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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
POEMS
BY
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
AUTHOR OF
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK '
"the poet AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE "
"the last leaf," "astr^a"
etc., etc , etc.
^„ , OF co»ie«>
" JUL 26 1895
PHILADELPHIA
HENRY ALTEMUS
1895
I
^u
^^>
IN UNIFORM STYLE.
Evangeline. Henry W. Longfellow.
Poems. Edgar Allan Poe.
Marmion. Walter Scott.
Lalla Eookh. Thomas Moore.
Poems. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Princess and Maud. Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Lady of the Lake. Walter Scott.
Childe Harold. Lord Byron.
Poems. William Cullen Bryant.
Idylls of the King. Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Belfry of Bruges. Henry W. Longfellow.
Voices of the Night. Henry W. Longfellow.
Whittier's Poems. Jn 2 volumes.
Lucile. Owen Meredith.
Cloth, handsome, new and original design,
full gilt, gilt tops, attractively boxed :. $0.75
Half Crushed Levant, super extra hand fin-
ished, untrimmed edges, sewn with silk,
gilt tops 1.50
Half Genuine English Calf, super extra hand
finished, new ornamental inlaid backs, un-
trimmed edges, sewn with silk, gilt tops... 2.00
Copyrighted, 1 895, by Henry Altemus.
iz ~ 3 Yjj-y
CONXKNXS
PAGE
" Cambridge Churchyard 13
^ Old Ironsides 17
, The Last Reader 19
' Our Yankee Girls 21
. Stanzas 22
The Philosopher to His Love ... 23
. L'Inconnue 25
The Star and the Water Lily . . 26
^ Illustration of a Picture 28
•" The Dying Seneca 30
'^ To A Caged Lion 31
To My Companions 32
•^HE Last Leaf 34
"To AN Insect 36
^My Aunt 38
lo CONTEXTS.
PAGE
^ The Meeting of the Dryads .... 41
.- The Mysterious Visitor 44
^ Lines by a Clerk 48
^ Reflections of a Proud Pedestrian 50
" The Poet's Lot 51
Daily Trials , 52
The Dorchester Giant 55
To THE Portrait of "A Gentleman " 57
To the Portrait of "A Lady" . . 60
..The Comet 61
^, A Noontide Lyric 64
The Ballad of the Oysterman . . 66
^' A Song. {Harvard Centesimal, J8j6.) . 69
1/ Questions and Answers 71
Lexington 72
^ The Music Grinders 75
The September Gale 79
The Height of the Ridiculous ... 81
The Hot Season 83
CONTEXTS.
PACT
^ Song. {To Charles Dicke?is, 1842.) . . 85
i/ Lines. {Berkshire Festival.) 87
V. Verses for After-Dinner 90
^ Song. {Temper a7ice Din?ter.) 94
\^' Urania: A Rhymed Lesson 96
V The Pilgrim's Vision 131
y' NUX POSTCCENATICA 1 37
J.. On Lending a Punch-Bowl 143
; Extracts from a Medical Poem . . 148
A Song of Other Days 150
Astr/EA: The Balance of Illusion . 153
CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD.
Our ancient church ! its lowly tower,
Beneath the loftier spire,
Is shadowed when the sunset hour
Clothes the tall shaft in fire ;
It sinks beyond the distant eye.
Long ere the glittering vane,
High wheeling in the western sky,
Has faded o'er the plain.
Like Sentinel and Nun, they keep
Their vigil on the green ;
One seems to guard, and one to weep,
The dead that lie between ;
And both roll out, so full and near,
Their music's mingling waves,
They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear
Leans on the narrow graves.
The stranger parts the flaunting weeds,
Whose seeds the winds have strown
So thick beneath the line he reads.
They shade the sculptured stone ;
13
14 CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD,
The child unveils his clustered brow
And ponders for a while
The graven willow's pendent bough,
Or rudest cherub's smile.
But what to them the dirge, the knell ?
These were the mourner's share ; —
The sullen clang, whose heavy swell
Throbbed through the beating air ; —
The rattling cord, — the rolHng stone, —
The shelving sand that slid.
And far beneath, with hollow tone
Rung on the coffin's lid.
The slumberer's mound grows fresh and green,
Then slowly disappears ;
The mosses creep, the gray stones lean.
Earth hides his date and years ;
But long before the once-loved name
Is sunk or worn away.
No lip the silent dust may claim.
That pressed the breathing clay.
Go where the ancient pathway guides,
See where our sires laid down
Their smiling babes, their cherished brides,
The patriarchs of the town ;
CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD. 1$
Hast thou a tear for buried love ?
A sigh for transient power ?
All that a century left above,
Go, read it in an hour !
The Indian's shaft, the Briton's ball,
The sabre's thirsting edge.
The hot shell, shattering in its fall,
The bayonet's rending wedge, —
Here scattered death ; yet seek the spot.
No trace thine eye can see.
No altar, — and they need it not
Who leave their children free !
Look where the turbid rain-drops stand
In many a chiseled square.
The knightly crest, the shield, the brand
Of honored names were there ; —
Alas ! for every tear is dried
Those blazoned tablets knew.
Save when the icy marble's side
Drips with the evening dew.
Or gaze upon yon pillared stone.
The empty urn of pride ;
There stand the Goblet and the Sun, —
What need of more beside ?
1 6 CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD.
Where lives the memory of the dead,
Who made their tomb a toy ?
Whose ashes press that nameless bed ?
Go, ask the village boy !
Lean o'er the slender western wall,
Ye ever-roaming girls ;
The breath that bids the blossom fall
May lift your floating curls,
To sweep the simple lines that tell
An exile's date and doom ;
And sigh, for where his daughters dwell,
They wreath the stranger's tomb.
And one amid these shades was born,
Beneath this turf who lies,
Once beaming as the summer's morn,
That closed her gentle eyes ; —
If sinless angels love as we,
Who stood thy grave beside,
Three seraph welcomes waited thee.
The daughter, sister, bride !
I wandered to thy buried mound
When earth was hid, below
The level of the glaring ground.
Choked to its gates with snow,
OLD IRONSIDES. i?
And when with summer's flowery waves
The lake of verdure rolled,
As if a Sultan's white-robed slaves
Had scattered pearls and gold.
Nay, the soft pinions of the air,
That lift this trembling tone.
Its breath of love may almost bear,
To kiss thy funeral stone ; —
And, now thy smiles have past away.
For all the joy they gave,
May sweetest dews and warmest ray
Lie on thine early grave !
When damps beneath, and storms above.
Have bowed these fragile towers,
Still o'er the graves yon locust-grove
Shall swing its Orient flowers ; —
And I would ask no mouldering bust.
If e'er this humble line.
Which breathed a sigh o'er other's dust,
Might call a tear on mine.
OLD IRONSIDES.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down !
Long has it waved on high,
1 8 OLD IRONSIDES.
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky ;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar ; —
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more !
Her deck, once red with heroes' blood
Where knelt the vanquished foe.
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee ; —
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea !
O better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave ;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave ;
Nail to the mast her holy flag.
Set every threadbare sail.
And give her to the god of storms, —
The lightning and the gale !
THE LAST READER. 19
THE LAST READER.
I SOMETIMES sit beneath a tree,
And read my own sweet songs ;
Though nought they may to others be,
Each humble line prolongs
A tone that might have passed away.
But for that scarce remembered lay.
I keep them like a lock or leaf,
That some dear girl has given ;
Frail record of an hour, as brief
As sunset clouds in heaven.
But spreading purple twilight still
High over memory's shadowed hill.
They lie upon my pathway bleak,
Those flowers that once ran wild,
As on a father's care-worn cheek
The ringlets of his child ;
The golden mingling with the gray.
And stealing half its snows away.
What care I though the dust is spread
Around these yellow leaves.
Or o'er them his sarcastic thread
Oblivion's insect weaves ;
20 THE LAST READER.
Though weeds are tangled on the stream^
It still reflects my morning's beam.
And therefore love I such as smile
On these neglected songs,
Nor deem that flattery's needless wile
My opening bosom wrongs ;
For who would trample, at my side,
A few pale buds, my garden's pride ?
It may be that my scanty ore
Long years have washed away,
And where were golden sands before,
Is nought but common clay ;
Still something sparkles in the sun
For Memory to look back upon.
And when my name no more is heard,
My lyre no more is known.
Still let me, like a winter's bird.
In silence and alone,
Fold over them the weary wing
Once flashing through the dews of spring*
Yes, let my fancy fondly wrap
My youth in its decline.
OUR YANKEE GIRLS. 21
And riot in the rosy lap
Of thoughts that once were mine,
And give the worm my Httle store
When the last reader reads no more !
OUR YANKEE GIRLS.
Let greener lands and bluer skies,
If such the wide earth shows.
With fairer cheeks and brighter eyes,
Match us the star and rose ;
The winds that lift the Georgian's veil
Or wave Circassia's curls.
Waft to their shores the sultan's sail, —
Who buys our Yankee girls !
The gay grisette, whose fingers touch
Love's thousand chords so well ;
The dark ItaHan, loving much,
But more than one can tell ;
And England's fair-haired, blue-eyed dame.
Who binds her brow with pearls ; —
Ye who have seen them, can they shame
Our own sweet Yankee girls ?
And what if court and castle vaunt
Its children loftier born ? —
22 STANZAS.
Who heeds the silken tassel's flaunt
Beside the golden corn ?
They ask not for the courtly toil
Of ribboned knights and earls,
The daughters of the virgin soil,
Our free born Yankee girls !
By every hill whose stately pines
Wave their dark arms above
The home where some fair being shines,
To warm the wilds with love,
From barest rock to bleakest shore
Where farthest sail unfurls,
That stars and stripes are streaming o'er,
God bless our Yankee gids !
STANZAS.
Strange ! that one lightly-whispered tone
Is far, far sweeter unto me,
Than all the sounds that kiss the earth.
Or breathe along the sea ;
But, lady, when thy voice I greet.
Not heavenly music seems so sweet.
I look upon the fair blue skies,
And nought but empty air I see ;
THE FRlLOaOFRER TO HIS LOVE.
But when I turn me to thine eyes,
It seemeth unto me
Ten thousand angels spread their wings
Within those Httle azure rings.
The lily hath the softest leaf,
That ever western breeze hath fanned,
But thou shalt have the tender flower,
So I may take thy hand ;
That litde hand to me doth yie^d
More joy than all the broidered field.
O lady ! there be many things
That seem right fair, below, above ;
But sure not one among them all
Is half so sweet as love ; —
Let us not pay our vows alone,
But join two altars both in one.
THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE.
Dearest, a look is but a ray
Reflected in a certain way ;
A word, whatever tone it wear.
Is but a trembling wave of air ;
A touch, obedience to a clause
In nature's pure material laws.
24 THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE.
The very flowers that bend and meet,
In sweetening others, grow more sweet;
The clouds by day, the stars by night,
Inweave their floating locks of light ;
The rainbow, Heaven's own forehead's braid,
Is but the embrace of sun and shade.
How few that love us have we found !
How wide the world that girds them round !
Like mountain streams we meet and part.
Each living in the other's heart.
Our course unknown, our hope to be
Yet mingled in the distant sea.
But Ocean coils and heaves in vain.
Bound in the subtle moonbeam's chain ;
And love and hope do but obey
Some cold, capricious planet's ray.
Which lights and leads the tide it charms.
To Death's dark caves and icy arms.
Alas ! one narrow line is drawn.
That links our sunset with our dawn ;
In mist and shade life's morning rose.
And clouds are round it at its close ;
But ah ! no twilight beam ascends
To whisper where that evening ends.
rmcoNxuE. 25
Oh ! in the hour when I shall feel
Those shadows round my senses steal,
When gentle eyes are weeping o'er
The clay that feels their tears no more,
Then let thy spirit with me be,
Or some sweet angel, likest thee !
L'INCONNUE.
Is thy name Mary, maiden fair ?
Such should, methinks, its music be ;
The sweetest name that mortals bear.
Were best befitting thee ;
And she, to whom it once was given,
Was half of earth and half of heaven.
I hear thy voice, I see thy smile,
I look upon thy folded hair ;
Ah ! while we dream not they beguile.
Our hearts are in the snare ;
And she, who chains a wild bird's wing,
Must start not if her captive sing.
So, lady, take the leaf that falls,
To all but thee unseen, unknown ;
26 THE STAR AND THE WATER-LILY,
When evening shades thy silent walls,
Then read it all alone ;
In stillness read, in darkness seal,
Forget, despise, but not reveal !
THE STAR AND THE WATER-LILY.
The sun stepped down from his golden throne.
And lay in the silent sea.
And the lily had folded her satin leaves,
For a sleepy thing was she ;
What is the Lily dreaming of ?
Why crisp the waters blue ?
See, see, she is lifting her varnished hd !
Her white leaves are glistening through !
The Rose is cooling his burning cheek
In the lap of the breathless tide ; —
The Lily hath sisters fresh and fair,
That would lie by the Rose's side ;
He would love her better than all the rest.
And he would be fond and true ; —
But the Lily unfolded her weary lids,
And looked at the sky so blue.
Remember, remember, thou silly one,
How fast will thy summer ghde.
THE STAR AXD THE WATER-LILY. ^7
And wilt thou wither a virgin pale,
Or flourish a blooming bride ?
"O the Rose is old, and thorny, and cold,
And he lives on earth," said she ;
" But the Star is fair and he hves in the air,
And he shall my bridegroom be."
But what if the stormy cloud should come,
And ruffle the silver sea ?
Would he turn his eye from the distant sky,
To smile on a thing like thee ?
O no, fair Lily, he will not send
One ray from his far-off throne ;
The winds shall blow and the waves shall flow,
And thou will be left alone.
There is not a leaf on the mountain top,
Nor a drop of evening dew,
Nor a golden sand on the sparkhng shore.
Nor a pearl in the waters blue.
That he has not cheered with his fickle smile.
And warmed with his faithless beam, —
And will he be true to a pallid flower.
That floats on the quiet stream ?
Alas for the Lily ! she would not heed.
But turned to the skies afar,
28 ILLUSTRATIOX OF A PICTURE.
And bared her breast to the trembling ray-
That shot from the rising star ;
The cloud came over the darkened sky,
And over the waters wide :
She looked in vain through the beating rain,
And sank in the stormy tide.
ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE.
"A Spanish Girl in Reverie^
She twirled the string of golden beads.
That round her neck was hung, —
My grandsire's gift; the good old man
Loved girls when he was young ;
And, bending lightly o'er the cord,
And turning half away.
With something like a youthful sigh,
Thus spoke the maiden gray :
"Well, one may trail her silken robe.
And bind her locks with pearls.
And one may wreathe the woodland rose
Among her floating curls ;
And one may tread the dewy grass,
And one the marble floor,
Nor half-hid bosom heave the less,
Nor broidered corset more !
