Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE JERSEY BLUES, by ISAAC RUSLING PENNYPACKER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE JERSEY BLUES, by                    
First Line: Brave as the battle roll of drum
Last Line: Its ocean-dashed abutment here.
Subject(s): Death; Revolutions; War - Home Front; Dead, The


Brave as the battle roll of drum,
Strong as the surf when tempests come,
Throbbed all the Jersey hearts of oak
When war upon the Jerseys broke;
At streams, by forest springs filled up,
Deep drinks the sea, and smites the shore;
Deep from the brimful bitter cup
The soil drank to the dregs of war.

Then North or South the red-coats came
And South and North they fled again;
The road the Blues fell back -- the same
Way in pursuit they sped again.
At last -- at last the land was free,
And safe once more the misty main,
And, like some soul to ecstasy,
Rose the sweet Sabbath song again.

Clear flow the streams, which, red with blood
Ran through the battle lines arrayed;
The cross-road's salient long withstood
The charge above the church graves made;
And quiet Quaker villages
Are scenes in this historic story,
And many a field of tillage is
Also a field of strife and glory.

Thus from the waves was Jersey raised
A pathway to the promised land;
Thus shall she keep an epic phrased
On tablets of coagulate sand;
Her many bivouacs were dreams
Of deeds still told, then lately done,
And all her battlefields are gleams
Of victories for freedom won.

Sons of those sires! Ye soldiers who
Bound North and South in folds of blue!
Where, Aphrodite like, still laves
The sea-born State in lapsing waves,
Firm may the arch of Union rest
Forever on her fruitful breast;
For well wrought each artificer
Its ocean-dashed abutment here.





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