Looked from the rocks of Marblehead Over the moaning and rainy sea, Looked for the coming that might not be!

What did the winds and the sea-birds say

Of the cruel captain who sailed away?

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

Through the street, on either side,
Up flew windows, doors swung wide;
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives
gray,

Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head, and fist, and hat, hat, and

cane,

And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain:

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt

And gave him a cloak to hide him in, And left him alone with his shame

Since the rustic Irish gleeman
Broke for them the virgin mould.

Deftly set to Celtic music,

At his violin's sound they grew, Through the moonlit eves of summer, Making Amphion's fable true.

Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant!
Pass in jerkin green along,
With thy eyes brimful of laughter,
And thy mouth as full of song.

Pioneer of Erin's outcasts,

With his fiddle and his pack;
Little dreamed the village Saxons
Of the myriads at his back.

How he wrought with spade and fiddle,
Delved by day and sang by night,
With a hand that never wearied,
And a heart forever light, -

Still the gay tradition mingles
With a record grave and drear,
Like the rolic air of Cluny,

With the solemn march of Mear.

When the box-tree, white with blos

soms,

Made the sweet May woodlands
glad,

And the Aronia by the river
Lighted up the swarming shad,

And the bulging nets swept shoreward,

With their silver-sided haul, Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, He was merriest of them all.

When, among the jovial huskers, Love stole in at Labor's side With the lusty airs of England, Soft his Celtic measures vied.

Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake,
And the merry fair's carouse;
Of the wild Red Fox of Erin

And the Woman of Three Cows,

By the blazing hearths of winter, Pleasant seemed his simple tales, Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends And the mountain myths of Wales.

How the souls in Purgatory

Scrambled up from fate forlorn,
On St. Keven's sackcloth ladder,
Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.

Of the fiddler who at Tara
Played all night to ghosts of kings;
Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies
Dancing in their Moorland rings!

Jolliest of our birds of singing,

Best he loved the Bob-o-link. "Hush!" he 'd say, "the tipsy fairies! Hear the little folks in drink!"

Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle, Singing through the ancient town, Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant, Hath Tradition handed down.

Not a stone his grave discloses;
But if yet his spirit walks,
'T is beneath the trees he planted,
And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks;

Green memorials of the gleeman! Linking still the river-shores, With their shadows cast by sunset, Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores!

When the Father of his Country Through the north-land riding came,

And the roofs were starred with banners,

And the steeples rang acclaim, When each war-scarred Continental, Leaving smithy, mill, and farm, Waved his rusted sword in welcome, And shot off his old king's arm,

Slowly passed that august Presence Down the thronged and shouting street;