Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/36

IN WAR TIME On their own heads be the slaughter, if their victims rise to harm them—

These Virginians! who believed not, nor would heed the warning mouth."

Says Old Brown,

Osawatomie Brown,

"The world shall see a Republic, or my name is not John Brown."

'T was the sixteenth of October, on the evening of a Sunday:

"This good work," declared the captain, "shall be on a holy night!"

It was on a Sunday evening, and before the noon of Monday,

With two sons, and Captain Stephens, fifteen privates—black and white,

Captain Brown,

Osawatomie Brown,

Marched across the bridged Potomac, and knocked the sentry down;

Took the guarded armory-building, and the muskets and the cannon;

Captured all the county majors and the colonels, one by one;

Scared to death each gallant scion of Virginia they ran on,

And before the noon of Monday, I say, the deed was done.

Mad Old Brown,

Osawatomie Brown,

With his eighteen other crazy men, went in and took the town.

Very little noise and bluster, little smell of powder made he;

It was all done in the midnight, like the Emperor's coup d'état. 6