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Subject: [GM-L] Grandmother's Story ~ Bunker Hill 1775 Part 2 of 2
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 15:24:13 EDT

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

Part 2 of 2 - Bunker Hill
p.13

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 crown
is flying
Like a billow that has broken and is shivered into
spray.

Then we cried, "The troops are routed! They are
beat - it cant be doubted!
God be thanked, the fight is over!
An old soldier's smile!

Are they beaten? Are they beaten? Are they
beaten?" "Wait a while."

O the trembling and the terror! 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 Charles-
town blazing!
They have fired the harmless village; in an hour it
will be down!
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 earth-
work 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 backwards
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 battles'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 afeard there'll be more trouble afore the 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.

And 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 o'er a deck;
How, driven, yet scarce defeated, our worn-out men
retreated,
With the 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 afrighted 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,

p.17

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, "Oh, 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 are all here!"

Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/

In 1875 the poet laureate of Boston, Oliver Wendell Holmes, called upon to
commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill in verse, he produced a verse of the
tragedy and heroics of the fateful day - the dawn of American freedom. Holmes
tells the story from an original angle: Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill
Battle (as she saw it from the belfry.)

Boston (Mass.)

Celebration of the centennial anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill.

With an appendix containing a survey of the literature of the battle, its

antecedents and results. Boston, Printed by order of the City council,

1875.





See also:

<A
HREF="http://www.cyberschool.k12.or.us/~layton/biographies/h/oliverwendellholm

es/oliverwendellholmes.html">Oliver Wendell Holmes</A>

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