WEAPONS OF WAR AND CHASE
They hang on the carven oaken wall
Of picturesque, ancestral hall,
Armors in ancient battles worn,
Banners and pennons shred and torn;
Cuirass and helmet, gorget bright,
Dinted and pierc'd in stormy fight,
Breastplate and morion, casques of proof,
Hanging from rafter and groined roof.
Burnish'd shields that have turn'd aside
Bullet and arrow in battletide;
Swords double-handed, claymore blade,
By Scottish hands in forays sway'd--
Weapons of every age and race
In this old gallery find a place.
Stilleto, dagger, and poniard keen,
Toledo rapier, Highland skene,
Banners that stream'd from castle crag,
Trafalgar Nelson's blazon'd flag,
Standards at Moscow's gate that flew,
Or wav'd in the flames of Waterloo,
Banners of Cressy and Poitiers,
Star-flags that wav'd on Bunker's height,
Or Marston Moor in the vanish'd years,
Flags of the old Saratoga fight,
Blood-red ensigns of Lundy Lane,
Of Orleans, borne o'er the British slain;
Flags of the grand, chivalric joust,
Where spears were shiver'd and lances lost;
Flags of Gettysburg's stricken field,
Or where the cannon of Shiloh peal'd;
And many another tatter'd fold,
Scorch'd in the fires, in slaughter roll'd.
There were weapons of Indian strife,
Red tomahawk and scalping-knife;
Buckler of skin and wampum crest,
War-club and sling of the savage West,
Shafts of a prehistoric race,
Fashion'd for ravage or the chase;
Knife of the Norseman, keen to slay,
Pawnee arrows of lawless fray,
Spears of the ruthless Carib band,
Light assegais of Afric land.
Deerhorn naliget, tipt with steel
Of Arctic hunter of the seal;
A Feejee paddle and war-canoe
Once mann'd by a Cannibal Island crew.
All these momentoes of peace and war,
From frozen pole to the tropics far,
Shine out as the sunbeam filters clear
O'er kandjar, creese, and spur and spear;
They rest in peace from hunt and fight,
The dust of years gathers on them white;
They crumble in Time's corroding rust,
The hands that fashion'd them lie in dust.
These weapons remind of other years,
When swept the Saxon with plump of spears,
Of pulk of Cossacks in wild hurrah,
Storming around Napoleon's war;
Of Indian tribesmen o'er grassy plain,
The plunging chargers, the tossing mane,
The swinging lariat, levell'd lance,
The massacre, the great war dance,
And of many another stirring scene--
When these old weapons were bright and keen.