ILWSTRATIOX OF A PICTURE. 29
*'Some years ago, a dark-eyed girl
Was sitting in the shade, —
There's something brings her to my mind
In that young dreaming maid, —
And in her hand she held a flower,
A flower, whose speaking hue
Said, in the language of the heart,
' Believe the giver true.'
*' And, as she looked upon its leaves.
The maiden made a vow
To wear it when the bridal wreath
Was woven for her brow ;
She watched the flower, as, day by day,
The leaflets curled and died ;
But he who gave it, never came
To claim her for his bride.
" O many a summer's morning glow
Has lent the rose its ray.
And many a winter's drifting snow
Has swept its bloom away ;
But she has kept that faithless pledge
To this, her winter hour.
And keeps it still, herself alone.
And wasted hke the flower."
30 THE DYING SENECA.
Her pale lip quivered, and the light
Gleamed in her moistening eyes ; —
I asked her how she liked the tints
In those Castilian skies ?
" She thought them misty, — 'twas perhaps
Because she stood too near ;" —
She turned away, and, as she turned,
I saw her wipe a tear.
THE DYING SENECA.
He died not as the martyr dies.
Wrapped in his living shroud of flame ;
He fell not as the warrior falls,
Gasping upon the field of fame ;
A gentler passage to the grave,
The murderer's softened fury gave.
Rome's slaughtered sons and blazing piles
Had tracked the purpled demon's path,
And yet another victim lived
To fill the fiery scroll of wrath ;
Could not imperial vengeance spare
His furrowed brow and silver hair ?
The field was sown with noble blood,
The harvest reaped in burning tears.
TO A CAGED LION. 31
When, rolling up its crimson flood,
Broke the long-gathering tide of years ;
His diadem was rent away,
And beggars trampled on his clay.
None wept, — none pitied ; —they who knelt
At morning by the despot's throne,
At evening dashed the laurelled bust,
And spurned the wreaths themselves had
strown ;
The shout of triumph echoed wide.
The self-stung reptile writhed and died !
TO A CAGED LION.
Poor conquered monarch ! though that haughty
glance
Still speaks thy courage unsubdued by time,
And in the grandeur of thy sullen tread
Lives the proud spirit of thy burning clime ; —
Fettered by things that shudder at thy roar,
Torn from thy pathless wilds to pace this nar-
row floor !
Thou wast the victor, and all nature shrunk
Before the thunders of thine awful wrath ;
32 TO MY C03IPANI0NS.
The steel-armed hunter viewed thee from afar.
Fearless and trackless in thy lonely path !
The famished tiger closed his flaming eye,
And crouched and panted as thy step went by !
Thou art the vanquished, and insulting man
Bars thy broad bosom as a sparrow's wing ;
His nerveless arms thine iron sinews bind,
And lead in chains the desert's fallen king ;
Are these the beings that have dared to twine
Their feeble threads around those limbs of
thine ?
So must it be ; the weaker, wiser race,
That wields the tempest and that rides the
sea,
Even in the stillness of thy solitude
Must teach the lesson of its power to thee ;
And thou, the terror of the trembling wild.
Must bow thy savage strength, the mockery of
a child !
TO MY COMPANIONS.
Mine ancient Chair ! thy wide-embracing arms
Have clasped around me even from a boy ;
TO MY CO.MPAXIOXS. 33
Hadst thou a voice to speak of years gone by,
Thine were a tale of sorrow and of joy,
Of fevered hopes and ill-foreboding fears,
And smiles unseen, and unrecorded tears.
And thou, my Table ! though unwearied Time
Hath set his signet on thine altered brow.
Still can I see thee in thy spotless prime.
And in my memory thou art living now ;
Soon must thou slumber with forgotten things,
The peasant's ashes and the dust of kings.
Thou melancholy Mug ! thy sober brown
Hath something pensive in its evening hue,
Not like the things that please the tasteless
clown,
With gaudy streaks of orange and of blue ;
And I must love thee, for thou art mine own,
Pressed by my lip, and pressed by mine alone.
My broken Mirror! faithless, yet beloved,
Thou who canst smile, and smile alike
on all.
Oft do I leave thee, oft again return,
I scorn the siren, but obey the call ;
I hate thy falsehood, while I fear thy truth.
But most I love thee, flattering friend of youth.
34 THE LAST LEAF.
Primeval Carpet ! every well-worn thread
Has slowly parted with its virgin dye ;
I saw thee fade beneath the ceaseless tread.
Fainter and fainter in mine anxious eye ;
So flies the color from the brightest flower,
And heaven's own rainbow Hyes but for an
hour.
I love you all ! there radiates from our own,
A soul that lives in every shape we see ;
There is a voice, to other ears unknown,
Like echoed music answering to its key.
The dungeoned captive hath a tale to tell.
Of every insect in his lonely cell ;
And these poor frailties have a simple tone.
That breathes in accents sweet to me alone.
THE LAST LEAF.
I SAW him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.
THE LAST LEAF. 35
They say that in his prime
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.
But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
" They are gone."
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
My grandmamma has said, —
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago, —
That he had a Roman nose.
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
36 TO AN INSECT.
But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back.
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here ;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer !
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring, —
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.
TO AN INSECT.
I LOVE to hear thine earnest voice,
Wherever thou art hid.
Thou testy little dogmatist,
Thou pretty Katydid !
TO AX INSECT. 37
Thou mindest me of gentle folks, —
Old gentle folks are they, —
Thou sayst an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.
Thou art a female. Katydid !
I know it by the trill
That quivers through thy piercing notes,
So petulant and shrill.
I think there is a knot of you
Beneath the hollow tree, —
A knot of spinster Katydids, —
Do Katydids drink tea ?
0 tell me where did Katy live,
And what did Katy do ?
And was she very fair and young,
And yet so wicked, too ?
Did Katy love a naughty man,
Or kiss more cheeks than one ?
1 warrant Katy did no more
Than many a Kate has done.
Dear me ! I'll tell you all about
My fuss with little Jane,
And Ann, with whom I used to walk
So often down the lane,
38 3ir A UNT.
And all that tore their locks of black,
Or wet their eyes of blue, —
Pray tell me, sweetest Katydid,
What did poor Katy do ?
Ah no ! the living oak shall crash.
That stood for ages still,
The rock shall rend its mossy base
And thunder down the hill.
Before the little Katydid
Shall add one word, to tell
The mystic story of the maid
Whose name she knows so well.
Peace to the ever-murmuring race !
And when the latest one
Shall fold in death her feeble wings
Beneath the autumn sun,
Then shall she raise her fainting voice
And hft her drooping lid,
And then the child of future years
Shall hear what Katy did.
MY AUNT.
My aunt ! my dear unmarried aunt !
Long years have o'er her flown ;
Jir A UNT. 39
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin zone ;
I know it hurts her, — though she looks
As cheerful as she can ;
Her waist is ampler than her life,
For life is but a span.
My aunt, my poor deluded aunt !
Her hair is almost gray ;
Why will she train that winter curl
In such a spring-like way ?
How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well,
When, through a double convex lens,
She just makes out to spell ?
Her father, — grandpapa ! forgive
This erring lip its smiles, —
Vowed she should make the finest girl
Within a hundred miles.
He sent her to a stylish school ;
'Twas in her thirteenth June ;
And with her, as the rules required,
" Two towels and a spoon."
They braced my aunt against a board,
To make her straight and tall ;
40 31 Y A UNT.
They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small ;
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair.
They screwed it up with pins ; —
O never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins.
So, when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back ;
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
Might follow on the track ;)
"Ah ! " said my grandsire, as he shook
Some powder in his pan,
" What could this lovely creature do
Against a desperate man ! ' '
Alas ! nor chariot, nor barouche.
Nor bandit cavalcade
Tore from the trembhng father's arms
His all-accomphshed maid.
For her how happy had it been !
And Heaven had spared to me
To see one sad, ungathered rose
On my ancestral tree.
THE MEETIXG OF THE DRYADS. 4i
THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS*
It was not many centuries since,
When, gathered on the moonlit green,
Beneath the Tree of Liberty,
A ring of weeping sprites was seen.
The freshman's lamp had long been dim,
The voice of busy day was mute,
And tortured melody had ceased
Her sufferings on the evening flute.
They met not as they once had met.
To laugh o'er many a jocund tale ;
But every pulse was beating low,
And every cheek was cold and pale.
There rose a fair but faded one,
Who oft had cheered them with her song ;
She waved a mutilated arm.
And silence held the listening throng.
" Sweet friends," the gentle nymph began,
" From opening bud to withering leaf.
One common lot has bound us all.
In every change of joy and grief.
* Written after a general pruning of the trees
around Harvard College.
42 THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS.
" While all around has felt decay,
We rose in ever-living prime,
With broader shade and fresher green,
Beneath the crumbling step of Time.
" When often by our feet has past
Some biped, nature's walking whim,
Say, have we trimmed one awkward shape.
Or lopped away one crooked limb ?
" Go on, fair Science ; soon to thee
Shall Nature yield her idle boast ;
Her vulgar fingers formed a tree,
But thou hast trained it to a post.
" Go paint the birch's silver rind.
And quilt the peach with softer down ;
Up with the willow's trailing threads,
Off with the sunflower's radiant crown !
" Go plant the lily on the shore.
And set the rose among the waves,
And bid the tropic bud unbind
Its silken zone in arctic caves ;
" Bring bellows for the panting winds,
Hang up a lantern by the moon.
And give the nightingale a fife,
And lend the eagfle a balloon !
THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS. 43
" I cannot smile, — the tide of scorn,
That rolled through every bleeding vein,
Comes kindling fiercer as it flows
Back to its burning source again.
"Again in every quivering leaf
That moment's agony I feel.
When limbs, that spurned the northern blast,
Shrunk from the sacrilegious steel.
"A curse upon the wretch who dared
To crop us with his felon saw !
May every fruit his lip shall taste,
Lie like a bullet in his maw.
" In every julep that he drinks,
May gout, and bile, and headache be ;
And when he strives to calm his pain,
May colic mingle with his tea.
" May nightshade cluster round his path.
And thistles shoot, and brambles cling ;
May blistering ivy scorch his veins.
And dogwood burn, and nettles sting.
" On him may never shadow fall,
When fever racks his throbbing brow.
And his last shilling buy a rope
To hang him on my highest bough !"
44 THE 3IYSTERIUUS VISITOR.
She spoke; — the morning's herald beam
Sprang from the bosom of the sea,
And every mangled sprite returned
In sadness to her wounded tree.'^
THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR.
There was a sound of hurrying feet,
A tramp on echoing stairs,
There was a rush along the aisles, —
It was the hour of prayers.
And on, like Ocean's midnight wave,
The current rolled along,
When, suddenly, a stranger form
Was seen amidst the throng.
He was a dark and swarthy man.
That uninvited guest ;
A faded coat of bottle green
Was buttoned round his breast.
* A little poem, on a similar occasion, may be
found in the works of Swift, from which, perhaps,
the idea was borrowed ; although I was as much
surprised as amused to meet wnth it some tim&
after writing the preceding lines.
THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR. 45
There was not one among them all
Could say from whence he came ;
Nor beardless boy, nor ancient man,
Could tell that stranger's name.
All silent as the sheeted dead,
In spite of sneer and frown,
Fast by a gray-haired senior's side
He sat him boldly down.
There was a look of horror flashed
From out the tutor's eyes ;
When all around him rose to pray.
The stranger did not rise !
A murmur broke along the crowd,
The prayer was at an end ;
With ringing heels and measured tread
A hundred forms descend.
Through sounding aisle, o'er grating stair,
The long procession poured,
Till all were gathered on the seats
Around the Commons board.
That fearful stranger ! down he sat,
Unasked, yet undismayed ;
And on his lip a rising smile
Of scorn or pleasure played.
46 THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR.
He took his hat and hung it up,
With slow and earnest air ;
He stripped his coat from off his back
And placed it on a chair.
Then from his nearest neighbor's side
A knife and plate he drew ;
And, reaching out his hand again,
He took his teacup too.
How fled the sugar from the bowl !
How sunk the azure cream !
They vanished like the shapes that float
Upon a summer's dream.
A long, long draught, — an outstretched hand,
And crackers, toast, and tea
They faded from the stranger's touch
Like dew upon the sea.
Then clouds were dark on many a brow,
Fear sat upon their souls.
And, in a bitter agony.
They clasped their buttered rolls.
A whisper trembled through the crowd, —
Who could the stranger be ?
And some were silent, for they thought .
A cannibal was he.
THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR. 47
What if the creature should arise, —
For he was stout and tall, —
And swallow down a sophomore,
Coat, crow's-foot, cap, and all !
All sullenly the stranger rose ;
They sat in mute despair ;
He took his hat from off the peg,
His coat from off the chair.
Four freshmen fainted on the seat,
Six swooned upon the floor ;
Yet on the fearful being passed,
And shut the chapel door.
There is full many a starving man,
That walks in bottle green.
But never more that hungry one
In Commons-hall was seen.
Yet often in the sunset hour,
When tolls the evening bell,
The freshman lingers on the steps,
That frightful tale to tell.
48 LINES BY A CLERK.
LINES BY A CLERK.
Oh ! I did love her dearly,
And gave her toys and rings,
And I thought she meant sincerely
When she took my pretty things ;
But her heart has grown as icy
As a fountain in the fall,
And her love, that was so spicy,
It did not last at all.
I gave her once a locket,
It was filled with my own hair.
And she put it in her pocket
With very special care.
But a jeweller has got it, —
He offered it to me,
And another that is not it
Around her neck I see.
For my cooings and my billings
I do not now complain.
But my dollars and my shillings
Will never come again ;
LINES BY A CLERK. 49
They were earned with toil and sorrow,
But I never told her that,
And now I have to borrow,
And want another hat.
Think, think, thou cruel Emma,
When thou shalt hear my woe,
And know my sad dilemma,
That thou hast made it so.
See, see my beaver rusty.
Look, look upon this hole.
This coat is dim and dusty ;
0 let it rend thy scul !
Before the gates of fashion
1 daily bent my knee,
But I sought the shrine of passion.
And found my idol, — thee ;
Though never love intenser
Had bowed a soul before it.
Thine eye was on the censer.
And not the hand that bore it.
50 REFLECTIONS OF A PEDESTRIAN.
REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDES-
TRIAN.
I SAW the curl of his waving lash,
And the glance of his knowing eye,
And I knew that he thought he was cutting a
dash,
As his steed went thundering by.
And he may ride in the rattling gig,
Or flourish the Stanhope gay,
And dream that he looks exceeding big
To the people that walk in the way ;
But he shall think, when the night is still,
On the stable-boy's gathering numbers,
And the ghost of many a veteran bill
Shall hover around his slumbers ;
The ghastly dun shall worry his sleep.
And constables cluster around him,
And he shall creep from the wood-hole deep
Where their spectre-eyes have found him !
