They come, the mercenary dogs, assassins of the crown; Right gracefully and gallantly they sit their horses brown, Then rowel-deep they drive their spurs, and thunder madly down. But as the ground is shaking round before their horses’ tread, A sheet of fire their sabres lights, high waving overhead, And of the hundred men who charge full forty-eight lie dead. Those who survive in vain they strive; they may not fight nor run— We pass them quickly to the rear, our captives every one. And so we serve the Brunswicker that day at Bennington. Then where their remnant lay at bay our angry torrent rolled— As when a dam gives way, and leaves the waters uncontrolled— Sweeping to break the square of steel in centre of their hold. No peal of trump nor tap of drum our eager footsteps timed; With firelocks clubbed or knife in hand, our faces powder-grimed, Fatigue unfelt and fear unknown, the ridge of earth we climbed; Down from its crest we fearless plunged amid the smoke clouds dun, But struck no blow upon the foe—resistance there was none— Down fell their arms, uprose the white, and Bennington was won. Then greeted we surviving friends, and mourned for those who fell, And, leaning on our firelocks, heard the tales that soldiers tell How comrades whom they little knew had done their duty well, And how amid the hosts in fight no coward had been found; Then gazed upon the foemen slain that lay in heaps around, And said, in bitter hate and scorn, they well became the ground— So evermore by sea and shore might those invaders be, Who came with chains for limbs of men who by their birth were free— A pang shot sharply through my brain—my brother! where was he? I sought and found him with the blood slow oozing from his brain; His feet were pointed to the ridge, his back was to the plain, And round him in a curving row a dozen Hessians slain. How well his sword had mown was shown in gazing at the heap— Strown like a swathe of grass before some lusty mower’s sweep— Of those whose souls had fled their forms through bloody wounds and deep. I placed his corse upon his horse, and gently homeward led The wearied steed that ne’er before was ridden by the dead; And we buried the corse in the meadow with a white stone at its head. [Illustration: THE BATTLE-GROUND OF BENNINGTON.] _THE CAPTURE OF BURGOYNE._ [Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL BURGOYNE. [From an English Print, 1783.]]