Complete Poetical Works

Nothing more, did I say?  Stay one moment: you've heard
Of Caldwell, the parson, who once preached the word
Down at Springfield?  What, no?  Come—that's bad; why, he had
All the Jerseys aflame!  And they gave him the name
Of the "rebel high priest."  He stuck in their gorge,
For he loved the Lord God—and he hated King George!

He had cause, you might say!  When the Hessians that day
Marched up with Knyphausen, they stopped on their way
At the "farms," where his wife, with a child in her arms,
Sat alone in the house.  How it happened none knew
But God—and that one of the hireling crew
Who fired the shot!  Enough!—there she lay,
And Caldwell, the chaplain, her husband, away!

Did he preach—did he pray?  Think of him as you stand
By the old church to-day,—think of him and his band
Of militant ploughboys!  See the smoke and the heat
Of that reckless advance, of that straggling retreat!
Keep the ghost of that wife, foully slain, in your view—
And what could you, what should you, what would YOU do?

Why, just what HE did!  They were left in the lurch
For the want of more wadding.  He ran to the church,
Broke the door, stripped the pews, and dashed out in the road
With his arms full of hymn-books, and threw down his load
At their feet!  Then above all the shouting and shots
Rang his voice: "Put Watts into 'em!  Boys, give 'em Watts!"

And they did.  That is all.  Grasses spring, flowers blow,
Pretty much as they did ninety-three years ago.
You may dig anywhere and you'll turn up a ball—
But not always a hero like this—and that's all.

POEM

DELIVERED ON THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF CALIFORNIA'S ADMISSION INTO THE UNION, SEPTEMBER 9, 1864

We meet in peace, though from our native East
The sun that sparkles on our birthday feast
Glanced as he rose on fields whose dews were red
With darker tints than those Aurora spread.
Though shorn his rays, his welcome disk concealed
In the dim smoke that veiled each battlefield,
Still striving upward, in meridian pride,
He climbed the walls that East and West divide,—
Saw his bright face flashed back from golden sand,
And sapphire seas that lave the Western land.

Strange was the contrast that such scenes disclose
From his high vantage o'er eternal snows;
There War's alarm the brazen trumpet rings—
Here his love-song the mailed cicala sings;
There bayonets glitter through the forest glades—
Here yellow cornfields stack their peaceful blades;
There the deep trench where Valor finds a grave—
Here the long ditch that curbs the peaceful wave;
There the bold sapper with his lighted train—
Here the dark tunnel and its stores of gain;
Here the full harvest and the wain's advance—
There the Grim Reaper and the ambulance.

With scenes so adverse, what mysterious bond
Links our fair fortunes to the shores beyond?
Why come we here—last of a scattered fold—
To pour new metal in the broken mould?
To yield our tribute, stamped with Caesar's face,
To Caesar, stricken in the market-place?

Ah! love of country is the secret tie
That joins these contrasts 'neath one arching sky;
Though brighter paths our peaceful steps explore,
We meet together at the Nation's door.
War winds her horn, and giant cliffs go down
Like the high walls that girt the sacred town,
And bares the pathway to her throbbing heart,
From clustered village and from crowded mart.

Part of God's providence it was to found
A Nation's bulwark on this chosen ground;
Not Jesuit's zeal nor pioneer's unrest
Planted these pickets in the distant West,
But He who first the Nation's fate forecast
Placed here His fountains sealed for ages past,
Rock-ribbed and guarded till the coming time
Should fit the people for their work sublime;
When a new Moses with his rod of steel
Smote the tall cliffs with one wide-ringing peal,
And the old miracle in record told
To the new Nation was revealed in gold.

Judge not too idly that our toils are mean,
Though no new levies marshal on our green;
Nor deem too rashly that our gains are small,
Weighed with the prizes for which heroes fall.
See, where thick vapor wreathes the battle-line;
There Mercy follows with her oil and wine;
Or where brown Labor with its peaceful charm
Stiffens the sinews of the Nation's arm.
What nerves its hands to strike a deadlier blow