Abraham Davenport

In the old days (a custom laid aside     With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent     Their wisest men to make the public laws.     And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound     Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas,     Waved over by the woods of Rippowams,     And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths,     Stamford sent up to the councils of the State     Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport.     'T was on a May-day of the far old year     Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell     Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring,     Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,     A horror of great darkness, like the night     In day of which the Norland sagas tell,     The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky     Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim     Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs     The crater's sides from the red hell below.     Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls     Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars     Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings     Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died;     Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp     To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter     The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ     Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked     A loving guest at Bethany, but stern     As Justice and inexorable Law.     Meanwhile in the old State House, dim as ghosts,     Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut,     Trembling beneath their legislative robes.     "It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn,"     Some said; and then, as if with one accord,     All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport.     He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice     The intolerable hush. "This well may be     The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;     But be it so or not, I only know     My present duty, and my Lord's command     To occupy till He come. So at the post     Where He hath set me in His providence,     I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face,     No faithless servant frightened from my task,     But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;     And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,     Let God do His work, we will see to ours.     Bring in the candles." And they brought them in.     Then by the flaring lights the Speaker read,     Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands,     An act to amend an act to regulate     The shad and alewive fisheries. Whereupon     Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport,     Straight to the question, with no figures of speech     Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without     The shrewd dry humor natural to the man     His awe-struck colleagues listening all the while,     Between the pauses of his argument,     To hear the thunder of the wrath of God     Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud.     And there he stands in memory to this day,     Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen     Against the background of unnatural dark,     A witness to the ages as they pass,     That simple duty hath no place for fear.                 -    -    -    -    -    -     He ceased: just then the ocean seemed     To lift a half-faced moon in sight;     And, shore-ward, o'er the waters gleamed,     From crest to crest, a line of light,     Such as of old, with solemn awe,     The fishers by Gennesaret saw,     When dry-shod o'er it walked the Son of God,     Tracking the waves with light where'er his sandals trod.     Silently for a space each eye     Upon that sudden glory turned     Cool from the land the breeze blew by,     The tent-ropes flapped, the long beach churned     Its waves to foam; on either hand     Stretched, far as sight, the hills of sand;     With bays of marsh, and capes of bush and tree,     The wood's black shore-line loomed beyond the meadowy sea.     The lady rose to leave. "One song,     Or hymn," they urged, "before we part."     And she, with lips to which belong     Sweet intuitions of all art,     Gave to the winds of night a strain     Which they who heard would hear again;     And to her voice the solemn ocean lent,     Touching its harp of sand, a deep accompaniment