High leaped the perch.  The hawk screamed joy. 
      Under Joost’s belly musically
    The ripples broke.  Bright clouds convoy
    The brute that man would but destroy,
      And all instinctive agents rally
      Strong and medicinally.

    In vain!  The gurgling waters suck
      That old life under.  Herman swimming
    Seized but the horse tail.  Like a buck
    Breasting a lake in wild woods’ pluck,
      Joost rose, the glaze his bright eyes dimming,
      And blood his sockets brimming.

    Then voices speak and women cry. 
      The treading feet find soil to stand. 
    Above them the green ramparts lie,
    And twixt their shadows and the sky,
      The wondering burghers crowd the strand,
      And Herman help to land: 

    “Now to Newcastle’s English walls,
      Hail, Herman! and thy matchless stud!”
    Joost staggers up the bank and falls,
    And dying to his master crawls. 
      Yields up his long solicitude,
      And spills his veins of blood.

    In Herman’s arms his neck is prest,
      With martial pride his dark eye glazes;
    He feels the hand he loves the best
    Stroke fondly, and a chill of rest,
      As if he rolled in pasture daisies
      And heard in winds his praises: 

    “O couldst thou speak, what wouldst thou say? 
      I who can speak am dumb before thee. 
    Thine eyes that drink Olympian day
    Where steeds of wings thy soul convey,
      With pride of eagles circling o’er thee: 
      Thou seest I adore thee!

    “Bound to thy starry home and her
      Who brought me thee and left earth hollow! 
    An honored grave thy bones inter,
    And painting shall thy fame confer,
      Ere in thy shining track I follow,
      Thou courser of Apollo!”

NOTE TO HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR.[1]

The singular incident of this poem was published in 1862, in Rev. John Lednum’s “Personal Rise of Methodism,” and in the following words: 

“It is said that the Dutch had him (Herman) a prisoner of war, at one time, under sentence of death, in New York.  A short time before he was to be executed, he feigned himself to be deranged in mind, and requested that his horse should be brought to him in the prison.  The horse was brought, finely caparisoned.  Herman mounted him, and seemed to be performing military exercises, when, on the first opportunity, he bolted through one of the large windows, that was some fifteen feet above ground, leaped down, swam the North River, ran his horse through Jersey, and alighted on the bank of the Delaware, opposite Newcastle, and thus made his escape from death and the Dutch.  This daring feat, tradition says, he had transferred to canvas—­himself represented as standing by the side of his charger, from whose nostrils the blood was flowing.”—­Page 277.