Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/89

Rh One long century hath been numbered,
 * And another half-way told,

Since the rustic Irish gleeman
 * Broke for them the virgin mould.

Deftly set to Celtic music,
 * At his violin’s sound they grew,

Through the moonlit eves of summer,
 * Making Amphion’s fable true.

Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant!
 * Pass in jerkin green along,

With thy eyes brimful of laughter,
 * And thy mouth as full of song.

Pioneer of Erin’s outcasts,
 * With his fiddle and his pack;

Little dreamed the village Saxons
 * Of the myriads at his back.

How he wrought with spade and fiddle,
 * Delved by day and sang by night,

With a hand that never wearied,
 * And a heart forever light,—

Still the gay tradition mingles
 * With a record grave and drear,

Like the rollic air of Cluny
 * With the solemn march of Mear.

When the box-tree, white with blossoms,
 * Made the sweet May woodlands glad,

And the Aronia by the river
 * Lighted up the swarming shad,

And the bulging nets swept shoreward,
 * With their silver-sided haul,

Midst the shouts of dripping fishers,
 * He was merriest of them all.

When, among the jovial buskers,
 * Love stole in at Labor’s side,

With the lusty airs of England
 * Soft his Celtic measures vied.

Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake,
 * And the merry fair’s carouse;

Of the wild Red Fox of Erin
 * And the Woman of Three Cows,

By the blazing hearths of winter,
 * Pleasant seemed his simple tales,

Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends
 * And the mountain myths of Wales.

How the souls in Purgatory
 * Scrambled up from fate forlorn,

On St. Keven’s sackcloth ladder,
 * Slyly hitched to Satan’s horn.

Of the fiddler who at Tara
 * Played all night to ghosts of kings;

Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies
 * Dancing in their moorland rings!

Jolliest of our birds of singing,
 * Best he loved the Bob-o-link.

“Hush!” he ’d say, “the tipsy fairies!
 * Hear the little folks in drink!”

Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle,
 * Singing through the ancient town,

Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant,
 * Hath Tradition handed down.

Not a stone his grave discloses;
 * But if yet his spirit walks,

’T is beneath the trees he planted,
 * And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks;

Green memorials of the gleeman!
 * Linking still the river-shores,

With their shadows cast by sunset,
 * Stand Hugh Tallant’s sycamores!

When the Father of his Country
 * Through the north-land riding came,

And the roofs were starred with banners,
 * And the steeples rang acclaim,—

When each war-scarred Continental,
 * Leaving smithy, mill, and farm,

Waved his rusted sword in welcome,
 * And shot off his old king’s-arm,—

Slowly passed that august Presence
 * Down the thronged and shouting street;

Village girls as white as angels
 * Scattering flowers around his feet.

Midway, where the plane-tree’s shadow
 * Deepest fell, his rein he drew:

On his stately head, uncovered,
 * Cool and soft the west-wind blew.

And he stood up in his stirrups,
 * Looking up and looking down

On the hills of Gold and Silver
 * Rimming round the little town,—