times, a droning airplane went,
No flicker of astonishment
Could lift the heavy eyelids on one gossip's up-turned face.

For William Speakman could not tell--so thick the grasses grow--
If that strange humming in the sky
Meant that the Judgment Day were nigh,
Or if 'twas but the summer bees that blundered to and fro.

And then, across the breathless wood, a Bell began to sound,
The only Bell that wakes the dead,
And Stockton Signer raised his head,
And called to all the deacons in the ancient burial-ground.

"The Bell, the Bell is ringing! Give me back my rusty sword.
Though I thought the wars were done,
Though I thought our peace was won,
Yet I signed the Declaration, and the dead must keep their word.

"There's only one great ghost I know could make that 'larum ring.
It's the captain that we knew
In the ancient buff and blue,
It's our Englishman, George Washington, who fought the German king!"

So the sunset saw them mustering beneath their brooding boughs,
Ancient shadows of our sires,
Kindling with the ancient fires,
While the old cracked Bell to southward shook the ancient meeting house.

PRINCETON
(_1917_)

The first four lines of this poem were written for inscription on the
first joint memorial to the American and British soldiers who fell in
the Revolutionary War. This memorial was recently dedicated at
Princeton.

I.

_Here Freedom stood, by slaughtered friend and foe,
And ere the wrath paled or that sunset died,
Looked through the ages: then, with eyes aglow,
Laid them, to wait that future, side by side._

II.

Now lamp-lit gardens in the blue dusk shine
Through dog-wood red and white,
And round the gray quadrangles, line by line,
The windows fill with light,
Where Princeton calls to Magdalen, tower to tower,
Twin lanthorns of the law,
And those cream-white magnolia boughs embower
The halls of old Nassau.

III.

The dark bronze tigers crouch on either side
Where red-coats used to pass,
And round the bird-loved house where Mercer died
And violets dusk the grass,
By Stony Brook that ran so red of old,
But sings of friendship now,
To feed the old enemy's harvest fifty-fold
The green earth takes the plough.

IV.

Through this May night if one great ghost should stray
With deep remembering eyes,
Where that old meadow of battle smiles away
Its blood-stained memories,
If Washington should walk, where friend and foe
Slee