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Subject: [GM-L] Grandmother's Story ~ Bunker Hill 1775 Part 1
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 19:45:04 EDT

My thanks to Ann Keegan who sent me 4 lines of this epic poem and within
minutes
found it online when I said I would love to read it through! A treasure and
something
that flows so nicely to be read to children & grandchildren for betime
stories. Janice

Subject: Grandmother's Story ~ Bunker Hill 1775
By Oliver Wendell Holmes


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 poeple;
The pidgions circled round us as we climbed the creaking
stair,
Just across the narrow river - Oh, 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 cannon's
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 redcoats'
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 reddeniing, 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;
For behind their 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 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 tone 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!

To be continued - Part 2 - p. 13.
Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth

<A
HREF="http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moa;cc=moa;sid=175f

1d43475dac1614dc30360ca33bc9;idno=ABX7910.0001.001;view=image;seq=0003">
Grandmother's Story - 1775 - Bunker Hill. Oliver W. Holmes</A> Part 2. p. 13

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