  Dull in the night, when the camps were still, Thumped two nags over Good Hope Hill; The white deserter, the passing spy, Took to the brush as the pair went by; The army mule gave over the chase; The Catholic negro, hearing the pace, Said, as they splashed through Oxon Run: "Dey ride like de soldiers who speared God's Son!" But when Good Friday's bells behind Died in the capital on the wind, He who rode foremost paused to say: "Herold, spur up to my side, scared boy! A word has rung in my ears all day— Merely a jingle, 'Nanjemoy.'" "Ha!" said Herold, "John, why that's A little old creek on the river. Surratt's Lies just before us. You halt on the green While I slip in the tavern and get your carbine!" The outlaw drank of the whiskey deep, Which the tipsy landlord, half asleep, Brought to his side, and his broken foot He raised from the stirrup and slashed the boot. "Lloyd," he cried, "if some news you invite— Old Seward was stabbed in his bed to-night. Lincoln I shot—that long-lived fox— As he looked at the play from the theatre box; And it seemed to me that the sound I heard, As the audience fluttered, like ducks round decoy, Was only the buzz of a musical word That I cannot get rid of—'Nanjemoy.'" "Twenty miles we must ride before day, Cross Mattawoman, Piscataway, If in the morn we would take to the woods In the swamp of Zekiah, at Doctor Mudd's!" "Though much I have mingled with Maryland men! I have fever, I think, or my mind's o'erthrown. Though scraped is the flesh by this broken bone, Every jog that I take on this road so lonely, With thoughts, aye bloody, my mind to employ, I can but say, over and over, this only— The drowsy, melodious 'Nanjemoy.'" Silent they galloped by broken gates, By slashes of pines around old estates; By planters' graves afield under clumps Of blackjack oaks and tobacco stumps; The empty quarters of negroes grin From clearings of cedar and chinquopin; From fodder stacks the wild swine flew, The shy young wheat the frost peeped through, And the swamp owl hooted as if she knew Of the crime, as she hailed: "Ahoy! Ahoy!" And the chiming hoofs of the horses drew The pitiless rhythm of "Nanjemoy." So in the dawn as perturbed and gray They hid in the farm-house off the way, And the worn assassin dozed in his chair, A voice in his dreams or afloat in the air, Like a spirit born in the Indian corn— Immemorial, vague, forlorn, And disembodied—murmured forever The name of the old creek up the river. "God of blood!" he said unto Herold, As they groped in the dusk, lost and imperilled, In the oozy, entangled morass and mesh Of hanging vines over Allen's Fresh: "The chirp of birds and the drone of frogs, The lizards and crickets from trees and bogs Follow me yet, pursue and ferret My soul with a word which I used to enjoy, As if it had turned on me like a spirit And stabbed my ear with its 'Nanjemoy.'" Ay! Great Nature fury or preacher Makes, as she wists, of the tiniest creature— Arming a word, as it floats on the mind, With the dagger of wrath and the wing of the wind. Their swimming steeds in the river they drown, And paddle the farther shore to gain, Chased by gunboats or lost in rain? Many a night they try the ferry And the days in haggard sleep employ, But every raft, or float, or wherry, Drifts up the tide to Nanjemoy. "Ho! John, we shall have no more annoy, We've crossed the river from Nanjemoy. The bluffs of Virginny their shadows reach To hide our landing upon the beach!" Repelled from the manse to hide in the barn, The sick wretch hears, like a far-away horn, As he lies on the straw by the snoring boy, The winding echo of "N-a-n-j-e-m-o-y." All day it follows, all night it whines, From the suck of waters, the moan of pines, And the tread of cavalry following after, The flash of flames on beam and rafter, The shot, the strangle, the crash, the swoon, Scarce break his trance or disturb the croon Of the meaningless notes on his lips which fasten, And the soldier hears, as he seeks to convoy The dying words of the dark assassin, A wandering murmur, like "Nanjemoy." |
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