Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill
Battle as She
Saw it from the Belfry
By Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 �
1894) |
 |
|
'Tis like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one
remembers
All the achings and the quakings of "the times
that tried men's souls";
When I talk of _Whig_ and
_Tory_, when I tell the _Rebel_ story,
To you the
words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals.
I
had heard the muskets' rattle of the April running battle;
Lord Percy's hunted soldiers, I can see their red coats
still;
But a deadly chill comes o'er me, as the day looms
up before me,
When a thousand men lay bleeding on the
slopes of Bunker's Hill.
'Twas a peaceful
summer's morning, when the first thing gave us warning
Was the booming of the cannon from the river and the shore:
"Child," says grandma, "what's the matter, what is all this
noise and clatter?
Have those scalping Indian devils come
to murder us once more?"
Poor old soul! my sides were
shaking in the midst of all my quaking
To hear her talk
of Indians when the guns began to roar:
She had seen the
burning village, and the slaughter and the pillage,
When
the Mohawks killed her father, with their bullets through
his door.
Then I said, "Now, dear old granny, don't
you fret and worry any,
For I'll soon come back and tell
you whether this is work or play;
There can't be mischief
in it, so I won't be gone a minute"--
For a minute then I
started. I was gone the livelong day.
No time for
bodice-lacing or for looking-glass grimacing;
Down my
hair went as I hurried, tumbling half-way to my heels;
God forbid your ever knowing, when there's blood around her
flowing,
How the lonely, helpless daughter of a quiet
household feels!
In the street I heard a thumping;
and I knew it was the stumping
Of the Corporal, our old
neighbor, on that wooden leg he wore,
With a knot of
women round him,--it was lucky I had found him,--
So I
followed with the others, and the Corporal marched before.
They were making for the steeple,--the old soldier and
his people;
The pigeons circled round us as we climbed
the creaking stair,
Just across the narrow river--O, so
close it made me shiver!--
Stood a fortress on the
hilltop that but yesterday was bare.
Not slow our
eyes to find it; well we knew who stood behind it,
Though
the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls
were dumb:
Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking
wild upon each other,
And their lips were white with
terror as they said, THE HOUR HAS COME!
The
morning slowly wasted, not a morsel had we tasted,
And
our heads were almost splitting with the cannons'
deafening thrill,
When a figure tall and stately round
the rampart strode sedately;
It was PRESCOTT, one since
told me; he commanded on the hill.
Every woman's
heart grew bigger when we saw his manly figure,
With the
banyan buckled round it, standing up so straight and
tall;
Like a gentleman of leisure who is strolling out
for pleasure,
Through the storm of shells and cannon-shot
he walked around the wall.
At eleven the streets
were swarming, for the red-coats' ranks were forming;
At noon in marching order they were moving to the piers;
How the bayonets gleamed and glistened, as we looked far
down and listened
To the trampling and the drum-beat of
the belted grenadiers!
At length the men have
started, with a cheer (it seemed faint-hearted),
In
their scarlet regimentals, with their knapsacks on their
backs,
And the reddening, rippling water, as after a
sea-fight's slaughter,
Round the barges gliding onward
blushed like blood along their tracks.
So they
crossed to the other border, and again they formed in order;
And the boats came back for soldiers, came for soldiers,
soldiers still:
The time seemed everlasting to us women
faint and fasting,--
At last they're moving, marching,
marching proudly up the hill.
We can see the bright
steel glancing all along the lines advancing--
Now the
front rank fires a volley--they have thrown away their shot;
Far behind the earthwork lying, all the balls above them
flying,
Our people need not hurry; so they wait and
answer not.
Then the Corporal, our old cripple (he
would swear sometimes and tipple),--
He had heard the
bullets whistle (in the old French war) before,--
Calls
out in words of jeering, just as if they all were hearing,--
And his wooden leg thumps fiercely on the dusty belfry
floor:--
"Oh! fire away, ye villains, and earn
King George's shillin's,
But ye'll waste a ton of powder
afore a 'rebel' falls;
You may bang the dirt and welcome,
they're as safe as Dan'l Malcolm
Ten foot beneath the
gravestone that you've splintered with your balls!"
In the hush of expectation, in the awe and trepidation
Of the dread approaching moment, we are well-nigh breathless
all;
Though the rotten bars are failing on the rickety
belfry railing,
We are crowding up against them like the
waves against a wall.
Just a glimpse (the air is
clearer), they are nearer,--nearer,-- nearer,
When a
flash--a curling smoke-wreath--then a crash--the steeple
shakes--
The deadly truce is ended; the tempest's shroud
is rended;
Like a morning mist it gathered, like a
thunder-cloud it breaks!
O the sight our eyes
discover as the blue-black smoke blows over!