THE POET'S LOT 5 1
Ay ! gather your reins, and crack your thong,
And bid your steed go faster ;
He does not know, as he scrambles along,
That he has a fool for his master ;
And hurry away on your lonely ride,
Nor deign from the mire to save me ;
[^ I will paddle it stoutly at your side
\ With the tandem that nature gave me !
THE POET'S LOT.
What is a poet's love ? —
To write a girl a sonnet,
To get a ring, or some such thing,
And fustianize upon it.
What is a poet's fame ? —
Sad hints about his reason,
And sadder praise from garreteers,
To be returned in season.
Where go the poet's lines ? —
Answer, ye evening tapers !
Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls.
Speak from your folded papers !
52 DAILY TRIALS.
Child of the ploughshare, smile ;
Boy of the counter, grieve not,
Though muses round thy trundle-bed
Their broidered tissue weave not.
The poet's future holds
No civic wreath above him ;
Nor slated roof, nor varnished chaise,
Nor wife nor child to love him.
Maid of the village inn,
Who workest woe on satin,
(The grass in black, the graves in green.
The epitaph in Latin,)
Trust not to them who say
In stanzas, they adore thee ;
O rather sleep in church -yard clay,
With urns and cherubs o'er thee !
DAILY TRIALS.
{By a Sensitive Man.)
O THERE are times
When all this fret and tumult that we hear
Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear
His own dull chimes.
DAILY TRIALS. 53
Ding dong ! ding dong !
The world is in a simmer like a sea
Over a pent volcano, — woe is me
All the day long !
From crib to shroud !
Nurse o'er our cradles screameth lullaby,
And friends in boots tramp round us as we die,
Snuffling aloud.
At morning's call
The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun,
And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one,
Give answer all.
Draws round us, then the lonely caterwaul
Tart solo, sour duet, and general squall, —
These are our hymn.
Women, with tongues
Like polar needles, ever on the jar, —
Men, plugless word-spouts, whose deep foun-
tains are
Within their lungs.
54 DAILY TRIALS.
Children, with drums
Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass,
Peripatetics with a blade of grass
Between their thumbs.
Vagrants, whose arts
Have caged some devil in their mad machine,
Which grinding, squeaks, with husky groans
between.
Come out by starts.
Cockneys that kill
Thin horses of a Sunday, — men, with clams,
Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams
From hill to hill.
Soldiers, with guns
Making a nuisance of the blessed air,
Child-crying bellmen, children in despair
Screeching for buns.
Storms, thunders, waves !
Howl, crash, and bellow till ye get your fill ;
Ye sometimes rest ; men never can be still
But in their graves.
THE DORCHESTER GIANT, 55
THE DORCHESTER GIANT.
There was a giant in time of old,
A mighty one was he ;
He had a wife, but she was a scold,
So he kept her shut in his mammoth fold ;
And he had children three.
It happened to be an election day,
And the giants were choosing a king ;
The people were not democrats then.
They did not talk of the rights of men,
And all that sort of thing.
Then the giant took his children three
And fastened them in the pen ;
The children roared; quoth the giant, "Be
still!"
And Dorchester Heights and Milton Hill
Rolled back the sound again.
Then he brought them a pudding stuffed with
plums
As big as the State-House dome;
Quoth he, " There's something for you to eat ;
So stop your mouths with your 'lection treat,
And wait till your dad comes home."
5<5 THE DORCHESTER GIANT.
So the giant pulled him a chestnut stout,
And whittled the boughs away ;
The boys and their mother set up a shout ;
Said he, "You're in, and you can't get out.
Bellow as loud as you may."
Off he went, and he growled a tune
As he strode the fields along ;
'Tis said a buffalo fainted away,
And fell as cold as a lump of clay,
When he heard the giant's song.
But whether the story's true or not,
It is not for me to show ;
There's many a thing that's twice as queer
In somebody's lectures that we hear,
And those are true, you know.
What are those lone ones doing now,
The wife and the children sad ?
O ! they are in a terrible rout,
Screaming, and throwing their pudding about,
Acting as they were mad.
TO PORTRAIT OF 'M GENTLEMAN." 57
They flung it over to Roxbury hills,
They flung it over the plain,
And all over Milton and Dorchester too
Great lumps of pudding the giants threw ;
They tumbled as thick as rain.
Giant and mammoth have passed away,
For ages have floated by ;
The suet is hard as a marrow bone,
And every plum is turned to a stone,
But there the puddings lie.
And if, some pleasant afternoon,
You'll ask me out to ride.
The whole of the story I will tell,
And you shall see where the puddings fell,
And pay for the punch beside.
TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A GENTLEMAN.'
{In the AthencEiim Gallery)
It may be so, — perhaps thou hast
A warm and loving heart ;
I will not blame thee for thy face,
Poor devil as thou art.
58 TO PORTRAIT OF "^ GENTLEMAN:
That thing, thou fondly deem'st a nose,
Unsightly though it be, —
In spite of all the cold world's scorn,
It may be much to thee.
Those eyes, — among thine elder friends
Perhaps they pass for blue ; —
No matter, — if a man can see,
What more have eyes to do ?
Thy mouth, — that fissure in thy face
By something like a chin, —
May be a very useful place
To put thy victual in.
I know thou hast a wife at home,
I know thou hast a child.
By that subdued, domestic smile
Upon thy features mild.
That wife sits fearless by thy side.
That cherub on thy knee ;
They do not shudder at thy looks.
They do not shrink from thee.
Above thy mantel is a hook, —
A portrait once was there ;
It was thine only ornament, —
Alas ! that hook is bare.
TO PORTRAIT OF 'M GENTLEMAN:' 59
She begged thee not to let it go,
She begged thee all in vain ;
She wept, — and breathed a trembling prayer
To meet it safe again.
It was a bitter sight to see
That picture torn away ;
It was a solemn thought to think
What all her friends would say !
And often in her calmer hours,
And in her happy dreams,
Upon its long-deserted hook
The absent portrait seems.
Thy wretched infant turns his head
In melancholy wise.
And looks to meet the placid stare
Of those unbending eyes.
I never saw thee, lovely one, —
Perchance I never may ;
It is not often that we cross
Such people in our way ;
But if we meet in distant years.
Or on some foreign shore.
Sure I can take my Bible oath,
I've seen that face before.
6o TO THE PORTRAIT OF ''A LADY:'
TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A LADY.
{In the AihencEiun Gallery.)
Well, Miss, I wonder where you live,
I wonder what's your name,
I wonder how you came to be
In such a stylish frame ;
Perhaps you were a favorite child,
Perhaps an only one ;
Perhaps your friends were not aware
You had your portrait done !
Yet you must be a harmless soul ;
I cannot think that Sin
Would care to throw his loaded dice
With such a stake to win ;
I cannot think you would provoke
The poet's wicked pen,
Or make young women bite their lips.
Or ruin fine young men.
Pray, did you ever hear, my love,
Of boys that go about.
Who, for a very trifling sum,
Will snip one's picture out ?
THE COMET. 6 1
I'm not averse to red and white,
But all things have their place,
I think a profile cut in black
Would suit your style of face !
I love sweet features ; I will own
That I should like myself
To see my portrait on a wall,
Or bust upon a shelf;
But nature sometimes makes one up
Of such sad odds and ends,
It really might be quite as well
Hushed up among one's friends I
THE COMET.
The Comet I He is on his way.
And singing as he flies ;
The whizzing planets shrink before
The spectre of the skies ;
Ah ! well may regal orbs burn blue,
And satellites turn pale,^
Ten million cubic miles of head.
Ten billion leagues of tail !
62 THE COMET.
On, on by whistling spheres of light.
He flashes and he flames ;
He turns not to the left nor right,
He asks them not their names ;
One spurn from his demoniac heel, —
Away, away they fly.
Where darkness might be bottled up
And sold for " Tyrian dye."
And what would happen to the land.
And how would look the sea.
If in the bearded devil's path
Our earth should chance to be ?
Full hot and high the sea would boil,
Full red the forests gleam ;
Methought I saw and heard it all
In a dyspeptic dream !
I saw a tutor take his tube
The Comet's course to spy ;
I heard a scream, — the gathered rays
Had stewed the tutor's eye ;
I saw a fort, — the soldiers all
Were armed with goggles green ;
Pop cracked the guns ! whiz flew the balls !
Bang went the magazine!
THE COMET. ^3
I saw a poet dip a scroll
Each moment in a tub,
I read upon the warping back,
"The Dream of Beelzebub ;"
He could not see his verses burn,
Although his brain was fried,
And ever and anon he bent
To wet them as they dried.
I saw the scalding pitch roll down
The crackling, sweating pines.
And streams of smoke, like water-spouts,
Burst through the rumbhng mines ;
I asked the firemen why they made
Such noise about the town ;
They answered not, — but all the while
The brakes went up and down.
I saw a roasting pullet sit
Upon a baking egg ;
I saw a cripple scorch his hand
Extinguishing his leg ;
I saw nine geese upon the wing
Towards the frozen pole,
And every mother's gosling fell
Crisped to a crackling coal.
64 A NOONTIDE LYRIC.
I saw the ox that browsed the grass
Writhe in the bhstering rays,
The herbage in his shrinking jaws
Was all a fiery blaze ;
I saw huge fishes, boiled to rags,
Bob through the bubbling waves ;
I listened, and I heard the dead
All simmering in their graves !
Strange sights ! strange sounds ! O fearful
dream !
Its memory haunts me still,
The steaming sea, the crimson glare,
That wreathed each wooded hill ;
Stranger ! if through thy reeling brain
Such midnight visions sweep,
Spare, spare, O spare thine evening meal.
And sweet shall be thy sleep !
A NOONTIDE LYRIC.
The dinner-bell, the dinner-bell
Is ringing loud and clear ;
Through hill and plain, through street and
lane.
It echoes far and near ;
A NOOXTIDE LYRIC. 65
From curtained hall, and whitewashed stall,
Wherever men can hide,
Like bursting waves from ocean caves,
They float upon the tide.
I smell the smell of roasted meat !
I hear the hissing fry !
The beggars know where they can go,
But where, O where shall I ?
At twelve o'clock men took my hand,
At two they only stare,
And eye me with a fearful look,
As if I were a bear ?
The poet lays his laurels down
And hastens to his greens ;
The happy tailor quits his goose.
To riot on his beans ;
The weary cobbler snaps his thread.
The printer leaves his pie ;
His very devil hath a home.
But what, O what have I ?
Methinks I hear an angel voice,
That softly seems to say ;
" Pale stranger, all may yet be well.
Then wipe thy tears away ;
66 BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN.
Erect thy head, and cock thy hat,
And follow me afar,
And thou shalt have a jolly meal
And charge it at the bar."
I hear the voice ! I go ! I go !
Prepare your meat and wine !
They httle heed their future need,
Who pay not when they dine.
Give me to-day the rosy bowl,
Give me one golden dream, —
To-morrow kick away the stool.
And dangle from the beam !
THE BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN.
It was a tall young oysterman lived by the
river-side.
His shop was just upon the bank, his boat was
on the tide ;
The daughter of a fisherman, that was so
straight and slim.
Lived over on the other bank, right opposite
to him.
BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN. 67
It was the pensive oysterman that saw a lovely-
maid,
Upon a moonlight evening, a sitting in the
shade ;
He saw her wave her handkerchief, as much as
if to say,
" I'm wide awake, young oysterman, and all
the folks away."
Then up arose the oysterman, and to himself
said he,
" I guess I'll leave the skiff at home, for fear
that folks should see ;
I read it in the story-book, that, for to kiss his
dear,
Leander swam the Hellespont, — and 1 will swim
this here."
And he has leaped into the waves, and crossed
the shining stream,
And he has clambered up the bank, all in the
moonlight gleam ;
O there were kisses sweet as dew, and words
as soft as rain, —
But they have heard her father's step, and in
he leaps again I
68 BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN,
Out spoke the ancient fisherman, — " O what
was that, my daughter ?"
" 'Twas nothing but a pebble. Sir, I threw into
the water ;"
"And what is that, pray tell me, love, that
paddles off so fast ?"
" It's nothing but a porpoise. Sir, that's been a
swimming past."
Out spoke the ancient fisherman, — " Now bring
me my harpoon !
I'll get into my fishing-boat, and fix the fellow-
soon."
Down fell that pretty innocent, as falls a snow-
white lamb,
Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, like
seaweed on a clam.
Alas for those two loving ones ! she waked not
from her swound,
And he was taken with the cramp, and in the
waves was drowned ;
But Fate has metamorphosed them in pity of
their woe,
And now they keep an oyster-shop for mer-
maids down below.
A SONO. 69
A SONG.
FOR THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF
HARVARD COLLEGE, 1 836.
When the Puritans came over,
Our hills and swamps to clear.
The woods were full of catamounts.
And Indians red as deer,
With tomahawks and scalping-knives,
That make folks' heads look queer ; —
O the ship from England used to bring
A hundred wives a year !
The crows came cawing through the air
To pluck the pilgrim's corn,
The bears came snuffing round the door
Whene'er a babe was born.
The rattlesnakes were bigger round
Than the butt of the old ram's horn
The deacon blew at meeting time
On every " Sabbath " morn.
But soon they knocked the wigwams down,
And pine-tree trunk and limb
Began to sprout among the leaves
In shape of steeples slim ;
70 A SONG.
And out the little wharves were stretched
Along the ocean's rim,
And up the little schoolhouse shot
To keep the boys in trim.
And, when at length the College rose,
The sachem cocked his eye
At every tutor's meagre ribs
Whose coat-tails whistled by ;
But, when the Greek and Hebrew words
Came tumbling from their jaws.
The copper-colored children all
Ran screaming to the squaws.
And who was on the Catalogue
When college was begun ?
Two nephews of the President,
And the Professor's son,
(They turned a little Indian by,
As brown as any bun ;)
Lord ! how the seniors knocked about
The Freshman class of one !
They had not then the dainty things
That commons now afford,
But succotash and hominy
Were smoking on the board ;
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. 71
They did not rattle round in gigs,
Or dash on long-tail blues,
But always on Commencement days
The tutors blacked their shoes.
God bless the ancient Puritans !
Their lot was hard enough ;
But honest hearts make iron arms,
And tender maids are tough ;
Some love and faith have formed and fed
Our true-born Yankee stuff,
And keep the kernel in the shell
The British found so rough !
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
Where, O where are the visions of morning,
Fresh as the dews of our prime ?
Gone, like tenants that quit without warning,
Down the back entry of time.
Where, O where are life's lilies and roses,
Nursed in the golden dawn's smile ?
Dead as the bulrushes round little Moses,
On the old banks of the Nile.
72 LEXINGTON.
Where are the Marys, and Anns, and Elizas,
Loving and lovely of yore ?
Look in the columns of old Advertisers, —
Married and dead by the score.
Where the gray colts and the ten-year-old
fillies,
Saturday's triumph and joy ?
Gone hke our friend heroic Achilles,
Homer's ferocious old boy.
