Silent they galloped by broken gates,
By slashes of pines around old estates;
By planters' graves afield under clumps
Of blackjack oaks and tobacco stumps;
The empty quarters of negroes grin
From clearings of cedar and chinquopin;
From fodder stacks the wild swine flew,
The shy young wheat the frost peeped through,
And the swamp owl hooted as if she knew
Of the crime, as she hailed: "Ahoy! Ahoy!"
And the chiming hoofs of the horses drew
The pitiless rhythm of "Nanjemoy."
So in the dawn as perturbed and gray
They hid in the farm-house off the way,
And the worn assassin dozed in his chair,
A voice in his dreams or afloat in the air,
Like a spirit born in the Indian corn—
Immemorial, vague, forlorn,
And disembodied—murmured forever
The name of the old creek up the river.
"God of blood!" he said unto Herold,
As they groped in the dusk, lost and imperilled,
In the oozy, entangled morass and mesh
Of hanging vines over Allen's Fresh:
"The chirp of birds and the drone of frogs,
The lizards and crickets from trees and bogs
Follow me yet, pursue and ferret
My soul with a word which I used to enjoy,
As if it had turned on me like a spirit
And stabbed my ear with its 'Nanjemoy.'"
Ay! Great Nature fury or preacher
Makes, as she wists, of the tiniest creature—
Arming a word, as it floats on the mind,
With the dagger of wrath and the wing of the wind.
What, though weighted to take them down,
Their swimming steeds in the river they drown,
And paddle the farther shore to gain,
Chased by gunboats or lost in rain?
Many a night they try the ferry
And the days in haggard sleep employ,
But every raft, or float, or wherry,
Drifts up the tide to Nanjemoy.
"Ho! John, we shall have no more annoy,
We've crossed the river from Nanjemoy.
The bluffs of Virginny their shadows reach
To hide our landing upon the beach!"
Repelled from the manse to hide in the barn,
The sick wretch hears, like a far-away horn,
As he lies on the straw by the snoring boy,
The winding echo of "N-a-n-j-e-m-o-y."
All day it follows, all night it whines,
From the suck of waters, the moan of pines,
And the tread of cavalry following after,
The flash of flames on beam and rafter,
The shot, the strangle, the crash, the swoon,
Scarce break his trance or disturb the croon
Of the meaningless notes on his lips which fasten,
And the soldier hears, as he seeks to convoy
The dying words of the dark assassin,
A wandering murmur, like "Nanjemoy."
THE FALL OF UTIE.
The reception at Secretary Flake's was at its height. Bland Van, the President of the nation, had departed with his boys; the punch-bowl had been emptied nine times; and still the cry from our republican society was, "Fill up!"
A pair of young men, unacquainted with each other, pressed at the same time to the punch-bowl, and Jack, the chief ladler, turning from the younger, a clerk in civil dress, helped the elder, a tall naval officer, to a couple of glasses. The clerk, young Utie, who was somewhat flushed, addressed the chief ladler and remarked:
"You dam nigger, didn't you see my glass?"