Who knows, thought I, but he has come,
  By Charon kindly ferried,
To tell me of a mighty sum
  Behind my wainscot buried? 
There is a buccaneerish air
  About that garb outlandish—­ 70
Just then the ghost drew up his chair
  And said, ’My name is Standish.

’I come from Plymouth, deadly bored
  With toasts, and songs, and speeches,
As long and flat as my old sword,
  As threadbare as my breeches: 
They understand us Pilgrims! they,
  Smooth men with rosy faces. 
Strength’s knots and gnarls all pared away,
  And varnish in their places! 80

’We had some toughness in our grain,
  The eye to rightly see us is
Not just the one that lights the brain
  Of drawing-room Tyrtaeuses: 
They talk about their Pilgrim blood,
  Their birthright high and holy! 
A mountain-stream that ends in mud
  Methinks is melancholy.

’He had stiff knees, the Puritan,
  That were not good at bending;
The homespun dignity of man 91
  He thought was worth defending;
He did not, with his pinchbeck ore,
  His country’s shame forgotten,
Gild Freedom’s coffin o’er and o’er,
  When all within was rotten.

’These loud ancestral boasts of yours,
  How can they else than vex us? 
Where were your dinner orators
  When slavery grasped at Texas? 100
Dumb on his knees was every one
  That now is bold as Caesar;
Mere pegs to hang an office on
  Such stalwart men as these are.’

‘Good sir,’ I said, ’you seem much stirred;
  The sacred compromises’—­
’Now God confound the dastard word! 
  My gall thereat arises: 
Northward it hath this sense alone
  That you, your conscience blinding, 110
Shall bow your fool’s nose to the stone,
  When slavery feels like grinding.

’’Tis shame to see such painted sticks
  In Vane’s and Winthrop’s places,
To see your spirit of Seventy-Six
  Drag humbly in the traces,
With slavery’s lash upon her back,
  And herds, of office-holders
To shout applause, as, with a crack, 119
  It peels her patient shoulders.

’We forefathers to such a rout!—­
  No, by my faith in God’s word!’
Half rose the ghost, and half drew out
  The ghost of his old broadsword,
Then thrust it slowly back again,
  And said, with reverent gesture,
’No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain
  The hem of thy white vesture.

’I feel the soul in me draw near
  The mount of prophesying; 130
In this bleak wilderness I hear
  A John the Baptist crying;
Far in the east I see upleap
  The streaks of first forewarning,
And they who sowed the light shall reap
  The golden sheaves of morning.

’Child of our travail and our woe,
  Light in our day of sorrow,
Through my rapt spirit I foreknow
  The glory of thy morrow; 140
I hear great steps, that through the shade
  Draw nigher still and nigher,
And voices call like that which bade
  The prophet come up higher.’