Die-away dreams of ecstatic emotion,
Hopes like young eagles at play.
Vows of unheard of and endless devotion,
How ye have faded away !
Yet, though the ebbing of Time's mighty river
Leave our young blossoms to die,
Let him roll smooth in his current for ever.
Till the last pebble is dry.
LEXINGTON.
Slowly the mist o'er the meadow was creeping,
Bright on the dewy buds glistened the sun,
When from his couch, while his children were
sleeping,
Rose the bold rebel and shouldered his gun.
LL'XIXGTOX. 73
Waving her golden veil
Over the silent dale,
Blithe looked the morning on cottage and
spire ;
Hushed was his parting sigh,
While from his noble eye
Flashed the last sparkle of Uberty's fire.
On the smooth green where the fresh leaf is
springing
Calmly the first-born of glory have met ;
Hark ! the death-volley around them is ring-
ing !
Look ! with their life-blood the young grass
is wet !
Faint is the feeble breath,
Murmuring low in death,
" Tell to our sons how their fathers have died ;"
Nerveless the iron hand,
Raised for its native land,
Lies by the weapon that gleams at its side.
Over the hill-sides the wild knell is tolUng,
From their far hamlets the yeomanry come ;
As through the storm-clouds the thunder-burst
rolling,
Circles the beat of the mustering drum.
74 LEXiyGTON.
Fast on the soldier's path
Darken the waves of wrath,
Long have they gathered and loud shall they
fall;
Red glares the musket's flash,
Sharp rings the rifle's crash.
Blazing and clanging from thicket and wall.
Gaily the plume of the horseman was dancing.
Never to shadow his cold brow again ;
Proudly at morning the war-steed was prancing.
Reeking and panting he droops on the rein ;
Pale is the lip of scorn.
Voiceless the trumpet horn,
Torn is the silken-fringed red cross on high ;
Many a belted breast
Low on the surf shall rest.
Ere the dark hunters the herd have past by.
Snow-girdled crags where the hoarse wind is
raving,
Rocks where the weary floods murmur and
wail,
Wilds where the fern by the furrow is waving.
Reeled with the echoes that rode on the
gale;
Far as the tempest thrills
Over the darkened hills.
THE iMUSIC-GRINDERS. 75
Far as the sunshine streams over the plain,
Roused by the tyrant band,
Woke all the mighty land,
Girded for battle, from mountain to main.
Green be the graves where her martyrs are
lying !
Shroudless and tombless they sunk to their
rest,
While o'er their ashes the starry fold flying
Wraps the proud eagle they roused from his
nest.
Borne on her northern pine,
Long o'er the foaming brine
Spread her broad banner to storm and to sun ;
Heaven keep her ever free,
Wide as o'er land and sea
Floats the fair emblem her heroes have won.
THE MUSIC-GRINDERS.
There are three ways in which men take
One's money from his purse,
And very hard it is to tell
Which of the three is worse ;
But all of them are bad enough
To make a body curse.
76 THE 3IUSIC-GRINDERS.
You're riding out some pleasant day,
And counting up your gains ;
A fellow jumps from out a bush
And takes your horse's reins,
Another hints some words about
A bullet in your brains.
It's hard to meet such pressing friends
In such a lonely spot ;
It's very hard to lose your cash,
But harder to be shot ;
And so you take your wallet out,
Though you would rather not.
Perhaps you're going out to dine, —
Some filthy creature begs
You'll hear about the cannon-ball
That carried off his pegs.
And says it is a dreadful thing
For men to lose their legs.
He tells you of his starving wife.
His children to be fed,
Poor little, lovely innocents,
All clamorous for bread, —
And so you kindly help to put
A bachelor to bed.
THE BIUSIC'GEINDERS. 77
You're sitting on your window-seat
Beneath a cloudless moon ;
You hear a sound, that seems to wear
The semblance of a tune,
As if a broken fife should strive
To drown a cracked bassoon.
And nearer, nearer still, the tide
Of music seems to come,
There's something like a human voice.
And something like a drum ;
You sit, in speechless agony.
Until your ear is numb.
Poor " home, sweet home," should seem to be
A very dismal place ;
Your " auld acquaintance," all at once.
Is altered in the face ;
Their discords sting through Burns and Moore,
Like hedgehogs dressed in lace.
You think they are crusaders, sent
From some infernal clime.
To pluck the eyes of Sentiment,
And dock the tail of Rhyme,
To crack the voice of Melody,
And break the legs of Time.
78 THE MUSIC-GRINDERS.
But hark ! the air again is still,
The music all is ground,
And silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound ;
It cannot be, — it is, — it is, —
A hat is going round !
No ! Pay the dentist when he leaves
A fracture in your jaw.
And pay the owner of the bear,
That stunned you with his paw,
And buy the lobster, that has had
Your knuckles in his claw ;
But if you are a portly man.
Put on your fiercest frown,
And talk about a constable
To turn them out of town ;
Then close your sentence with an oath,
• And shut the window down !
And if you are a slender man.
Not big enough for that,
Or, if you cannot make a speech.
Because you are a flat.
Go very quietly and drop
A button in the hat !
THE SEPTEMBER GALE. 79
THE SEPTEMBER GALE.
I'm not a chicken ; I have seen
Full many a chill September,
And though I was a youngster then,
That gale I well remember ;
The day before, my kite-string snapped.
And, I my kite pursuing,
The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat
For me, two storms were brewing !
It came as quarrels sometimes do,
When married folks get clashing ;
There was a heavy sigh or two,
Before the fire was flashing, —
A little stir among the clouds,
Before they rent asunder, —
A little rocking of the trees,
And then came on the thunder.
Lord ! how the ponds and rivers boiled,
And how the shingles rattled !
And oaks were scattered on the ground
As if the Titans battled ;
And all above was in a howl.
And all below a clatter, —
So THE SEPTEMBER GALE.
The earth was hke a frying-pan,
Or some such hissing matter.
It chanced to be our washing-day,
And all our things were drying :
The storm came roaring through the lines,
And set them all a flying ;
I saw the shirts and petticoats
Go riding off like witches ;
I lost, ah ! bitterly I wept, —
I lost my Sunday breeches !
I saw them straddling through the air,
Alas ! too late to win them ;
I saw them chase the clouds, as if
The devil had been in them ;
They were my darhngs and my pride,
My boyhood's only riches, —
"Farewell, farewell," I faintly cried, —
" My breeches ! O my breeches !"
That night I saw them in my dreams,
How changed from what I knew them !
The dews had steeped their faded threads,
The winds had whistled through them ;
I saw the wide and ghastly rents
Where demon claws had torn them ;
A hole was in their amplest part,
As if an imp had worn them.
HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS, 8i
I have had many happy years,
And tailors kind and clever,
But those young pantaloons have gone.
For ever and for ever !
And not till fate has cut the last
Of all my earthly stitches,
This aching heart shall cease to mourn
My loved, my long-lost breeches !
THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS.
I WROTE some lines once on a time
In wondi'ous merry mood.
And thought, as usual, men would say
They were exceeding good.
They were so queer, so very queer,
I laughed as I would die ;
Albeit, in the general way,
A sober man am I.
I called my servant, and he came ;
How kind it was of him,
To mind a slender man like me,
He of the mighty limb !
02 HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS.
"These to the printer," I exclaimed,
And, in my humorous way,
I added, (as a trifling jest,)
" There '11 be the devil to pay."
He took the paper, and I watched.
And saw him peep within ;
At the first line he read, his face
Was all upon the grin.
He read the next; the grin grew broad,
And shot from ear to ear ;
He read the third ; a chuckling noise
I now began to hear.
The fourth ; he broke into a roar ;
The fifth ; his waistband split ;
The sixth ; he burst five buttons off,
And tumbled in a fit.
Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,
I watched that wretched man.
And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.
THE HOT SEASOX. 83
THE HOT SEASON.
The folks, that on the first of May-
Wore winter-coats and hose,
Began to say, the first of June,
" Good Lord ! how hot it grows."
At last two Fahrenheits blew up,
And killed two children small,
And one barometer Shot dead
A tutor with its ball !
Now all day long the locusts sang
Among the leafless trees ;
Three new hotels warped inside out,
The pumps could only wheeze ;
And ripe old wine, that twenty years
Had cobwebbed o'er in vain,
Came spouting through the rotten corks
Like Joly's best Champagne !
The Worcester locomotives did
Their trip in half an hour ;
The Lowell cars ran forty miles
Before they checked the power ;
Roll brimstone soon became a drug.
And loco-focos fell ;
H THE HOT SEAS ox.
All asked for ice, but everywhere
Saltpetre was to sell !
Plump men of mornings ordered tights,
But, ere the scorching noons,
Their candle-moulds had grown as loose
As Cossack pantaloons !
The dogs ran mad, — men could not try
If water they would choose ;
A horse fell dead, — he only left
Four red-hot, rusty shoes !
But soon the people could not bear
The slightest hint of fire ;
Allusions to caloric drew
A flood of savage ire ;
The leaves on heat were all torn out
From every book at school,
And many blackguards kicked and caned.
Because they said, — " Keep cool !"
The gas-light companies were mobbed,
The bakers all were shot,
The penny press began to talk
Of Lynching Doctor Nott ;
And all about the warehouse steps
Were angry men in droves,
SOXG. o
Crashing and splintering through the doors
To smash the patent stoves !
The abohtion men and maids
Were tanned to such a hue,
You scarce could tell them from their friends,
Unless their eyes were blue ;
And when I left, society-
Had burst its ancient guards.
And Brattle Street and Temple Place
Were interchanging cards !
SONG,
WRITTEN FOR THE DINNER GIVEN TO CHARLES
DICKENS, BY THE YOUNG MEN OF BOSTON,
FEB. I, 1842.
The stars their early vigils keep,
The silent hours are near
When drooping eyes forget to weep, —
Yet still we linger here ;
And what, — the passing churl may ask, —
Can claim such wond'rous power.
That Toil forgets his wonted task,
And Love his promised hour ?
86 SO^G.
The Irish harp no longer thrills,
Or breathes a fainter tone ;
The clarion blast from Scotland's hills
Alas ! no more is blown ;
And passion's burning lip bewails
Her Harold's wasted fire,
Still lingering o'er the dust that veils
The Lord of England's lyre.
But grieve not o'er its broken strings,
Nor think its soul hath died,
While yet the lark at heaven's gate sings.
As once o'er Avon's side : —
While gentle Summer sheds her bloom,
And dewy blossoms wave
Alike o'er Juliet's storied tomb
And Nellie's nameless grave.
Thou glorious island of the sea !
Though wide the wasting flood
That parts our distant land from thee, —
We claim thy generous blood ;
Nor o'er thy far horizon springs
One hallowed star of fame.
But kindles, like an angel's wings,
Our western skies in flame !
LINES. 87
LINES
RECITED AT THE BERKSHIRE FESTIVAL.
Come back to your mother, ye children, for
shame,
Who have wandered Hke truants, for riches or
fame !
With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her
cap,
She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap.
Come out from your alleys, your courts and
your lanes,
And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our
plains ;
Take a whiff from our fields, and your excel-
lent wives
Will declare it's all nonsense insuring )our
lives.
Come you of the law, who can talk if you
please,
Till the man in the moon will allow it's a
cheese,
And leave " the old lady, that never tells lies,"
To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes.
88 LINES.
Ye healers of men, for a moment decline
Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line ;
While you shut up your turnpike, your neigh-
bors can go
The old roundabout road, to the regions below.
You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens,
And whose head is an ant-hill of units and tens ;
Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still
As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill.
Poor drudge of the city, how happy he feels
With the burs on his legs, and the grass at his
heels ;
No dodger behind, his bandannas to share,
No constable grumbling, "You musn't walk
there."
In yonder green meadow, to memory dear,
He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear ;
The dewdrops hang round him, on blossoms
and shoots,
He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his
boots.
There stands the old school-house, hard by the
old church ;
That tree at its side had the flavor of birch ;
LINES. 89
Oh sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks,
Though the prairie of youth had so many " big
hcks."
By the side of yon river he weeps and he
slumps,
The boots fill with water, as if they were
pumps ;
Till sated with rapture, he steals to his bed
With a glow in his heart and a cold in his head.
'Tis past — he is dreaming — I see him again ;
The ledger returns as by legerdemain ;
His neckcloth is damp with an easterly flaw,
And he holds in his fingers an omnibus straw.
He dreams the chill gust is a blossomy gale.
That the straw is a rose from his dear native
vale ;
And murmurs, unconscious of space and of
time,
"A I. Extra-super. Ah, isn't it prime!"
Oh what are the prizes we perish to win
To the first httle "shiner" we caught with a
pin !
No soil upon earth is as dear to our eyes
As the soil we first stirred in terrestrial pies !
90 VERSES FOR AFTER-DINNER.
Then come from all parties, and parts, to our
feast,
Though not at the "Astor," we'll give you at
least
A bite at an apple, a seat on the grass,
And the best of old — water — at nothing a glass.
VERSES FOR AFTER-DINNER.
$. B. K. SOCIETY, 1844.
I WAS thinking last night, as I sat in the cars.
With the charmingest prospect of cinders and
stars.
Next Thursday is — bless me — how hard it will
be.
If that cannibal president calls upon me.
There is nothing on earth that he will not de-
vour,
From a tutor in seed to a freshman in flower ;
No sage is too gray, and no youth is too green,
And you can't be too plump, though you're
never too lean.
VERSES FOR AFTER-DINNER. 9'
While others enlarge on the boiled and the
roast,
He serves a raw clergyman up with a toast,
Or catches some doctor, quite tender and young,
And basely insists on a bit of his tongue.
Poor victim, prepared for his classical spit,
With a stuffing of praise and a basting of wit,
You may twitch at your collar, and wrinkle
your brow.
But you're up on your legs, and you're in for it
O think of your friends — they are waiting to
hear
Those jokes that are thought so remarkably
queer ;
And all of the Jack Homers of metrical buns
Are prying and fingering to pick out the puns.
Those thoughts, which like chickens, will al-
ways thrive best
AVhen reared by the heat of the natural nest.
Will perish if hatched from their embryo
dream
In the mist and the glow of convivial steam.
9- VERSES FOR AFTER-DINNER.
0 pardon me then, if I meekly retire,
With a very small flash of ethereal fire ;
No rubbing will kindle your Lucifer match,
If the Ji2 does not follow the primitive scratch.
Dear friends, who are listening so sweetly the
while,
With your lips double reefed in a snug little
smile, —
1 leave you two fables, both drawn from the
deep, —
The shells you can drop, but the pearls you
may keep.
The fish called the Flounder, perhaps you
may know,
Has one side for use and another for show ;
One side for the pubhc, a delicate brown.
And one that is white, which he always keeps
down.
A very young flounder, the flattest of flats,
(And they're none of them thicker than opera
hats)
Was speaking more freely than charity taught,
Of a friend and relation that just had been
caught.
