"God preserve us!" said the captain; "never mortal foes were there;

They have vanished with their leader, Prince and Power of the air!

Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and prowess naught avail;

They who do the devil's service wear their master's coat of mail ! ”

So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again warning call

Roused the score of weary soldiers watching round the dusky hall;

And they looked to flint and priming, and they longed for break of day;

But the captain closed his Bible: "Let us cease from man, and pray!"

To the men who went before us, all the unseen powers seemed near,

And their steadfast strength of courage struck its roots in holy fear.

Every hand forsook the musket, every head was bowed and bare,

Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as the captain led in prayer.

Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres round the wall,

But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears and hearts of all,

Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish! Never after mortal man

Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the blockhouse of Cape Ann.

So to us who walk in summer through the cool and sea-blown town,

From the childhood of its people comes the solemn legend down.

PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL.

313

Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives

the youth

And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying truth.

Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres of the mind,

Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined;

Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain,

And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.

In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high

Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly;

But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith, and not to sight,

And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night!

THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL

1697.

Up and down the village streets

Strange are the forms my fancy meets,

For the thoughts and things of to-day are 'hid,
And through the veil of a closed lid
The ancient worthies I see again:

I hear the tap of the elder's cane,
And his awful periwig I see,

And the silver buckles of shoe and knee.
Stately and slow, with thoughtful air,

His black cap hiding his whitened hair

Walks the Judge of the Great Assize,
Samuel Sewall the good and wise.
His face with lines of firmness wrought,
He wears the look of a man unbought
Who swears to his hurt and changes not;
Yet, touched and softened nevertheless
With the grace of Christian gentleness,
The face that a child would climb to kiss!
True, and tender, and brave, and just,
That man might honor and woman trust.

Touching and sad, a tale is told,
Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old,
Of the fast which the good man life-long kept
With a haunting sorrow that never slept,
As the circling year brought round the time
Of an error that left the sting of crime,
When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft courts,
With the laws of Moses and Hale's Reports,
And spake, in the name of both, the word
That gave the witch's neck to the cord,
And piled the oaken planks that pressed
The feeble life from the warlock's breast!
All the day long, from dawn to dawn,
His door was bolted, his curtain drawn ;
No foot on his silent threshold trod,
No eye looked on him save that of God,
As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms
Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms,
And, with precious proofs from the sacred word
Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord,
His faith confirmed and his trust renewed
That the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued,
Might be washed away in the mingled flood
Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood!

Green forever the memory be

Of the Judge of the old Theocracy,
Whom even his errors glorified,

PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL.

Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side
By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide!
Honor and praise to the Puritan

Who the halting step of his age outran,
And, seeing the infinite worth of man
In the priceless gift the Father gave,
In the infinite love that stooped to save,
Dared not brand his brother a slave!
"Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say,
In his own quaint, picture-loving way,

Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade

Which God shall cast down upon his head!"

Widely as heaven and hell, contrast
That brave old jurist of the past

And the cunning trickster and knave of courts
Who the holy features of Truth distorts,———
Ruling as right the will of the strong,

Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong;

Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weak Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek

Scoffing aside at party's nod

Order of nature and law of God;

For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste,
Reverence folly, and awe misplaced;

Justice of whom 'twere vain to seek

As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik !
Oh! leave the wretch to his bribes and sins;
Let him rot in the web of lies he spins!
To the saintly soul of the early day,
To the Christian judge, let us turn and say:
"Praise and thanks, for an honest man!-
Glory to God for the Puritan ! "

I see, far southward, this quiet day, The hills of Newbury rolling away, With the many tints of the season gay, Dreamily blending in autumn mist Crimson, and gold, and amethyst.

315

Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,
Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,
A stone's toss over the narrow sound.
Inland, as far as the eye can go,

The hills curve round like a bended bow;
A silver arrow from out them sprung,
I see the shine of the Quasycung;
And, round and round, over valley and hill,
Old roads winding, as old roads will,
Here to a ferry, and there to a mill;
And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves,
Through green elm arches and inaple leaves,-
Old homesteads sacred to all that can
Gladden or sadden the heart of man,-
Over whose thresholds of oak and stone
Life and Death have come and gone!
There pictured tiles in the fireplace show,
Great beams sag from the ceiling low,
The dresser glitters with polished wares,
The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs,
And the low, broad chimney shows the crack
By the earthquake made a century back.
Up from their midst springs the village spire
With the crest of its cock in the sun afire;
Beyond are orchards and planting lands,
And great salt marshes and glimmering sands,
And, where north and south the coast-lines run,
The blink of the sea in breeze and sun!

I see it all like a chart unrolled,
But my thoughts are full of the past and old,
I hear the tales of my boyhood told;
And the shadows and shapes of early days
Flit dimly by in the veiling haze,

With measured movement and rhythmic chime
Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme.
I think of the old man wise and good
Who once on yon misty hill-sides stood,
(A poet who never measured rhyme,