The
red-coats stretched in windrows as a mower rakes his hay;
Here a scarlet heap is lying, there a headlong crowd is
flying
Like a billow that has broken and is shivered into
spray.
Then we cried, "The troops are routed! they
are beat--it can't be doubted!
God be thanked, the
fight is over!"--Ah! the grim old soldier's smile!
"Tell us, tell us why you look so?" (we could hardly speak,
we shook so),--
"Are they beaten? _Are_ they beaten? ARE
they beaten?"-- "Wait a while."
O the trembling
and the terror! for too soon we saw our error:
They are
baffled, not defeated; we have driven them back in vain;
And the columns that were scattered, round the colors that
were tattered,
Toward the sullen silent fortress turn
their belted breasts again.
All at once, as we are
gazing, lo the roofs of Charlestown blazing!
They have
fired the harmless village; in an hour it will be down!
The Lord in heaven confound them, rain his fire and
brimstone round them,--
The robbing, murdering
red-coats, that would burn a peaceful town!
They are
marching, stern and solemn; we can see each massive column
As they near the naked earth-mound with the slanting walls
so steep.
Have our soldiers got faint-hearted, and in
noiseless haste departed?
Are they panic-struck and
helpless? Are they palsied or asleep?
Now! the walls
they're almost under! scarce a rod the foes asunder!
Not
a firelock flashed against them! up the earthwork they
will swarm!
But the words have scarce been spoken, when
the ominous calm is broken,
And a bellowing crash has
emptied all the vengeance of the storm!
So again,
with murderous slaughter, pelted backward to the water,
Fly Pigot's running heroes and the frightened braves of
Howe;
And we shout, "At last they're done for, it's their
barges they have run for:
They are beaten, beaten,
beaten; and the battle's over now!"
And we looked,
poor timid creatures, on the rough old soldier's
features,
Our lips afraid to question, but he knew what
we would ask:
"Not sure," he said; "keep quiet,--once
more, I guess, they'll try it--
Here's damnation to
the cut-throats!" then he handed me his flask,
Saying, "Gal, you're looking shaky; have a drop of old
Jamaiky:
I'm afraid there'll be more trouble afore this
job is done;"
So I took one scorching swallow; dreadful
faint I felt and hollow,
Standing there from early
morning when the firing was begun.
All through those
hours of trial I had watched a calm clock dial,
As the
hands kept creeping, creeping,--they were creeping round
to four,
When the old man said, "They're forming with
their bayonets fixed for storming:
It's the death grip
that's a coming,--they will try the works once more."
With brazen trumpets blaring, the flames behind them
glaring,
The deadly wall before them, in close array they
come;
Still onward, upward toiling, like a dragon's fold
uncoiling--
Like the rattlesnake's shrill warning the
reverberating drum!
Over heaps all torn and
gory--shall I tell the fearful story,
How they surged
above the breastwork, as a sea breaks over a deck;
How,
driven, yet scarce defeated, our worn-out men retreated,
With their powder-horns all emptied, like the swimmers from
a wreck?
It has all been told and painted; as for me,
they say I fainted,
And the wooden-legged old Corporal
stumped with me down the stair:
When I woke from dreams
affrighted the evening lamps were lighted,--
On the floor
a youth was lying; his bleeding breast was bare.
And
I heard through all the flurry, "Send for WARREN! hurry!
hurry!
Tell him here's a soldier bleeding, and he'll come
and dress his wound!"
Ah, we knew not till the morrow
told its tale of death and sorrow,
How the starlight
found him stiffened on the dark and bloody ground.
Who the youth was, what his name was, where the place from
which he came was,
Who had brought him from the battle,
and had left him at our door,
He could not speak to tell
us; but 'twas one of our brave fellows,
As the homespun
plainly showed us which the dying soldier wore.
For
they all thought he was dying, as they gathered 'round
him crying,--
And they said, "O, how they'll miss him!"
and, "What will his mother do?"
Then, his eyelids just
unclosing like a child's that has been dozing,
He faintly
murmured, "Mother!"--and--I saw his eyes were blue.
--"Why, grandma, how you're winking!"--Ah, my child, it
sets me thinking
Of a story not like this one. Well, he
somehow lived along;
So we came to know each other, and I
nursed him like a--mother,
Till at last he stood before
me, tall, and rosy-cheeked, and strong.
And we
sometimes walked together in the pleasant summer weather;
--"Please to tell us what his name was?"--Just your own,
my little dear,--
There's his picture Copley painted: we
became so well acquainted,
That--in short, that's why I'm
grandma, and you children all are here! |
By Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 � 1894)
Listed May
21, 2012 |
Battle of Bunker Hill
occurred on June 17, 1775. |
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