Subject: Lyr Add: DANIEL PERITON'S RIDE (Albion W. Tourgee)
From:
Jim Dixon
Date: 20 May 09 - 01:38 PM
I'm sure there's a lot of poetry on the subject if anyone cares to seek it out.
From The New Popular Reciter and Book of Elocution by Frances Putnam Pogle (International Pub. Co., 1901):
DANIEL PERITON'S RIDE
Albion W. Tourgee
On the 31st day of May, 1889, one of the greatest disasters which ever happened in America was caused by the breaking of a dam in the Allegheny Mountains, throwing the waters of a large lake into the Conemaugh River causing a wall of water to rush down the valley sweeping everything in its course. The city of Johnstown, Pa., was literally washed away and a thousand of people drowned. The following poem describes the ride of a daring horseman to warn the fated city of its coming doom.
All day long the river flowed,
Down by the winding mountain road,
Leaping and roaring in angry mood,
At stubborn rocks in its way that stood;
Sullen the gleam of its rippled crest,
Dark was the foam on its yellow breast;
The dripping bank on either side
But half-imprisoned the turgid tide.
By farm and village it quickly sped,—
The weeping skies bent low overhead,—
Foaming and rushing and tumbling down
Into the streets of pent Johnstown,
Down through the valley of Conemaugh,
Down from the dam of shale and straw,
To the granite bridge, where its waters pour,
Through the arches wide, with a dismal roar.
All day long the pitiful tide,
Babbled of death on the mountain side;
And all day long with jest and sigh,
They who were doomed that day to die
Turned deafened ears to the warning roar
They had heard so oft and despised before.
Yet women trembled—the mother's eyes
Turned oft to the lowering, woeful skies—
And shuddered to think what might befall
Should the flood burst over the earthen wall.
So all day long they went up and down,
Heedless of peril in doomed Johnstown.
And all day long in the chilly gloom
Of a thrifty merchant's counting room,
O'er the ledger bent with anxious care
Old Periton's only son and heir.
A commonplace, plodding, industrious youth,
Counting debit and credit the highest truth,
And profit and loss a more honored game
Than searching for laurels or fighting for fame.
He saw the dark tide as it swept by the door,
But heeded it not till his task was o'er;
Then saddled his horse,—a black-pointed bay,
High-stepping, high-blooded, grandson of Dismay;
Raw-boned and deep-chested, his eyes full of fire;
The temper of Satan—Magog was his sire;
Arched fetlocks, strong quarters, low knees,
And lean, bony head—his dam gave him these;
The foal of a racer transformed to a cob
For the son of the merchant when out of a job.
"Now I'll see," said Dan Periton, mounting the bay,
"What danger there is of the dam giving way!"
A marvelous sight young Periton saw
When he rode up the valley of Conemaugh.
Seventy feet the water fell
With a roar like angry ocean's swell!
Seventy feet from the crumbling crest
To the rock on which the foundations rest!
Seventy feet fell the ceaseless flow
Into the boiling gulf below!
Dan Periton's cheek grew pale with fear,
As the echoes fell on his startled ear,
And he thought of the weight of the pent-up tide,
That hung on the rifted mountain-side,
Held by that heap of stone and straw
O'er the swarming valley of Conemaugh!
The raw-boned bay with quivering ears
Displayed a brute's instinctive fears,
Snorted and pawed with flashing eye,
Seized on the curb and turned to fly!
Dan Periton tightened his grip on the rein,
Sat close to the saddle, glanced backward again,
Touched the bay with the spur, then gave him his head,
And down the steep valley they clattering sped.
Then the horse showed his breeding—the close gripping knees
Felt the strong shoulders working with unflagging ease
As mile after mile, 'neath the high-blooded bay,
The steep mountain turnpike flew backward away,
While with outstretched neck he went galloping down
With the message of warning to periled Johnstown,
Past farmhouse and village, while shrilly outrang,
O'er the river's deep roar and the hoofs iron clang,
His gallant young rider's premonitant shout,
"Fly! Fly to the hills! The waters are out!"
Past Mineral Point there came such a roar
As never had shaken those mountains before!
Dan urged the good horse then with word and caress:
'Twould be his last race, what mattered distress?
A mile farther on and behind him he spied
The wreck-laden crest of the death-dealing tide!
Then he plied whip and spur and redoubled the shout,
"To the hills! To the hills! The waters are out!"
Thus horseman and flood-tide came racing it down
The cinder-paved streets of doomed Johnstown!
Daniel Periton knew that his doom was nigh,
Yet never once faltered his clarion cry;
The blood ran oft from his good steed's side
Over him hung the white crest of the tide;
His hair felt the touch of the eygre's breath;
The spray on his cheek was the cold kiss of death;
Beneath him the horse 'gan to tremble and droop—
He saw the pale rider who sat on the croup!
But clear over all rang his last warning shout,
"To the hills! To the hills! For the waters are out!"
Then the tide reared its head and leaped vengefully down
On the horse and his rider in fated Johnstown!
That horse was a hero, so poets still say,
That brought the good news of the treaty to Aix;
And the steed is immortal, which carried Revere
Through the echoing night with his message of fear;
And the one that bore Sheridan into the fray,
From Winchester town, "twenty miles away;"
But none of these merits a nobler lay
Than young Daniel Periton's raw-boned bay
That raced down the valley of Conemaugh,
With the tide that rushed through the dam of straw,
Roaring and rushing and tearing down
On the fated thousands in doomed Johnstown!
In the very track of the eygre's swoop,
With Dan in the saddle and Death on the croup,
The foam of his nostrils flew back on the wind,
And mixed with the foam of the billow behind.
A terrible vision the morrow saw
In the desolate valley of Conemaugh!
The river had shrunk to its narrow bed,
But its way was choked with heaped-up dead.
'Gainst the granite bridge with its arches four
Lay the wreck of a city that delves no more;
And under it all, so the searchers say,
Stood the sprawling limbs of the gallant bay,
Stiff-cased in the drift of the Conemaugh.
A goodlier statue man never saw,—
Dan's foot on the stirrup his hand on the rein!
So they shall live in white marble again;
And ages shall tell, as they gaze on the group,
Of the race that he ran while Death sat on the croup.
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