The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tales of the Chesapeake, by George Alfred
Townsend

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Title: Tales of the Chesapeake

Author: George Alfred Townsend

Release Date: April 5, 2006 [eBook #18126]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE CHESAPEAKE***

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TALES OF THE CHESAPEAKE

by

GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND

"GATH."

A fruity smell is in the school-house lane;
The clover bees are sick with evening heats;
A few old houses from the window-pane
Fling back the flame of sunset, and there beats
The throb of oars from basking oyster fleets,
And clangorous music of the oyster tongs
Plunged down in deep bivalvulous retreats,
And sound of seine drawn home with negro songs.

New York:
American News Company,
39 and 41 Chambers Street.
1880.
Copyright, 1880,
Geo. Alfred Townsend.

TO MY FATHER,

REV. STEPHEN TOWNSEND, M.D., PH.D.,

WHOSE ANCESTORS EXPLORED THE CHESAPEAKE BAY IN 1623,
AND WERE SETTLED ON THE POCOMOKE RIVER ALMOST
TWO HUNDRED YEARS, NEAR HIS BIRTHPLACE;

WITH

THE AFFECTION OF

_HIS ONLY SURVIVING SON._

Of the following pieces, two, "Kidnapped," and "Dominion over the
Fish," have been published in _Chambers's Journal_, London. The poem
"Herman of Bohemia Manor" is new. All the compositions illustrate the
same general locality.

INTRODUCTION.

MOTHERNOOK.

THE EASTERN SHORE OF MARYLAND.

One day, worn out with head and pen,
And the debate of public men,
I said aloud, "Oh! if there were
Some place to make me young awhile,
I would go there, I would go there,
And if it were a many a mile!"
Then something cried--perhaps my map,
That not in vain I oft invoke--
"Go seek again your mother's lap,
The dear old soil that gave you sap,
And see the land of Pocomoke!"

A sense of shame that never yet
My foot on that old shore was