UPPER MARLB'RO'.
Through a narrow, ravelled valley, wearing down the farmer's soil,
The Patuxent flows inconstant, with a hue of clay and oil,
From the terraces of mill-dams and the temperate slopes of wheat,
To the bottoms of tobacco, watched by many a planter's seat.
There the blackened drying-houses show the hanging shocks of green,
Smoking through the lifted shutters, sunning in the nicotine;
And around old steamboat-landings loiter mules and over-seers,
With the hogsheads of tobacco rolled together on the piers.
Inland from the river stranded in a cove between the hills,
Lies old Marlb'ro' Court and village, acclimated to her chills;
And the white mists nightly rising from the swamps that trench her round,
Seem the sheeted ghosts of memories buried in that ancient ground.
Here in days when still Prince George's of the province was the queen,
Great old judges ruled the gentry, gathering to the court-house green;
When the Ogles and the Tayloes matched their Arab steeds to race,
Judge Duval adjourned the sessions, Luther Martin quit his case.
Here young Roger Taney lingered, while the horn and hounds were loud,
To behold the pompous Pinkney scattering learning to the crowd;
And old men great Wirt remembered, while their minds he strove to win,
As a little German urchin drumming at his father's inn.
When the ocean barks could moor them in the shadow of the town
Ere the channels filled and mouldered with the rich soil wafted down—
Here the Irish trader, Carroll, brought the bride of Darnell Hall,
And their Jesuit son was Bishop of the New World over all.
Here the troopers of Prince George's, with their horse-tail helmets, won
Praise from valiant Eager Howard and from General Wilkinson;
And (the village doctor seeking from the British to restore)
Key, the poet, wrote his anthem in the light of Baltimore.