VERSES FOR AFTER-DINNER. 93
"My! what an exposure! just see what a
sight !
I blush for my race — he is showing his white !
Such spinning and wrigghng — why what does
he wish ?
How painfully small to respectable fish !"
Then said an old Sculpin, — "My freedom ex-
cuse,
But you're playing the cobbler with holes in
your shoes ;
Your brown side is up, — but just wait till
you're tried,
And you'll find that all flounders are white on
one side."
There 's a slice near the Pickerel's pectoral
fins,
Where the thorax leaves olT and the venter hQ-
gins ;
Which his brother, survivor of fish-hooks and
lines,
Though fond of his family, never declines.
He loves his relations ; he feels they'll be
missed ;
But that one little tit-bit he cannot resist ;
94 SONG.
So your bait may be swallowed, no matter how
fast,
For you catch your next fish with a piece of the
last.
And thus, O survivor, whose merciless fate,
Is to take the next hook with the president's bait,
You are lost while you snatch from the end of
his line,
The morsel he rent from this bosom of mine !
SONG,
FOR A TEMPERANCE DINNER TO WHICH LADIES
WERE INVITED.
A HEALTH to dear woman ! she bids us entwine
From the cup it encircles, the fast-clinging
vine ;
But her cheek in its crystal with pleasure will
glow,
And mirror its bloom in the bright wave below.
A health to sweet woman ! the days are no
more
When she watched for her lord till the revel
was o'er,
SOXG. 95
And smoothed the white pillow, and blushed
when he came
As she pressed her cold lips on his forehead of
flame.
Alas for the loved one ! too spotless and fair,
The joys of his banquet to chasten and share ;
Her eye lost its light that his goblet might
shine,
And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his
wine.
Joy smiles in the fountain, health flows in the
rills,
As their ribands of silver unwind from the
hills ;
They breathe not the mist of the bacchanal's
dream.
But the lilies of innocence float on their stream.
Then a health and a welcome to woman once
more !
She brings us a passport that laughs at our
door ;
It is written on crimson, — its letters are
pearls, —
It is countersigned Nature — So room for the
Girls !
9^ URANIA.
URANIA:
A RHYMED LESSON.*
Yes, dear Enchantress, wandering far and
long,
In realms unperfumed by the breath of song.
Where flowers ill-flavored shed their sweets
around,
And bitterest roots invade the ungenial ground,
Whose gems are crystals from the Epsom mine,
Whose vineyards flow with antimonial wine,
Whose gates admit no mirthful feature in,
Save one gaunt mocker, the Sardonic grin.
Whose pangs are real, not the woes of rhyme
That blue-eyed misses warble out of time ;
Truant, not recreant to thy sacred claim.
Older by reckoning, but in heart the same.
Freed for a moment from the chains of toil,
I tread once more thy consecrated soil ;
Here at thy feet my old allegiance own.
Thy subject still, and loyal to thy throne !
My dazzled glance explores the crowded hall ;
Alas, how vain to hope the smiles of all 1
"■•• This poem was delivered before the Boston
Mercantile Library Association, October 14, 1846.
URANIA. 97
I know my audience ; all the gay and young
Love the light antics of a playful tongue,
And these, remembering some expansive hne
My lips let loose among the nuts and wine,
Are all impatience till the opening pun
Proclaim the witty sham fight is begun.
Two-fifths at least, if not the total half,
Have come infuriate for an earthquake laugh ;
I know full well what alderman has tied
His red bandanna tight about his side ;
I see the mother, who, aware that boys
Perform their laughter with superfluous noise.
Beside her kerchief, brought an extra one
To stop the explosions of her bursting son ;
I know a tailor, once a friend of mine,
Expects great doings in the button line ; —
For mirth's concussions rip the outward case
And plant the stitches in a tenderer place ; —
I know my audience ; these shall have their due,
A smile awaits them ere my song is through !
I know myself; not servile for applause,
My Muse permits no deprecating clause ;
Modest or vain, she will not be denied
One bold confession, due to honest pride.
And well she knows, the drooping veil of song
Shall save her boldness from the caviller's
9 8 URANIA.
Her sweeter voice the Heavenly Maid imparts
To tell the secrets of our aching hearts ;
For this, a suppHant, captive, prostrate, bound.
She kneels imploring at the feet of sound ;
For this, convulsed in thought's maternal pains.
She loads her arms with rhyme's resounding
chains ;
Faint though the music of her fetters be.
It lends one charm ; her lips are ever free !
Think not I come, in manhood's fiery noon.
To steal his laurels from the stage buffoon ;
His sword of lath the harlequin may wield ;
Behold the star upon my lifted shield !
Though the just critic pass my humble name.
And sweeter lips have drained the cup of fame.
While my gay stanza pleased the banquet's
lords,
The soul within was tuned to deeper chords !
Say, shall my arms, in other conflicts taught
To swing aloft the ponderous mace of thought,
Lift, in obedience to a school-girl's law,
Mirth's tinsel wand or laughter's tickling straw?
Say, shall I wound with satire's rankling spear
The pure, warm hearts that bid me welcome
here?
No ! while I wander through the land of dreams
To strive with great and play with trifling themes,
UEAXIA. 99
Let some kind meaning fill the varied line ;
You have your judgment; will you trust to
mine ?
Between two breaths what crowded mys-
teries lie, —
The first short gasp, the last and lonj drawn
sigh !
Like phantoms painted on the magic slide,
Forth from the darkness of the past we glide,
As living shadows for a moment seen
In airy pageant on the eternal screen,
Traced by a ray from one unchanging flame.
Then seek the dust and stillness whence we
came.
But whence and why, our trembling souls in-
quire.
Caught these dim visions their awakening fire ?
0 who forgets, when first the piercing thought
Through childhood's musings found its way un-
sought,
1 AM. I LIVE. The mystery and the fear
When the dread question — What has brought
ME HERE?
Burst through life's twilight, as before the sun
Roll the deep thunders of the morning gun !
loo URANIA.
Are angel faces, silent and serene,
Bent on the conflicts of this little scene.
Whose dream-like efforts, whose unreal strife
Are but the preludes to a larger life ?
Or does life's summer see the end of all,
These leaves of being mouldering as they fall,
As the old poet vaguely used to deem,
As Wesley questioned in his youthful dream ?
O could such mockery reach our souls indeed.
Give back the Pharaohs' or the Athenian's
creed ;
Better than this a Heaven of man's device, —
The Indian's sports, the Moslem's paradise !
Or is our being's only end and aim
To add new glories to our Maker's name,
As the poor insect, shrivelHng in the blaze.
Lends a faint sparkle to its streaming rays ?
Does earth send upwards to the Eternal's ear
The mingled discords of her jarring sphere
To swell his anthem, while Creation rings
With notes of anguish from its shattered
strings ?
Is it for this the immortal Artist means
These conscious, throbbing agonized machines ?
URAXIA. loi
Dark is the soul whose sullen creed can bind
In chains like these the all-embracing Mind ;
No ! two-faced bigot, thou dost ill reprove
The sensual, selfish, yet benignant Jove,
And praise a tyrant throned in lonely pride,
Who loves himself, and cares for nought be-
side ;
Who gave thee, summoned from primeval night,
A thousand laws, and not a single right ;
A heart to feel and quivering nerves to thrill,
The sense of wrong, the death-defying will ;
Who girt thy senses with this goodly frame.
Its earthly glories and its orbs of flame.
Not for thyself, unworthy of a thought.
Poor helpless victim of a life unsought.
But all for him, unchanging and supreme,
The heartless centre of thy frozen scheme !
Trust not the teacher with his lying scroll,
Who tears the charter of thy shuddering soul :
The God of love, who gave the breath that
warms
All living dust in all its varied forms,
Asks not the tribute of a world like this
To fill the measure of his perfect bliss.
Though winged with life through all its radiant
shores,
Creation flowed with unexhausted stores
I02 URANIA.
Cherub and seraph had not yet enjoyed ;
For this he called thee from the quickening
void!
Nor this alone ; a larger gift was thine,
A mightier purpose swelled his vast design ;
Thought, — conscience, — will, — to make them
all thine own.
He rent a pillar from the eternal throne !
Made in his image, thou must nobly dare
The thorny crown of sovereignty to share ;
With eye uplifted it is thine to view
From thine own centre. Heaven's o'erarching
blue ;
So round thy heart a beaming circle lies
No fiend can blot, no hypocrite disguise ;
From all its orbs one cheering voice is heard.
Full to thine ear it bears the Father's word,
Now, as in Eden where his first-born trod •
"Seek thine own welfare, true to man and
God!"
Think not too meanly of thy low estate ;
Thou hast a choice ; to choose is to create !
Remember whose the sacred lips that tell,
Angels approve thee when thy choice is well ;
Remember, One, a judge of righteous men.
Swore to spare Sodom if she held but ten !
URANIA. 103
Use well the freedom which thy Master gave,
(Think'st thou that Heaven can tolerate a
slave ?)
And he who made thee to be just and true
Will bless thee, love thee, — ay, respect thee
too!
Nature has placed thee on a changeful tide.
To breast its waves, but not without a guide ;
Yet, as the needle will forget its aim,
Jarred by the fury of the electric flame,
As the true current it will falsely feel,
Warped from its axis by a freight of steel ;
So will thy CONSCIENCE lose its balanced truth
If passion's lightning fall upon thy youth ;
So the pure impulse quit its sacred hold,
Girt round too deeply with magnetic gold.
Go to yon tower, where busy science plies
Her vast antennae feeling through the skies ;
That little vernier on whose slender lines
The midnight taper trembles as it shines,
A silent index, tracks the planets' march
In all their wanderings through the ethereal
arch.
Tells through the mist where dazzled Mercury
burns,
And marks the spot where Uranus returns.
I04 URANIA.
So, till by wrong or negligence effaced.
The living index which thy Maker traced
Repeats the line each starry \''irtue draws
Through the wide circuit of creation's laws :
Still tracks unchanged the everlasting ray
Where the dark shadows of temptation stray ;
But, once defaced, forgets the orbs of light.
And leaves thee wandering o'er the expanse of
nicrht !
" What is thy creed ?" a hundred lips in-
quire ;
"Thou seekest God beneath what Christian
spire ?"
Nor ask they idly, for uncounted lies
Float upward on the smoke of sacrifice ;
When man's first incense rose above the plain,
Of earth's two altars one was built by Caia !
Uncursed by doubt, our earhest creed we
take ;
We love the precepts for the teacher's sake ;
The simple lessons which the nursery taught
Fell soft and stainless on the buds of thought.
And the full blossom owes its fairest hue
To those sweet tear-drops of affection's dew.
Too oft the light that led our earlier hours
Fades with the perfume of our cradle flowers,
URANIA. ' 105
The clear, cold question chills to frozen doubt ;
Tired of beliefs, we dread to live without ;
O then, if reason waver at thy side,
Let humbler Memory be thy gentle guide.
Go to thy birth-place, and, if faith was there.
Repeat thv father's creed, thy mother's prayer !
Faith loves to lean on Time's destroying
arm.
And age, like distance, lends a double charm ;
In dim cathedrals, dark with vaulted gloom,
What holy awe invests the saintly tomb !
There pride will bow, and anxious care expand.
And creeping avarice come with open hand ;
The gay can weep, the impious can adore,
From morn's first glimmerings on the chancel
floor
Till dying sunset shed his crimson stains
Through the faint halos of the irised panes.
Yet, there are graves, whose rudely-shapen
sod
Bears the fresh footprints where the sexton
trod ;
Graves where the verdure has not dared to
shoot.
Where the chance wildflower has not fixed its
root,
io6 URANIA.
Whose slumbering tenants, dead without a
name,
The eternal record shall at length proclaim
Pure as the holiest in the long array
Of hooded, mitred, or tiaraed clay !
Come seek the air ; some pictures we may
gain
Whose passing shadows shall not be in vain ;
Not from the scenes that crowd the stranger's
soil,
Not from our own amidst the stir of toil.
But when the Sabbath brings its kind release.
And care lies slumbering on the lap of peace.
The air is hushed ; the street is holy ground ;
Hark ! The sweet bells renew their welcome
sound ;
As one by one awakes each silent tongue.
It tells the turret whence its voice is flung.
The Chapel, last of sublunary things
That shocks our echoes with the name of
Kings,
Whose bell, just glistening from the font and
forge,
Rolled its proud requiem for the second George,
Solemn and swelling, as of old it rang,
Flings to the wind its deep, sonorous clang ; —
The simpler pile, that, mindful of the hour
When Howe's artillery shook its half-built
tower.
Wears on its bosom, as a bride might do.
The iron breastpin which the " Rebels" threw,
Wakes the sharp echoes with the quivering
thrill
Of keen vibrations, tremulous and shrill ; —
Aloft, suspended in the morning's fire,
Crash the vast cymbals from the Southern
spire ; —
The Giant, standing by the elm-clad green.
His white lance lifted o'er the silent scene,
Whirling in the air his brazen goblet round,
Swings from its brim the swollen floods of
sound ; —
While, sad with memories of the olden time.
The Northern Minstrel pours her tender chime,
Faint, single tones, that spell their ancient song.
But tears still follow as they breathe along.
Child of the soil, whom fortune sends to
range
Where man and nature, faith and customs
chancre.
loS URANIA.
Borne in thy memory, each familiar tone
Mourns on the winds that sigh in every zone.
When Ceylon sweeps thee with her perfumed
breeze
Through the warm billows of the Indian seas ;
When, — ship and shadow blend both in one, —
Flames o'er thy mast the equatorial sun,
From sparkling midnight to refulgent noon
Thy canvas swelling with the still monsoon ;
When through thy shrouds the wild tornado
sings
And thy poor seabird folds her tattered wings,
Oft will delusion o'er thy senses steal,
And airy echoes ring the Sabbath peal !
Then, dim with grateful tears, in long array
Rise the fair town, the island-studded bay.
Home, with its smiling board, its cheering
fire,
The half-choked welcome of the expecting
sire,
The mother's kiss, and, still if aught remain,
Our whispering hearts shall aid the silent
strain —
Ah, let the dreamer o'er the taffrail lean
To muse unheeded, and to weep unseen ;
Fear not the tropic's dews, the evening's chills.
His heart lies warm among his triple hills !
UIiA^'^IA. I09
Turned from her path by this deceitful
gleam,
My wayward fancy half forgets her theme ;
See through the streets that slumbered in re-
pose
The living current of devotion flows ;
Its varied forms in one harmonious band,
Age leading childhood by its dimpled hand.
Want, in the robe whose faded edges fall
To tell of rags beneath the tartan shawl,
And wealth, in silks that, fluttering to appear,
Lift the deep borders of the proud cashmere.
See, but glance briefly, sorrow-worn and pale.
Those sunken cheeks beneath the widow's veil ;
Alone she wanders where with ^zm she trod,
No arm to stay her, but she leans on God.
While other doublets deviate here and there.
What secret handcuff binds that pretty pair ?
