Now, bein’ born in Middlesex, you know,
  There’s certin spots where I like best to go: 
  The Concord road, for instance, (I, for one,
  Most gin’lly ollers call it John Bull’s Run.)—­
  The field o’ Lexin’ton, where England tried
  The fastest colors thet she ever dyed,—­
  An’ Concord Bridge, thet Davis, when he came,
  Found was the bee-line track to heaven an’ fame,—­
  Ez all roads be by natur’, ef your soul
  Don’t sneak thru shun-pikes so’s to save the toll.

  They’re ’most too fur away, take too much time
  To visit often, ef it ain’t in rhyme;
  But there’s a walk thet’s hendier, a sight,
  An’ suits me fust-rate of a winter’s night,—­
  I mean the round whale’s-back o’ Prospect Hill. 
  I love to loiter there while night grows still,
  An’ in the twinklin’ villages about,
  Fust here, then there, the well-saved lights goes out,
  An’ nary sound but watch-dogs’ false alarms,
  Or muffled cock-crows from the drowsy farms,
  Where some wise rooster (men act jest thet way)
  Stands to’t thet moon-rise is the break o’ day: 
  So Mister Seward sticks a three-months pin
  Where the war’d oughto end, then tries agin;—­
  My gran’ther’s rule was safer’n ’t is to crow: 
  Don’t never prophesy—­onless ye know.

  I love to muse there till it kind o’ seems
  Ez ef the world went eddyin’ off in dreams. 
  The Northwest wind thet twitches at my baird
  Blows out o’ sturdier days not easy scared,
  An’ the same moon thet this December shines
  Starts out the tents an’ booths o’ Putnam’s lines;
  The rail-fence posts, acrost the hill thet runs,
  Turn ghosts o’ sogers should’rin’ ghosts o’ guns;
  Ez wheels the sentry, glints a flash o’ light
  Along the firelock won at Concord Fight,
  An’ ’twixt the silences, now fur, now nigh,
  Rings the sharp chellenge, hums the low reply. 
  Ez I was settin’ so, it warn’t long sence,
  Mixin’ the perfect with the present tense,
  I heerd two voices som’ers in the air,
  Though, ef I was to die, I can’t tell where: 
  Voices I call ’em:  ‘t was a kind o’ sough
  Like pine-trees thet the wind is geth’rin’ through;
  An’, fact, I thought it was the wind a spell,—­
  Then some misdoubted,—­couldn’t fairly tell,—­
  Fust sure, then not, jest as you hold an eel,—­
  I knowed, an’ didn’t,—­fin’lly seemed to feel
  ‘T was Concord Bridge a-talkin’ off to kill
  With the Stone Spike thet’s druv thru Bunker Hill: 
  Whether’t was so, or ef I only dreamed,
  I couldn’t say; I tell it ez it seemed.

  THE BRIDGE.

  Wal, neighbor, tell us, wut’s turned up thet’s new? 
  You’re younger’n I be,—­nigher Boston, tu;
  An’ down to Boston, ef you take their showin’,
  Wut they don’t know ain’t hardly wuth the knowin’. 
  There’s sunthin’ goin’ on, I know:  las’ night