Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1899-05-04

the crystal drains of SHOWS,
Aud found the Tuscarora's gaps he am
bushed for Catawba foes,
And passed the ford at dusk's red hour
while sunsets vizor masks and glows.
Potomac's flowing cools their lives and
in the ripples cattle bend;
The packhorse feels his burden fall, the
smiths fire smokes the kit to mend
Their white knees laying as they pray
the songs of pilgrim maids ascend.
Stout Luthers hymns and Baptist slaves
from John ofLeyden 5 choral tongue,
And Simon Memmo's madrigals the
bunker lovers tuned among;
They stood upon Yirginia's rim and
every hope was virgin young.
The katydids the hollow night with their
resounding snoring fill,
The Switzer whistler calls to him the
country-woudcring whippoorwill,
Leap in the moonbeam cleaning trout
and into echo sounds distil.
Yost Hitc and Jan Van Meter led the
Teutons to their grants Of space,
Above the ford Notwithstanding glassed
i'll the river lake its face;
Lord Fairfax measured all within his
patent tied with royal lace.
At Greenway court his banished life in
As You Like It joys were sinned
Young Washington invaded there for
Liberty, his Rosalind,
And stretched Virginia 5 sandal foot fal
as the Gauges Of our Ind.
The men of Morgan crossed the ford nor
stopped till Boston's siege they
swelled,
They drowned the fame Of Gates and Lee
who past the Packhorse crossing
dwclled,
And greeting them, his old chainmen
the great Surveyor seyes o'erwelled
To Rumsey's steamboat screamed reply
the fierce bald eagle DER the ford
AS the experimental trip the Cincinnati:
chiefs record:
a thousand years are but day to Evo
luton and the Lord.
The bridges DER Potomac span and still
the old ford had its loves;
Josephs and Maries came this way uu
taxed amidst the thirsty droyes
That painted down the cool ravines and
Tapped the pools by willow coves.
Then closed the vine its vestibules ant
river travellers knew it not;
The Packhorse Ford in slumber lay like
some old ferry right forgot,
Till on its bank armies appeared, reused
by an angry nation 5 shot.
The natural route of savage times the
savage issues had restored,
And like the loadstone to its star North
ward rcvolved the cleaning sword
Redder than sunsets was the blood that
swelled the moan DER Packhorse
Ford.
As hereabout the ridges cease, in coun.
termarches parallel,
South Mountain i'll the Short Hills lost,
the Blue Ridge in Elk Mountain
swell,
Reverberatcd on the ford the Northern
cheer, the Southern yell.
Antietam, Gettysburg, respond to Stras.
burg's roar and Winchesters
The armies like the bisons dam the wa.
ters that the guns immerse;
Then swiftly peace grew like the corn
and freemen 5 was the universe.
The armies paused, as on the Rhine the
German host and German France
Held truce in times Of Charlemagne and
Perished every dissonauce,
Except the finished German tongue and
the soft parley Of Romance.
4 blended race one destiny swelled like
Potomac's current down,
Each old ingredient making rhyme in
the American renowu;
The old ford still its beauty held like
lovely girls Of Shepherdstown.
The raccoon ogled with the doves that
cooed above in sycamores,
The fisher cast his fly for bass wadiug
upon the pebbled floors,
And grounded on the hidden path the
skiff with its suspended oars.
How lovely everything appears as il
composed it ever stood!
We do not see the prints Of time beneath
the ripples and the food.
The ford that our forefathers crossed i:
in the river of our blood.
Woroan is more heroic than