Compactest couple ! pressing side to side, —
Ah, the white bonnet that reveals the bride !
By the white neckcloth, with its straightened
tie,
The sober hat, the Sabbath-speaking eye.
Severe and smileless, he that runs may read
The stern disciple of Geneva's creed ;
Decent and slow, behold his solemn march ;
no UHAKIA.
Silent he enters through yon crowded arch.
A liveher bearing of the outward man,
The light-hued gloves, the undevout rattan,
Now smartly raised or half-profanely twirled, —
A bright, fresh twinkle from the week-day
world, —
Tell their plain story ; — yes, thine eyes behold
A cheerful Christian from the liberal fold.
Down the chill street that curves in gloom-
iest shade.
What marks betray yon solitary maid ?
The cheek's red rose, that speaks of balmier
air;
The Celtic blackness of her braided hair ;
The gilded missal in her kerchief tied ;
Poor Nora, exile from Killarney's side !
Sister in toil, though born of colder skies,
That left their azure in her downcast eyes.
See pallid Margaret, Labor's patient child.
Scarce weaned from home, the nursling of the
wild
Where white Katahdin o'er the horizon shines,
And broad Penobscot dashes through the pines ;
Still, as she hastes, her careful fingers hold
The unfailing hymn-book in its cambric fold.
Six days at drudgery's heavy wheel she stands,
UEAXIA. 1 ' I
The seventh sweet morning folds her weary-
hands ;
Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be
sure
He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor !
This weekly picture faithful memory draws.
Nor claims the noisy tribute of applause;
Faint is the glow such barren hopes can lend.
And frail the line that asks no loftier end.
Trust me, kind listener, I will yet beguile
Thy saddened features of the promised smile ?
This magic mantle thou must well divide,
It has its sable, and its ermine side ;
Yet, ere the lining of the robe appears,
Take thou in silence, what I give in tears.
Dear listening soul, this transitory scene
Of murmuring stillness, busily serene ;
This solemn pause, the breathing-space of man.
The halt of toil's exhausted caravan,
Comes sweet with music to thy wearied ear ;
Rise with its anthems to a holier sphere !
Deal meekly, gently, with the hopes that
guide
The lowliest brother straying from thy side;
112 URANIA.
If right, they bid thee tremble for thine own,
If wrong, the verdict is for God alone !
What though the champions of thy faith es-
teem
The sprinkled fountain or baptismal stream ;
Shall jealous passions in unseemly strife
Cross their dark weapons o'er the waves of hfe ?
Let my free soul, expanding as it can.
Leave to his scheme the thoughtful Puritan ;
But Calvin's dogma shall my lips deride ?
In that stern faith my angel Mary died ; —
Or ask if mercy's milder creed can save.
Sweet sister, risen from thy new-made grave ?
True, the harsh founders of thy church re-
viled
That ancient faith, the trust of Erin's child ;
Must thou be raking in the crumbled past
For racks and fagots in her teeth to cast ?
See from the ashes of Helvetia's pile
The whitened skull of old Servetus smile !
Round her young heart thy " Romish Upas"
threw
Its firm, deep fibres, strengthening as she grew;
Thy sneering voice may call them " Popish
tricks," —
UEAXIA. I 13
Her Latin prayers, her dangling crucifix, —
But De Profundis blessed her father's grave ;
That " idol " cross her dying mother gave !
What if some angel looks with equal eyes
On her and thee, the simple and the wise,
Writes each dark fault against thy brighter
creed,
And drops a tear with every foolish bead '
Grieve, as thou must, o'er history's reeking
page;
Blush for the wrongs that stain thy happier a;^e ;
Strive with the wanderer from the better path,
Bearing thy message meekly, not in wrath ;
Weep for the frail that err, the weak that fall,
Have thine own faith, — but hope and pray for
all!
Faith ; Conscience ; Love. A meaner task
remains,
And humbler thoughts must creep in lowlier
strains ;
Shalt thou be honest ? Ask the worldly
schools,
And all will tell thee knaves are busier fools ;
Prudent ? Industrious ? Let not modern pens
Instruct " Poor Richard's" fellow-citizens.
114 URANIA.
Be firm ; one constant element in luck
Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck ;
See yon tall shaft ; if felt the earthquake's thrill.
Clung to its base, and greets the sunrise still.
Stick to your aim ; the mongrel's hold will
slip.
But only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip ;
Small as he looks, the jaw that never yields,
Drags down the bellowing monarch of the
fields !
Yet in opinions look not always back ;
Your wake is nothing, mind the coming track ;
Leave what you've done for what you have to
do;
Don't be " consistent," but be simply true.
Don't catch the fidgets ; you have found
your place
Just in the focus of a nervous race,
Fretful to change, and rabid to discuss,
Full of excitements, always in a fuss ; —
Think of the patriarchs ; then compare as men
These lean-cheeked maniacs of the tongue and
pen
Run, if you like, but try to keep your breath ;
URANIA. 1 1 S
Work like a man, but don't be worked to
death ;
And with new notions, — let me change the
rule, —
Don't strike the iron till it's slightly cool.
Choose well your set ; our feeble nature seeks
The aid of clubs, the countenance of cliques ;
And with this object settle first of all
Your weight of metal and your size of ball.
Track not the steps of such as hold you
cheap, —
Too mean to prize, though good enough to
keep;
The "real, genuine, no-mistake Tom Thumbs"^
Are little people fed on great men's crumbs.
Yet keep no followers of that hateful brood
That basely mingles with its wholesome food
The tumid reptile, which, the poet said.
Doth wear a precious jewel in his head.
If the wild filly, "Progress," thou would'st
ride,
Have young companions ever at thy side ;
But would'st thou stride the staunch old mare^
"Success,"
Go \\ith thine elders, though they please thee
less.
Ii6 URANIA.
Shun such as lounge through afternoons and
eves,
And on thy dial write " Beware of thieves !"
Felon of minutes, never taught to feel
The worth of treasures which thy fingers steal,
Pick my left pocket of its silver dime,
But spare the right, — it holds my golden time !
Does praise delight thee ! Choose some ultra
side ;
A sure old recipe, and often tried ;
Be its apostle, congressman or bard.
Spokesman, or jokesman, only drive it hard;
But know the forfeit which thy choice abides,
For on two wheels the poor reformer rides.
One black with epithets the a7iti throws.
One white with flattery, painted by the pros.
Though books on manners are not out of
print.
An honest tongue may drop a harmless hint.
Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet
To spin your wordy fabric in the street ;
While you are emptying your colloquial pack.
The fiend Ltimbago jumps upon his back.
Nor cloud his features with the unwelcome
tale
Of how he looks, if haply thin and pale ;
URANIA. 117
Health is a subject for his child, his wife,
And the rude office that insures his life.
Look in his face, to meet thy neighbor's soul,
Not on his garments to detect a hole ;
" How to observe," is what thy pages show.
Pride of thy sex, Miss Harriet Martineau !
O, what a precious book the one would be
That taught observers what they're not to see !
I tell in verse, — 'twere better done in prose, —
One curious trick that everybody knows ;
Once form this habit, and it's very strange
How long it sticks, how hard it is to change.
Two friendly people, both disposed to smile,
Who meet, hke others, every little while,
Instead of passing with a pleasant bow,
And " How d'ye do ?" or " How's your uncle
now ?"
Impelled by feelings in their nature kind.
But slightly weak, and somewhat undefined.
Rush at each other, make a sudden stand.
Begin to talk, expatiate, and expand ;
Each looks quite radiant, seems extremely
struck,
Their meeting so was such a piece of luck ;
Each thinks the other thinks he's greatly
pleased
ii8 URANIA.
To screw the vice in which they both are
squeezed ;
So there they talk, in dust, or mud, or snow,
Both bored to death, and both afraid to go !
Your hat once lifted, do not hang your fire.
Nor, Hkeslow Ajax, fighting still, retire ;
When your old castor on your crown you clap.
Go off; you've mounted your percussion cap!
Some words on language may be well ap-
pHed,
And take them kindly, though they touch your
pride ;
Words lead to things; a scale is more pre-
cise,—
Coarse speech, bad grammar, swearing, drink-
ing, vice.
Our cold Northeaster's icy fetter clips
The native freedom of the Saxon lips ;
See the brown peasant of the plastic South,
How all his passions play about his mouth !
With us, the feature that transmits the soul,
A frozen, passive, palsied breathing-hole.
The crampy shackles of the ploughboy's walk
Tie the small muscles when he strives to talk ;
Not all the pumice of the polished town
Can smooth this roughness of the barnyard
down ;
UBAXIA. 119
Rich, honored, titled, he betrays his race
Ey this one mark, — he's awkward in the
face ; —
Nature's rude impress, long before he knew
The sunny street that holds the sifted few.
It can't be helped, though if we're taken
young.
We gain some freedom of the lips and tongue ;
But school and college often try in vain
To break the padlock of our boyhood's chain ;
One stubborn word will prove this axiom true ;
No late-caught rustic can enunciate vi'^'W.
A few brief stanzas may be well employed
To speak of errors we can all avoid.
Learning condemns beyond the reach of
hope
The careless churl that speaks of soap for sOap ;
Her edict exiles from her fair abode
The clownish voice that utters road for road ;
Less stern to him who calls his coat a c at,
And steers his boat, believing it a b at.
She pardoned one, our classic city's boast.
Who said at Cambridge, most instead of most.
But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot
To hear a Teacher call a root a root.
Once more ; speak clearly, if you speak at
all:
I20 URANIA,
Carve every word before you let it fall ;
Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star,
Try over hard to roll the British R ;
Do put your accents in the proper spot ;
Don't — let me beg you, — don't say " How ?"
for "What?"
And, when you stick on conversation's burs.
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful
From little matters let us pass to less.
And lightly touch the mysteries of dress ;
The outward forms the inner man reveal, —
We guess the pulp before we cut the peel.
I leave the broadcloth, — coats and all the
rest, —
The dangerous waistcoat, called by cockneys
" vest,"
The things named " pants " in certain docu-
ments,
A word not made for gentlemen, but " gents ";
One single precept might the whole condense :
Be sure your tailor is a man of sense :
But add a little care, a decent pride,
And always err upon the sober side.
URAXIA. 121
Three pairs of boots one pair of feet de-
mands,
If polished daily by the owner's hands ;
If the dark menial's visit save from this,
Have twice the number, for he'll sometimes
miss.
One pair for critics of the nicer sex,
Close in the instep's clinging circumflex.
Long, narrow, light ; the Gallic boot of love,
A kind of cross between a boot and glove.
But not to tread on everlasting thorns
And sow in suffering what is reaped in corns,
Compact, but easy, strong, substantial square,
Let native art compile the medium pair.
The third remains, and let your tasteful skill
Here show some relics of affection still ;
Let no stiff cowhide, reeking from the tan.
No rough caoutchouc, no deformed brogan.
Disgrace the tapering outline of your feet,
Though yellow torrents gurgle through the
street ;
But the patched calfskin arm against the flood
In neat, light shoes, impervious to the mud.
Wear seemly gloves ; not black, nor yet too
light.
And least of all the pair that once was white ;
122 URANIA.
Let the dead party where you told your loves
Bury in peace its dead bouquets and gloves ;
Shave like the goat, if so your fancy bids,
But be a parent, — don't neglect your kids.
Have a good hat ; the secret of your looks
Lives with the beaver in Canadian brooks ;
Virtue may flourish in an old cravat,
But man and nature scorn the shocking hat.
Does beauty slight you from her gay abodes ?
Like bright Apollo you must take to Rhoades,
Mount the new castor, — ice itself will melt ;
Boots, gloves may fail ; the hat is always felt !
Be shy of breastpins ; plain,well-ironed white,
With small, pearl buttons, — two of them in
sight, —
Is always genuine, while your gems may pass,
Though real diamonds, for ignoble glass.
But spurn those paltry cis-Atlantic lies,
That round his breast the shabby rustic ties ;
Breathe not the name, profaned to hallow
things
The indignant laundress blushes when she
brings !
Our freeborn race, averse to every check,
Has tossed the yoke of Europe from its neck ;
URANIA. 123
From the green prairie, to the sea-girt town,
The whole wide nation turns its collars down.
The stately neck is manhood's manliest part ;
It takes the life-blood freshest from the heart ;
With short, curled ringlets close around it
spread,
How light and strong it lifts the Grecian head I
Thine, fair Erectheus of Minerva's wall ; —
Or thine, young athlete of the Louvre's hall,
Smooth as the pillar flashing in the sun
That filled the arena where thy wreaths were
won, —
Firm as the band that clasps the antlered spoil
Strained in the winding anaconda's coil !
I spare the contrast ; it were only kind
To be a little, nay, intensely blind ;
Choose for yourself: I know it cuts your ear ;
I know the points will sometimes interfere ;
I know that often, like the filial John,
Whom sleep surprised with half his drapery on,
You show your features to the astonished town
With one side standing and the other down ; —
But O my friend ! my favorite fellow-man !
If nature made you on her modern plan,
Sooner than wander with your windpipe bare, —
The fruit of Eden ripening in the air, —
124 URANIA.
With that lean head-stalk, that protruding chin,
Wear standing collars, were they made of tin !
And have a neck-cloth, by the throat of Jove !
Cut from the funnel of a rusty stove !
The long-drawn lesson narrows to its close,
Chill, slender, slow, the dwindled current flows ;
Tired of the ripples on its feeble springs,
Once more the Muse unfolds her upward wings.
Land of my birth, with this unhallowed
tongue.
Thy hopes, thy dangers, I perchance had sung ;
But who shall sing, in brutal disregard
Of all the essentials of the " native bard ?"
Lake, sea, shore, prairie, forest, mountain,
fall,
His eye omniverous must devour them all ;
The tallest summits and the broadest tides
His foot must compass with its giant strides.
Where Ocean thunders, where Missouri rolls.
And tread at once the tropics and the poles ;
His food all forms of earth, fire, water, air.
His home all space, his birth-place everywhere.
Some grave compatriot, having seen perhaps
The pictured page that goes in Worcester's
Maps,
URANIA, 125
And read in earnest what was said in jest,
"Who drives fat oxen" — please to add the
rest, —
Sprung the odd notion that the poet's dreams
Grow in the ratio of his hills and streams,
And hence insisted that the aforesaid " bard,"
Pink of the future, — fancy's pattern-card, —
The babe of nature in the "giant West,"
Must be of course her biggest and her best.
But, were it true that nature's fostering sun
Saves all its daylight for that favorite one.
If for his forehead every wreath she means,
And we, poor children, must not touch the
greens ;
Since rocks and rivers cannot take the road
To seek the elected in his own abode,
Some voice must answer for her precious heir,
One solemn question ; Who shall pay his fare ?
O when at length the expected bard shall
come,
Land of our pride, to strike thine echoes dumb,
(And many a voice exclaims in prose and
rhyme
It's getting late, and he's behind his time,)
126 URANIA.
When all thy mountains clap their hands in joy,
And all thy cataracts thunder " That's the
boy," —
Say if with him the reign of song shall end,
And Heaven declare its final dividend ?
