Most gin’lly ollers call it John Bull’s Run). 
The field o’ Lexin’ton where England tried
The fastest colours thet she ever dyed,
An’ Concord Bridge, thet Davis, when he came,
Found was the bee-line track to heaven an’ fame, 20
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 of’en, ef it ain’t in rhyme;
But the’ ’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 l’iter there while night grows still,
An’ in the twinklin’ villages about,
Fust here, then there, the well-saved lights goes out, 30
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 eend, then tries agin: 
My gran’ther’s rule was safer ’n ’tis 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; 40
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. 50

Ez I was settin’ so, it warn’t long sence,
Mixin’ the puffict 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:  ‘twas a kind o’ sough
Like pine-trees thet the wind’s ageth’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 60
‘Twas Concord Bridge a talkin’ off to kill
With the Stone Spike thet’s druv thru Bunker’s Hill;
Whether ’twas so, or ef I on’y 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
The British sogers killed in our gret fight 70
(Nigh fifty year they hedn’t stirred nor spoke)
Made sech a coil you’d thought a dam hed broke: 
Why, one he up an’ beat a revellee
With his own crossbones on a holler tree,
Till all the graveyards swarmed out like a hive
With faces I hain’t seen sence Seventy-five. 
Wut is the news?  ‘T ain’t good, or they’d be cheerin’. 
Speak slow an’ clear, for I’m some hard o’ hearin’.