Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,

Fair as a garden of the Lord

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde

On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain wall,

Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,

She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.

Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.

'Halt!'-the dust-brown ranks stood fast. 'Fire!'-out blazed the rifle-blast.

It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.

'Shoot, if you must, this old grey head,
But spare your country's flag,' she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word:
'Who touches a hair of yon grey head
Dies like a dog! March on!' he said.
All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:

All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.

Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;
And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.

Whittier.

XCIV

A BALLAD OF THE FLEET

AT Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying

from far away:

'Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fiftythree !'

Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "Fore God I

am no coward;

But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out

of gear,

And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.

We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fiftythree?'

Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: 'I know you are no coward;

You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.

But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick

ashore.

I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,

To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.'

So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,

Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer

heaven;

But Sir Richard bore in hand all the sick men from the land

Very carefully and slow,

Men of Bideford in Devon,

And we laid them on the ballast down below;

For we brought them all aboard,

And they blest him in their pain, that they were not

left to Spain,

To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.

He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,

And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,

With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather

bow.

'Shall we fight or shall we fly? Good Sir Richard, tell us now, For to fight is but to die!

There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.'

And Sir Richard said again: 'We be all good English

men.

Let us bang those dogs of Seville, the children of the

devil,

For I never turned my back upon Don or devil yet.'

Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so

The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the

foe,

With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;

For half their fleet to the right and half to the left

were seen,

And the little Revenge ran on through the long sealane between.

Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their

decks and laughed,

Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad

little craft

Running on and on, till delayed

By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,

And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,

Took the breath from our sails, and we stayed.

And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud

Whence the thunderbolt will fall

Long and loud,

Four galleons drew away

From the Spanish fleet that day,

And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,

And the battle thunder broke from them all.

But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went,

Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;

And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,

For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,

And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears

When he leaps from the water to the land.