Be calm, dear brother ! whose impassioned
strain
Comes from an alley watered by a drain ;
The little Mincio, dribbling to the Po,
Beats all the epics of the Hoang Ho ;
If loved in earnest by the tuneful maid.
Don't mind their nonsense, — never be afraid !
The nurse of poets feeds her winged brood
By common firesides, on femihar food ;
In a low hamlet, by a narrow stream,
Where bovine rustics used to doze and dream.
She filled young WiUiam's fiery fancy full.
While old John Shakespeare talked of beeves
and wool !
No Alpine needle, with its climbing spire.
Brings down for mortals the Promethean fire,
If careless nature have forgot to frame
An altar, worthy of the sacred flame.
URANIA. 127
Unblest by any save the goat-herd's lines,
Mont Blanc rose soaring through his " sea of
pines ";
In vain the Arve and the Arveiron dash,
No hymn salutes them but the Ranz des Vaches^
Till lazy Coleridge, by the morning's light,
Gazed for a moment on the fields of white,
And lo, the glaciers found at length a tongue,
Mont Blanc was vocal, and Chamouni sung- !
Children of wealth or want, to each is given
One spot of green, and all the blue of heaven !
Enough, if these their outward shows impart ;
The rest is thine, — the scenery of the heart.
If passion's hectic in thy stanzas glow,
Thy heart's best life-blood ebbing as they flow.
If with thy verse thy strength and bloom distil.
Drained by the pulses of the fevered thrill ;
If sound's sweet effluence polarize thy brain,
And thoughts turn crj'stals in thy fluid strain, —
Nor rolling ocean, nor the prairie's bloom.
Nor streaming cliffs, norrayless cavern's gloom,^
Need'st thou, young poet, to inform thy line ;
Thy own broad signet stamps thy song divine !
Let others gaze where silvery streams are
rolled.
And chase the rainbow for its cup of gold ;
128 URANIA.
To thee all landscapes wear a heavenly dye,
Changed in the glance of thy prismatic eye ;
Nature evoked thee in sublimer throes,
For thee her inmost Arethusa flows, —
The mighty mother's living depths are stirred, —
Thou art the starred Osiris of the herd !
A few brief lines ; they touch on solemn
chords.
And hearts may leap to hear their honest words ;
Yet, ere the jarring bugle blast is blown,
The softer lyre shall breathe its soothing tone.
New England ! proudly may thy children
claim
Their honored birthright by its humblest name !
Cold are thy skies, but, ever fresh and clear,
No rank malaria stains thine atmosphere ;
No fungous weeds invade thy scanty soil
Scarred by the ploughshares of unslumbering
toil.
Long may the doctrines by thy sages taught.
Raised from the quarries where their sires have
wrought.
Be like the granite of thy rock-ribbed land, —
As slow to rear, as obdurate to stand ;
And as the ice, that leaves thy crystal mine,
Chills the fierce alcohol in the Creole's wine,
URANIA. 129
So may the doctrines of thy sober school
Keep the hot theories of thy neighbors cool !
If ever, trampling on her ancient path,
Cankered by treachery, or inflamed by wrath,
With smooth "Resolves," or with discordant
cries.
The mad Briareus of disunion rise,
Chiefs of New England ! by your sires' re-
nown.
Dash the red torches of the rebel down !
Flood his black hearth-stone till its flames ex-
pire,
Though your old Sachem fanned his council-
fire !
But if at last, — her fading cycle run, —
The tongue must forfeit what the arm has won.
Then rise, wild Ocean ! roll thy surging shock
Full on old Plymouth's desecrated rock !
Scale the proud shaft degenerate hands have
hewn,
Where bleeding Valor stained the flowers of
June !
Sweep in one tide her spires and turrets down.
And howl her dirge above Monadnock's crown !
I30 URANIA.
List not the tale ; the Pilgrim's hallowed
shore,
Though strewn with weeds, is granite at the
core ;
O rather trust that He who made her free
Will keep her true, as long as faith shall be !
Farewell ! yet lingering through the destined
hour,
Leave, sweet Enchantress, one memorial flov/er !
An Angel, floating o'er the waste of snow
That clad our western desert, long ago,
(The same fair spirit, who unseen by day.
Shone as a star along the Mayflower's way,)
Sent, the first herald of the heavenly plan.
To choose on earth a resting-place for man, —
Tired with his flight along the unvaried field.
Turned to soar upwards, when his glance re-
vealed
A calm, bright bay, enclosed in rocky bounds,
And at its entrance stood three sister mounds.
The Angel spake : This three-fold hill shall
be
The home of Arts, the nurse of Liberty !
One stately summit from its shaft shall pour
Its deep-red blaze, along the darkened shore ;
THE PILGRIM'S VISION. U^
Emblem of thoughts, that, kindUng far and
wide,
In danger's night shall be a nation's guide.
One swelling crest the citadel shall crown,
Its slanted bastions black with battle's frown,
And bid the sons that tread its scowling heights
Bare their strong arms for man and all his
rights !
One silent steep along the northern wave
Shall hold the patriarch's and the hero's grave ;
When fades the torch, when o'er the peaceful
scene
The embattled fortress smiles in living green.
The cross of Faith, the anchor staff of Hope,
Shall stand eternal on its grassy slope ;
There through all time shall faithful Memory-
tell :
" Here Virtue toiled, and Patriot Valor fell ;
Thy free, proud fathers slumber at thy side,
Live as they lived, or perish as they died !"
THE PILGRIM'S VISION.
In the hour of twilight shadows
The Puritan looked out ;
He thought of the " bloudy Salvages "
That lurked all round about,
132 THE FILGEUrS VISION.
Of Wituwamet's pictured knife
And Pecksuot's whooping shout ;
For the baby's hmbs were feeble,
Though his father's arms were stout.
His home was a freezing cabin
Too bare for the hungry rat,
Its roof was thatched with ragged grass
And bald enough of that,
The hole that served for casement.
Was glazed with an ancient hat,
And the ice was gently thawing
From the log whereon he sat.
Along the dreary landscape
His eyes went to and fro,
The trees all clad in icicles.
The streams that did not flow ;
A sudden thought flashed o'er him —
A dream of long ago —
He smote his leathern jerkin
And murmured " Even so ! "
*'Come hither, God-be-Glorified,
And sit upon my knee.
Behold the dream unfolding,
Whereof I spake to thee
THE piLGRnrs visiox. 133
By the winter's hearth in Leyden
And on the stormy sea —
True is the dream's beginning —
So may its ending be !
" I saw in the naked forest
Our scattered remnant cast,
A screen of shivering branches
Between them and the blast ;
The snow was faUing round them,
The dying fell as fast ;
I looked to see them perish.
When lo, the vision passed.
"Again mine eyes were opened,
The feeble had waxed strong,
The babes had grown to sturdy men,
The remnant was a throng,
By shadowed lake and winding stream
And all the shores along,
The howling demons quaked to hear
The Christian's godly song.
" They slept — the village fathers —
By river, lake and shore,
When far adown the steep of Time
The vision rose once more :
134 THE PILGRUrS VISION.
I saw along the winter snow
A spectral column pour,
And high above their broken ranks
A tattered flag they bore.
"Their Leader rode before them,
Of bearing calm and high,
The light of Heaven's own kindling
Throned in his awful eye ;
These were a Nation's champions
Her dread appeal to try ;
God for the right ! I faltered,
And lo, the train passed by.
"Once more — the strife is ended.
The solemn issue tried,
The Lord of hosts his mighty arm
Has helped our Israel's side.
Gray stone and grassy hillock,
Tell where her martyrs died,
But peaceful smiles the harvest,
And stainless flows the tide.
"A crash — as when some swollen cloud
Cracks o'er the tangled trees !
With side to side, and spar to spar,
Whose smoking decks are these ?
THE PILGRIM'S VISION. 13?
I know Saint George's blood-red cross,
Thou Mistress of the Seas, —
But what is she, whose streaming bars
Roll out before the breeze ?
"Ah, well her iron ribs are knit,
Whose thunders strive to quell
The bellowing throats, the blazing lips
That pealed the Armada's knell !
The mist was cleared — a wreath of stars
Rose o'er the crimson swell.
And wavering from its haughty peak.
The cross of England fell !
" O trembhng Faith ! though dark the morn,
A heavenly torch is thine !
While feebler races melt away.
And paler orbs decline,
Still shall the fiery pillar's ray
Along thy pathway shine.
To light the chosen tribe that sought
This Western Palestine !
" I see the living tide roll on.
It crowns with flaming towers
The icy capes of Labrador,
The Spaniard's 'land of flowers!'
136 THE PILGRnrS VISION.
It streams beyond the splintered ridge
That parts the Northern showers,
From eastern rock to sunset wave
The Continent is ours !"
He ceased — the grim old Puritan —
Then softly bent to cheer
The pilgrim -child whose wasting face
Was meekly turned to hear ;
And drew his toil-worn sleeve across,
To brush the manly tear
From cheeks that never changed in woe,
And never blanched in fear.
The weary pilgrim slumbers,
His resting place unknown ;
His hands were crossed, his lids were closed,
The dust was o'er him strown,
The drifting soil, the mouldering leaf
Along the sod were blown,
His mound has melted into earth,
His memory lives alone.
So let it live unfading.
The memory of the dead.
Long as the pale anemone
Springs where their tears were shed,
NUX POSTCCEXATICA. I37
Or raining in the summer's wind
In flakes of burning red,
The wild rose sprinkles with its leaves
The turf where once they bled !
Yea, when the frowning bulwarks
That guard this holy strand
Have sunk beneath the trampHng surge
In beds of sparkling sand,
While in the waste of ocean,
One hoary rock shall stand,
Be this its latest legend —
Here was the Pilgrim's land !
NUX POSTCCENATICA.
I WAS sitting with my microscope, upon my
parlor rug,
With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug ;
The true bug had been organized with only
two antennae.
But the humbug in the copperplate would have
them twice as many.
And I thought, like Dr. Faustus, of the empti-
ness of art.
How we take a fragment for the whole, and call
the whole a part,
138 NUX POSTCCENATICA.
When I heard a heavy footstep that was loud
enough for two,
And a man of forty entered, exclaiming — " How
d'ye do ?"
He was not a ghost, my visitor, but solid flesh
and bone,
He wore a Palo Alto hat, his weight was twenty
stone ;
(It's odd how hats expand their brims as youth
begins to fade,
As if when life had reached its noon, it wanted
them for shade !
I lost my focus, — dropped my book, — the bug,
who was a flea.
At once exploded, and commenced experiments
on me —
They have a certain heartiness that frequently
appals —
These mediaeval gentlemen in semilunar
smalls !
" My boy," he said — (colloquial ways, — the
vast, broad-hatted man,)
" Come dine with us on Thursday next — you
must, you know you can,
^^UX rOSTCCEXATICA. 139
We're going to have a roaring time, with lots of
fun and noise,
Distinguished guests, etcetera, the Judge, and
all the boys."
Not so, — I said, — my temporal bones are show-
ing pretty clear
It's time to stop — ^just look and see that hair
above this ear ;
My golden days are more than spent — and
what is very strange.
If these are real silver hairs, I'm getting lots of
change.
Besides — my prospects — don't you know that
people won't employ
A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing
like a boy ?
And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds
upon a shoot
As if wisdom's old potato could not flourish at
its root !
It's a very fine reflection, when you're etching
out a smile
On a copper plate of faces that would stretch
into a mile,
I40 NUX POSTCCEXATICA.
That what with sneers from enemies, and
cheapening shrugs of friends,
It will cost you all the earnings that a month
of labor lends !
It's a vastly pleasing prospect, when you're
screwing out a laugh,
That your very next year's income is dimin-
ished by a half,
And a little boy trips barefoot that Pegasus
may go.
And the baby's milk is watered that your Heli-
con may flow !
No — the joke has been a good one — but I'm
getting fond of quiet.
And I don't like deviations from my customary
diet.
So I think I will not go with you to hear the
toasts and speeches,
But stick to old Montgomery Place, and have
some pig and peaches.
The fat man answered : — Shut your mouth,
and hear the genuine creed ;
The true essentials of a feast are only fun and
feed;
NUX POSTCCENATICA. 141
The force that wheels the planets round de-
lights in spinning tops,
And that young earthquake t'other day was
great at shaking props.
I tell you what, philosopher, if all the longest
heads
That ever knocked their sinciputs in stretching
on their beds
Were round one great mahogany, I'd beat
those fine old folks
With twenty dishes, twenty fools, and twenty
clever jokes !
Why, if Columbus should be there, the com-
pany would beg
He'd show that little trick of his of balancing
the egg !
Milton to Stilton would give in, and Solomon
to Salmon,
And Roger Bacon be a bore, and Francis
Bacon gammon !
And as for all the "patronage" of all the
clowns and boors
That squint their little narrow eyes at any freak
of yours,
142 KUX POSTCCENATICA.
Do leave them to your prosier friends — such
fellows ought to die
When rhubarb is so very scarce and ipecac so
high
And so I come — like Lochinvar, to tread a
single measure,
To purchase with a loaf of bread a sugar plum
of pleasure,
To enter for the cup of glass that's run for after
dinner,
Which yields a single sparkling draught, then
breaks and cuts the winner.
Ah, that's the way delusion comes — a glass of
old Madeira,
A pair of visual diaphragms revolved by Jane
or Sarah,
And down go vows and promises, without the
slightest question.
If eating words won't compromise the organs
of digestion !
And yet, among my native shades — beside my
nursing mother.
Where every stranger seems a friend, and every
friend a brother.
ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL. I43
I feel the old convivial glow (unaided) o'er me
stealing —
The warm, champagny, old particular, brandy-
punchy feeling.
We're all alike — Vesuvius flings the scoriae
from his fountain,
But down they come in volleying rain back to
the burning mountain ;
We leave, like those volcanic stones, our pre-
cious Alma Mater,
But will keep dropping in again to see the dear
old crater.
OxN LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL.
This ancient silver bowl of mine — it tells of
good old times.
Of joyous days and jolly nights, and merry
Christmas chimes ;
They were a free and jovial race, but honest,
brave and true,
That dipped their ladle in the punch when this
old bowl was new.
144 ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL.
A Spanish galleon brought the bar — so runs
the ancient tale —
'Twas hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose
arm was like a flail ;
And now and then between the strokes, for fear
his strength should fail.
He wiped his brow, and quaffed a cup of good
old Flemish ale.
'Twas purchased by an English squire to please
his loving dame,
Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing
for the same ;
And oft as on the ancient stock another twig
was found,
'Twas filled with caudle spiced and hot, and
handed smoking round.
But, changing hands, it reached at length a
Puritan divine.
Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little
wine,
But hated punch and prelacy ; and so it was,
perhaps.
