“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
      Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
    Here once the embattled farmers stood,
      And fired the shot heard round the world.

    “The foe long since in silence slept;
      Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
    And Time the ruined bridge has swept
      Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.”

Our reflections had already acquired a historical remoteness from the scenes we had left, and we ourselves essayed to sing.

    Ah, ’t is in vain the peaceful din
      That wakes the ignoble town,
    Not thus did braver spirits win
      A patriot’s renown.

    There is one field beside this stream,
      Wherein no foot does fall,
    But yet it beareth in my dream
      A richer crop than all.

    Let me believe a dream so dear,
     Some heart beat high that day,
    Above the petty Province here,
     And Britain far away;

    Some hero of the ancient mould,
     Some arm of knightly worth,
    Of strength unbought, and faith unsold,
     Honored this spot of earth;

    Who sought the prize his heart described,
     And did not ask release,
    Whose free-born valor was not bribed
     By prospect of a peace.

    The men who stood on yonder height
     That day are long since gone;
    Not the same hand directs the fight
     And monumental stone.

    Ye were the Grecian cities then,
     The Romes of modern birth,
    Where the New England husbandmen
     Have shown a Roman worth.

    In vain I search a foreign land
     To find our Bunker Hill,
    And Lexington and Concord stand
     By no Laconian rill.

With such thoughts we swept gently by this now peaceful pasture-ground, on waves of Concord, in which was long since drowned the din of war.

    But since we sailed
    Some things have failed,
    And many a dream
    Gone down the stream.

    Here then an aged shepherd dwelt,
    Who to his flock his substance dealt,
    And ruled them with a vigorous crook,
    By precept of the sacred Book;
    But he the pierless bridge passed o’er,
    And solitary left the shore.

    Anon a youthful pastor came,
    Whose crook was not unknown to fame,
    His lambs he viewed with gentle glance,
    Spread o’er the country’s wide expanse,
    And fed with “Mosses from the Manse.” 
    Here was our Hawthorne in the dale,
    And here the shepherd told his tale.

That slight shaft had now sunk behind the hills, and we had floated round the neighboring bend, and under the new North Bridge between Ponkawtasset and the Poplar Hill, into the Great Meadows, which, like a broad moccason print, have levelled a fertile and juicy place in nature.

     On Ponkawtasset, since, we took our way,
     Down this still stream to far Billericay,
     A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray
     Doth often shine on Concord’s twilight day.