Classic Poem

Above the Market stood the School
On pillars brick to have it cool,
A stair went steep, outside the stalls,
Where climbed the girls in hoods and shawls,
A market there was never told,
We played like calves they might have sold.
Some said a Fair of old forsook
The market school of Marcus Hook.

Still was a Fair beholden there:
The fishers' girls were always fair;
To learn their spells they swung their feet
Beneath the bench the boys to vex,
Their country shoulders bare to meet
The swaying freedom of their necks

We knew not what they sought to give,
But learned them quite intuitive;
No other lessons gave us dreams
Of what we could not understand,
Of pliant feet and fleshen gleams,
And captive forms in fairyland,
Like buds upon the balsam tree
Nature was sprouting puberty,
The book of life the only book
Our heads bore far from Marcus Hook.

In those bright days the girls wore curls
And mothers made for boys their caps,
We fought them if the bigger girls
Us little boys pulled in their laps;
But now that we have laps to give,
No such big girls appear to live.
To name our beaux would sorely vex
The independence of our sex
Down in the market from the piers
“Puss in the corner” with the dears
We played, till called by bell to book,
And romped up stairs at Marcus Hook.

We fished the creek, for perch at will,
Through winding turns to Trainer's mill,
Dewberries black, blackberries red
Our vagrant luck when tired fed;
We saw the farmer and the sailor
Banners parade for General Taylor.
On his white horse in cannon's rattle.
As at Buena Vista battle.

Two stores the street at river stept—
Bunting's and Fithian's they kept,
The river sloops and schooners floated;
For Hook's best life, was ever boated;
The field they reaped of silver grain,
Shed shad to sparkle in the seine;
We salted these and packed them strong

For breakfasts all the winter long
O, what a time at new boat's launching
To slide down ways when slipped the stanching.
And cheer the name the captain petted
The girl who knit his socks and netted;
She was his mate and crew and cook
Sailing all night off Marcus Hook.

Out on the flood the fishers' lights
Moved planet-like the mystic nights,
And when they vanished fishwives said
The ghost was come, the skipper dead.

Beyond the railway heights surveyed
The little port of ancient trade;
The daily steamboat to the mart,
The long wharf lined with wain and cart
Well back the post road was deserted,
In times Colonial travel-girted;
As far old Chester was to go
As Wilmington or Swedesboro.

Sour marshes lined the river front
Except the headland of Claymont,
And only reed birds swarmed to look
At sylvan Penn's Dutch Marty's Hook;
As far away this sleepy nook
As county court from Marcus Hook.
The brimming river's life partook,
As from Hook creek, of Marcus Hook.