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. 
    What, though weighted to take them down,
    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.”

THE FALL OF UTIE.

The reception at Secretary Flake’s was at its height.  Bland Van, the President of the nation, had departed with his boys; the punch-bowl had been emptied nine times; and still the cry from our republican society was, “Fill up!”