VII
Then the dream began to vanish—burgesses, the war's red flames,
Charging Tarleton, proud Cornwallis, navies moving on the James,
Years of peace, and years of glory, all began to melt away,
And the statesman woke from slumber in the night, and tranquil lay,
And his lips moved; friends there gathered with love's silken footstep near,
And he whispered, softly whispered in love's low and tender ear,—
VIII
"It is the Fourth?" "No, not yet," they answered, "but 'twill soon be early morn;
We will wake you, if you slumber, when the day begins to dawn."
Then the statesman left the present, lived again amid the past,
Saw, perhaps, the peopled future ope its portals grand and vast,
Till the flashes of the morning lit the far horizon low,
And the sun's rays o'er the forests in the east began to glow.
IX
Rose the sun, and from the woodlands fell the midnight dews like rain,
In magnolias cool and shady sang the mocking-bird again;
And the statesman woke from slumber, saw the risen sun, and heard
Rippling breezes 'mid the oak trees, and the lattice singing bird,
And, his eye serene uplifted, as rejoicing in the sun,
"It is the Fourth?" his only question,—to the world his final one.
X
Silence fell on Monticello—for the last dread hour was near,
And the old clock's measured ticking only broke upon the ear.
All the summer rooms were silent, where the great of earth had trod,
All the summer blooms seemed silent as the messengers of God;
Silent were the hall and chamber where old councils oft had met,
Save the far boom of the cannon that recalled the old day yet.
XI
Silent still is Monticello—he is breathing slowly now,
In the splendors of the noon-tide, with the death-dew on his brow—
Silent save the clock still ticking where his soul had given birth
To the mighty thoughts of freedom, that should free the fettered earth;
Silent save the boom of cannon on the sun-filled wave afar,
Bringing 'mid the peace eternal still the memory of war.
XII
Evening in majestic shadows fell upon the fortress' walls;
Sweetly were the last bells ringing on the James and on the Charles.
'Mid the choruses of freedom two departed victors lay,
One beside the blue Rivanna, one by Massachusetts Bay.
He was gone, and night her sable curtain drew across the sky;
Gone his soul into all nations, gone to live and not to die.
Hezekiah Butterworth.
On September 14, 1830, the Boston Advertiser contained a paragraph asserting that the Secretary of the Navy had recommended to the Board of Navy Commissioners that the old frigate Constitution, popularly known as "Old Ironsides," be disposed of. Two days later appeared the famous poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, which instantly became a sort of national battle-cry. Instead of being sold, the Constitution was rebuilt.
OLD IRONSIDES