth + 

Sullenly quaking like a beaten drum + 

From Kansas to Vermont. I hear the stamp + 

Of the ghost-feet. I hear the ascending sea. + 

“Glory, Glory Hallelujah, + 

Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, + 

Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!” + 

What is this agony of the marching dust? + 

What are these years ground into hatchet blades? + 

“Ask the tide why it rises with the moon, + 

My bones and I have risen like that tide + 

And an immortal anguish plucks us up + 

And will not hide us till our song is done.” + 

The phantom drum diminishes⁠—the year + 

Rolls back. It is only winter still, not spring, + 

The snow still flings its white on the new grave, + 

Nothing is changed, John Brown, nothing is changed + 

John⁠ ⁠… Brown⁠ ⁠… + 