Who knows, thought I, but he has come, By Charon kindly ferried, To tell me of a mighty sum Behind my wainscot buried? There is a buccaneerish air About that garb outlandish-- 70 Just then the ghost drew up his chair And said, 'My name is Standish.
'I come from Plymouth, deadly bored With toasts, and songs, and speeches, As long and flat as my old sword, As threadbare as my breeches: _They_ understand us Pilgrims! they, Smooth men with rosy faces. Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away, And varnish in their places! 80
'We had some toughness in our grain, The eye to rightly see us is Not just the one that lights the brain Of drawing-room Tyrtæuses: _They_ talk about their Pilgrim blood, Their birthright high and holy! A mountain-stream that ends in mud Methinks is melancholy.
'He had stiff knees, the Puritan, That were not good at bending; The homespun dignity of man 91 He thought was worth defending; He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, His country's shame forgotten, Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, When all within was rotten.
'These loud ancestral boasts of yours, How can they else than vex us? Where were your dinner orators When slavery grasped at Texas? 100 Dumb on his knees was every one That now is bold as Cæsar; Mere pegs to hang an office on Such stalwart men as these are.'
'Good sir,' I said, 'you seem much stirred; The sacred compromises'-- 'Now God confound the dastard word! My gall thereat arises: Northward it hath this sense alone That you, your conscience blinding, 110 Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone, When slavery feels like grinding.
''Tis shame to see such painted sticks In Vane's and Winthrop's places, To see your spirit of Seventy-Six Drag humbly in the traces, With slavery's lash upon her back, And herds, of office-holders To shout applause, as, with a crack, 119 It peels her patient shoulders.
'_We_ forefathers to such a rout!-- No, by my faith in God's word!' Half rose the ghost, and half drew out The ghost of his old broadsword, Then thrust it slowly back again, And said, with reverent gesture, 'No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain The hem of thy white vesture.
'I feel the soul in me draw near The mount of prophesying; 130 In this bleak wilderness I hear A John the Baptist crying; Far in the east I see upleap The streaks of first forewarning, And they who sowed the light shall reap The golden sheaves of morning.