Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.

At Trinity

Andrew E. Watrous

WHERE Wall Street’s head from full Broadway

Takes portions of the surge and spray,

By silent night, and roaring day,

Its graves it guardeth.

The jetsam of the swollen stream,

Profounder far their peace doth seem,

For tossing drift that from their dream,

The still close wardeth.

In days when Bleecker Street was rus,

And Murray Hill as is to us

Champlain, Au Sable; when this fuss

And fret were quiet;

When ladies yet might think it queer

To date in 18—; when all here,

In brief, was up-town—in the year,

Say ’08,—I spy it.

Perchance, in there among the pews,

Turned down his Sunday buckled shoes,

Knight Lawrence—ere that latest cruise—

The stainless sinner!

Trite wonder, where his tomb doth stand.

Had he a thought? The rector’s hand

He pressed, most like. Just back to land,

And drove to dinner.

Yet, haply, here from me a span,

Some stopped to chat of the new man

In Portugal, and his great plan

For Boney brewing.

How Burr’d turned up again, some said,

Young Irving made abroad great head,

And how of Gallic power the spread

We’d all be ruing.

Splash, splash! the midnight’s fresh laid dust

The swift aids churn the mud—needs must,

The troops, from off Long Island thrust,

Are marching nor’ward.

Lord Sterling’s taken, and his men

All slain—the field was but a pen

Of slaughter: we’re the King’s again

From this time forward.

It buffets back the lines-men’s drum,

Steel-fringed the scarlet ribbons come,

Strong silence through the sullen hum

St. George back bringing.

Even the gliding of their files,

In step that tells upon the miles,

They wheel—cling, clang, upon the aisles

Their muskets ringing.

Strain pipe and bellows! Belfry sway!

Roar street and slip! We greet to-day

Primmest of patres patriæ,

Great George!—it endeth.

Scant gleaner I amid the dead;

The reaper closely harvested;

A gesture here, a word there said,

Are all he lendeth.

What point or purpose had their fate?

They lived, and unlived; like a slate

Their old place is—our names the late

Their places borrow.

Rubbed out, writ in; it seemeth strange

To me, and plain to you—we’ll change;

The old thought and the new will range

This time to-morrow.

And, silent ones, if what one saith,

You hear, and comforts life in death

As death in life, you’ll wish for breath

To make me know it.

For, somehow, when first seen the place,

It seemed to nourish more the grace

Of kinship than did all the space

Above, below it.

Come on, friend—here we may not lie;

Our place is taken, yet may I,

And you, find some day time to die—

A rest remaineth.

Some spot is ours—a quiet nook,

Where shade and shine make pipe and book

To idlers pleasant: thither look,

Where peace sole reigneth.