Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/100

POEMS OF MANHATTAN In petticoats of linsey-red,

And jackets neatly kept,

The vrouws their knitting-needles sped

And deftly spun and swept.

Few modern-school flirtations there

Set wheels of scandal trundling,

But youths and maidens did their share

Of staid, old-fashioned bundling.

—The New Year opened clear and cold;

The snow, a Flemish ell

In depth, lay over Beeckman's Wold

And Wolfert's frozen well.

Each burgher shook his kitchen-doors,

Drew on his Holland leather,

Then stamped through drifts to do the chores,

Beshrewing all such weather.

But—after herring, ham, and kraut—

To all the gathered town

The Dominie preached the morning out,

In Calvinistic gown;

While tough old Peter Stuyvesant

Sat pewed in foremost station,—

The potent, sage, and valiant

Third Governor of the nation.

Prayer over, at his mansion hall,

With cake and courtly smile

He met the people, one and all,

In gubernatorial style;

Yet missed, though now the day was old,

An ancient fellow-feaster,—

Heer Govert Loockermans, that bold

Brewer and burgomeester;

Who, in his farm-house, close without

The picket's eastern end, 70