Poems (Allen)/In the Defences

by Elizabeth Chase Allen

IN THE DEFENCES.

LONG the ramparts which surround the town
 I walk with evening, marking all the while
How night and autumn, closing softly down,
 Leave on the land a blessing and a smile.

In the broad streets the sounds of tumult cease,
 The gorgeous sunset reddens roof and spire,
The city sinks to quietude and peace,
 Sleeping, like Saturn, in a ring of fire;

Circled with forts, whose grim and threatening walls
 Frown black with cannon, whose abated breath
Waits the command to send the fatal balls
 Upon their errands of dismay and death.

And see, directing, guiding, silently
 Flash from afar the mystic signal lights,
As gleamed the fiery pillar in the sky
 Leading by night the wandering Israelites.

The earthworks, draped with summer weeds and vines,
 The rifle-pits, half hid with tangled briers,
But wait their time; for see, along the lines
 Rise the faint smokes of lonesome picket-fires,

Where sturdy sentinels on silent beat
 Cheat the long hours of wakeful loneliness
With thoughts of home, and faces dear and sweet,
 And, on the edge of danger, dream of bliss.

Yet at a word, how wild and fierce a change
 Would rend and startle all the earth and skies
With blinding glare, and noises dread and strange,
 And shrieks, and shouts, and deathly agonies.

The wide-mouthed guns would war, and hissing shells
 Would pierce the shuddering sky with fiery thrills,
The battle rage and roll in thunderous swells,
 And war's fierce anguish shake the solid hills.

But now how tranquilly the golden gloom
 Creeps up the gorgeous forest-slopes, and flows
Down valleys blue with fringy aster-bloom,—
 An atmosphere of safety and repose.

Against the sunset lie the darkening hills,
 Mushroomed with tents, the sudden growth of war;
The frosty autumn air, that blights and chills,
 Yet brings its own full recompense therefor;

Rich colors light the leafy solitudes,
 And far and near the gazer's eyes behold
The oak's deep scarlet, warming all the woods,
 And spendthrift maples scattering their gold.

The pale beech shivers with prophetic woe,
 The towering chestnut ranks stand blanched and thinned,
Yet still the fearless sumac dares the foe,
 And waves its bloody guidons in the wind.

Where mellow haze the hill's sharp outline dims,
 Bare elms, like sentinels, watch silently,
The delicate tracery of their slender limbs
Pencilled in purple on the saffron sky.

Content and quietude and plenty seem
 Blessing the place, and sanctifying all;
And hark! how pleasantly a hidden stream
 Sweetens the silence with its silver fall!

The failing grasshopper chirps faint and shrill,
 The cricket calls, in mossy covert hid,
Cheery and loud, as stoutly answering still
 The soft persistence of the katydid.

With dead moths tangled in its blighted bloom,
 The golden-rod swings lonesome on its throne,
Forgot of bees; and in the thicket's gloom,
 The last belated peewee cries alone.

The hum of voices, and the careless laugh
 Of cheerful talkers, fall upon the ear;
The flag flaps listlessly adown its staff;
 And still the katydid pipes loud and near.

And now from far the bugle's mellow throat
 Pours out, in rippling flow, its silver tide;
And up the listening hills the echoes float
 Faint and more faint and sweetly multiplied.

Peace reigns; not now a soft-eyed nynph that sleeps
 Unvexed by dreams of strife or conqueror,
But Power, that, open-eyed and watchful, keeps
 Unwearied vigil on the brink of war.

Night falls; in silence sleep the patriot bands;
 The tireless cricket yet repeats its tune,
And the still figure of the sentry stands
 In black relief against the low full moon.