He went to Leyden, where he found convent-
icles and schnaps.
ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL. US
And then, of course, you know what's next — it
left the Dutchman's shore
With those that in the Mayflower came, — a
hundred souls and more, —
Along with all the furniture, to fill their new
abodes —
To judge by what is still on hand, at least a
hundred loads.
'Twas on a dreary winter's eve, the night was
closing dim,
When old Miles Standish took the bowl, and
filled it to the brim,
The little Captain stood and stirred the posset
with his sword.
And all his sturdy men at arms were ranged
about the board.
He poured the fiery hoUands in — the man that
never feared —
He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped
his yellow beard ;
And one by one the musketeers, the men that
fought and prayed.
All drank as 'twere their mother's milk, and not
a man afraid !
146 ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL.
That night, affrighted from his nest, the scream-
ing eagle flew.
He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the sol-
dier's wild halloo ;
And there the sachem learned the rule he taught
to kith and kin,
" Run from the white man v/hen you find he
smells of hollands gin !"
A hundred years, and fifty more had spread
their leaves and snows,
A thousand rubs had flattened down each httlc
cherub's nose ;
When once again the bowl was filled, but not
in mirth or joy,
'Twas mingled by a mother's hand to cheer
her parting boy.
Drink, John, she said, 'twill do you good— poor
child, you'll never bear
This working in the dismal trench, out in the
midnight air.
And if — God bless me — you were hurt, 'twould
keep away the chill ;
So John did drink — and well he wrought that
nig-ht at Bunker's Hill !
Oy LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL. H7
I tell you, there was generous warmth in good
old English cheer ;
I tell you, 'twas a pleasant thought to bring its
symbol here ;
'Tis but the fool that loves excess — hast thou a
drunken soul.
Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my
silver bowl !
I love the memory of the past — its pressed yet
fragrant flowers —
The moss that clothes its broken walls — the
ivy on its towers —
Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed — my eyes
grow moist and dim,
To think of all the vanished joys that danced
around its brim.
Then fill a fair and honest cup, and bear it
straight to me ;
The goblet hallows all it holds, whate'er the
liquid be ;
And may the cherubs on its face protect me
from the sin,
That dooms one to those dreadful words — " My
dear, where /lave you been ?"
148 EXTRACTS FROM 3IEDICAL POEM.
EXTRACTS FROM A MEDICAL POEM.
THE STABILITY OF SCIENCE.
The feeble seabirds, blinded in the storms,
On some tall lighthouse dash their little forms,
And the rude granite scatters for their pains
Those small deposits that were meant for brains.
Yet the proud fabric in the morning's sun
Stands all unconscious of the mischief done ;
Still the red beacon pours its evening rays
For the lost pilot with as full a blaze,
Nay, shines all radiance o'er the scattered fleet
Of gulls and boobies brainless at its feet.
I tell their fate, though courtesy disclaims
To call our kind by such ungentle names ;
Yet, if your rashness bid you vainly dare.
Think of their doom, ye simple, and beware !
See where aloft its hoary forehead rears
The towering pride of twice a thousand years !
Far, far below the vast incumbent pile
Sleeps the gray rock from art's ^gean isle ;
Its massive courses, circling as they rise.
Swell from the waves to mingle with the skies ;
There every quarry lends it marble spoil,
And clustering ages blend their common toil ;
EXTRACTS FR03I 3IEDICAL POEM. 149
The Greek, the Roman, reared its ancient
walls,
The silent Arab arched its mystic halls ;
In yon fair niche, by countless billows laved,
Trace the deep lines that Sydenham engraved ;
On yon broad front that breasts the changing
swell,
Mark where the ponderous sledge of Hunter
fell;
By that square buttress look where Louis
stands,
The stone yet warm from his uplifted hands ;
And say, O Science, shall thy life-blood freeze
When fluttering folly flaps on walls like these ?
A PORTRAIT.
Simple in youth, but not austere in age.
Calm, but not cold, and cheerful, though a
sage.
Too true to flatter, and too kind to sneer,
And only just when seemingly severe.
So gently blending courtesy and art
That wisdom's lips seemed borrowing friend-
ship's heart.
Taught by the sorrows that his age had known
In other's trials to forget his own.
I50 A SONG OF OTHER DAYS.
As hour by hour his lengthened day dedined,
The sweeter radiance Hngered o'er his mind ;
Cold were the lips that spoke his early praise.
And hushed the voices of his morning days,
Yet the same accents dwelt on every tongue.
And love renewing kept him ever young.
A SONG OF OTHER DAYS.
As o'er the glacier's frozen sheet
Breathes soft the Alpine rose,
So through Hfe's desert springing sweet
The flower of friendship grows,
And as where'er the roses grow
Some rain or dew descends,
'Tis nature's law that wine should flow
To wet the hps of friends.
Then once again before we part
My empty glass shall ring ;
And he that has the warmest heart
Shall loudest laugh and sing.
They say we were not born to eat.
But gray-haired sages think
It means — be moderate in your meat,
And partly hve to drink ;
A SOXG OF OTHER DAYS. 151
F'or baser tribes the rivers flow
That know not wine or song ;
Man wants but little drink below,
But wants that little strong.
Then once ae^ain. etc.
If one bright drop is like the gem
That decks a monarch's crown,
One goblet holds a diadem
Of rubies melted down !
A fig for Caesar's blazing brow,
But, like the Egyptian queen.
Bid each dissolving jewel glow
My thirsty Hps between.
Then once acrain. etc.
The Grecian's mound, the Roman's urn,
Are silent when we call,
Yet still the purple grapes return
To cluster on the wall ;
It was a bright Immortal's head
They circled with the vine.
And o'er their best and bravest dead
They poured the dark red wine.
Then once again, etc.
152 A SOJ^G OF OTHER DAYS.
Methinks o'er every sparkling glass
Young Eros waves his wings,
And echoes o'er its dimples pass
From dead Anacreon's strings ;
And tossing round its beaded brim
Their locks of floating gold,
With bacchant dance and choral hymn
Keturn the nymphs of old.
Then once again, etc.
A welcome then to joy and mirth.
From hearts as fresh as ours.
To scatter o'er the dust of earth
Their sweetly mingled flowers ;
'Tis Wisdom's self the cup that fills
In spite of Folly's frown,
And Nature from her vine-clad hills,
That rains her life-blood down !
Then once again, etc.
ASTR.EA. 153
A S T R . E A :
THE BALANCE OF ILLUSION.
What secret charm, long whispering in mine
ear,
Allures, attracts, compels and chains me here,
Where murmuring echoes call me to resign
Their sacred haunts to sweeter lips than mine ;
Where silent pathways pierce the solemn shade,
In whose still depths my feet have never
strayed ;
Here, in the home where grateful children
meet.
And I, half an alien, take the stranger's seat,
Doubting, yet hoping that the gift I bear
May keep its bloom in this unwonted air ?
Hush, idle fancy, with thy needless art,
Speak from thy fountains, O my throbbing
heart !
Say, shall I trust these trembling lips to led
The fireside tale that memory knows so well ?
How, in the days of Freedom's dread cam-
paign,
A home-bred schoolboy left his village plain.
Slow faring southward, till his wearied feet
Pressed the worn threshold of this fair retreat ;
154 ASTHjEA.
How, with his comely face and gracious mien,
He joined the concourse of the classic green,
Nameless, unfriended, yet by nature blest
With the rich tokens that she loves the best ;
The flowing locks, his youth's redundant crown,
Smoothed o'er a brow unfurrowed by a frown ;
The untaught smile that speaks so passing plain
A world all hope, a past without a stain ;
The clear-hued cheek, whose burning current
glows
Crimson in action, carmine in repose ;
Gifts such as purchase, with unminted gold,
Smiles from the young and blessings from the
old.
Say, shall my hand with pious love restore
The faint, far pictures time beholds no more ?
How the grave Senior, he whose later fame
Stamps on our laws his own undying name.
Saw from on high, with half paternal joy.
Some spark of promise in the studious boy.
And bade him enter, with benignant tone,
Those stately precincts which he called his own.
Where the fresh student and the youthful sage
Read by one taper from the common page ;
How the true comrade, whose maturer date,
Graced the large honors of his ancient State,
ASTR.EA. 155
Sought his young friendship, which through
every change
No time could weaken, no remove estrange ;
How the great Master, reverend, solemn, wise.
Fixed on his face those calm, majestic eyes.
Full of grave meaning, where a child might read
The Hebraist's patience and the Pilgrim's creed,
But warm with flashes of parental fire
That drew the stripling to his second sire ;
How kindness ripened, till the youth might dare
Take the low seat beside his sacred chair,
While the gray scholar, bending o'er the young,
Spelled the square types of Abraham's ancient
tongue.
Or with mild rapture stooped devoutly o'er
His small coarse leaf, aUve with curious lore ;
Tales of grim judges, at whose awful beck
Flashed the broad blade across a royal neck.
Or learned dreams of Israel's long lost child
Found in the wanderer of the western wild.
Dear to his age were memories such as these,
Leaves of his June in life's autumnal breeze ;
Such were the tales that won my boyish ear,
Told in low tones that evening loves to hear.
Thus in the scene I pass so lightly o'er.
Trod for a moment, then beheld no more,
156 ASTBjEA.
Strange shapes and dim, unseen by other eyes,
Through the dark portals of the past arise ;
I see no more the fair embracing throng,
I hear no echo to my saddened song.
No more I heed the kind or curious gaze,
The voice of blame, the rustling thrill of praise ;
Alone, alone, the awful past I tread
White with the marbles of the slumbering dead ;
One shadowy form my dreaming eyes behold
That leads my footsteps as it led of old,
One floating voice, amid the silence heard,
Breathes in my ear love's long unspoken word ; —
These are the scenes thy youthful eyes have
known ;
My heart's warm pulses claim them as its own !
The sapling, compassed in thy fingers' clasp.
My arms scarce circle in their twice-told grasp.
Yet in each leaf of yon o'ershadowing tree
I read a legend that was traced by thee.
Year after year the living wave has beat
These smooth-worn channels with its tramp-
ling feet,
Yet in each line that scores the grassy sod
I see the pathway where thy feet have trod.
Though from the scene that hears my falter-
ing lay.
The few that loved thee long have passed away,
ASTR.EA. 157
Thy sacred presence all the landscape fills,
Its groves and plains and adamantine hills !
Ye who have known the sudden tears that
flow, —
Sad tears, yet sweet, the dews of twihght woe, —
When led by chance, your wandering eye has
crossed
Some poor memorial of the loved and lost, —
Bear with my weakness as I look around
On the dear relics of this holy ground,
These bowery cloisters, shadowed and serene,
My dreams have pictured ere mine eyes have
seen.
And oh, forgive me, if the flower I brought
Droops in my hand beside this burning thought;
The hopes and fears that marked this destined
hour.
The chill of doubt, the startled throb of power,
The flush of pride, the trembling glow of shame.
All fade away and leave my Feather's name !
Winter is past ; the heart of Nature warms
Beneath the wrecks of unresisted storms ;
Doubtful at first, suspected more than seen,
The southern slopes are fringed with tender
green ;
158 ASTR^A,
On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping
eaves,
Spring's earliest nurslings spread their glowing
leaves.
Bright with the hues from wider pictures won.
White, azure, golden, — drift, or sky, or sun ; —
The snowdrop, bearing on her patient breast
The frozen trophy torn from winter's crest ;
The violet gazing on the arch of blue
Till her own iris wears its deepened hue ;
The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the
mould
Naked and shivering with his cup of gold.
Swelled with new life, the darkening elm on high
Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky ;
On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves
The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo
leaves ;
The housefly, stealing from his narrow grave,
Drugged with the opiate that November gave,
Beats with faint wing against the sunny pane.
Or crawls, tenacious, o'er its lucid plain ;
From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls,
In languid curves, the gliding serpent crawls ;
The bog's green harper, thawing from his sleep.
Twangs a hoarse note and tries a shortened
leap ;
ASTUTE A. 159
On floating rails that face the softening noons
The still shy turtles range their dark platoons.
Or toiling, aimless, o'er the mellowing fields,
Trail through the grass their tessellated shields.
At last young April, ever frail and fair,
Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair,
Chased to the margin of receding floods
O'er the soft meadows starred with opening
buds,
In tears and blushes sighs herself away.
And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of
May.
Then the proud tulip lights her beacon blaze.
Her clustering curls the hyacinth displays.
O'er her tall blades the crested fleur-de-lis,
Like blue-eyed Pallas, towers erect and free ;
With yellower flames the lengthened sunshine
glows,
And love lays bear the passion-breathing rose ;
Queen of the lake, along its reedy verge
The rival lily hastens to emerge,
Her snowy shoulders ghstening as she strips
Till morn is sultan of her parted lips.
Then bursts the song from every leafy glade,
The yielding season's bridal serenade ;
i6o ASTJRJEA.
Then flash the wings returning summer calls
Through the deep arches of her forest halls ;
The bluebird breathing from his azure plumes
The fragrance borrowed where the myrtle
blooms ;
The thrush, poor wanderer, dropping meekly-
down.
Clad in his remnant of autumnal brown ;
The oriole, drifting like a flake of fire
Rent by the whirlwind from a blazing spire.
The robin, jerking his spasmodic throat,
Repeats, staccato, his peremptory note ;
The crackbrained bobolink courts his crazy
mate.
Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight ;
Nay, in his cage the lone canary sings,
Feels the soft air and spreads his idle wings ; —
Why dream I here within these caging walls,
Deaf to her voice while blooming Nature calls ;
Peering and gazing with insatiate looks
Through blinding lenses, or in wearying books ?
Off, gloomy spectres of the shrivelled past,
Fly with the leaves that filed the autumn blast !
Ye imps of Science, whose relentless chains
Lock the warm tides within these living veins,
Close your dim cavern, while its captive strays
Dazzled and giddy in the morning's blaze ?
ASTEjEA. i6i
What life is this, that spreads its sudden
birth
Its plumes of light around a new-born earth ?
Is this the sun that brought the unwelcome
day,
PalUd and glimmering with his lifeless ray,
Or through the sash that bars yon narrow cage
Slanted, intrusive, on the opened page ?
Is this soft breath the same complaining gale
That filled my slumbers with its murmuring
wail ?
Is this green mantle of elastic sod
The same brown desert with its frozen clod,
Where the last ridges of the dingy snow
Lie till the windflower blooms unstained below ?
Thus to my heart its wonted tides return
When sullen Winter breaks his crystal urn.
And o'er the turf in wild profusion showers
Its dewy leaflets and ambrosial flowers.
In vacant rapture for a while I range
Through the wild scene of universal change,
Till, as the statue in its nerves of stone
Felt the new senses wakening one by one,
Each long closed inlet finds its destined ray
Through the dark curtain Spring has rent
away.
1 62 ASTBJEA.
I crushed the buds the clustering lilacs bear ;
The same sweet fragrance that I loved is there ;
The same fresh hues each opening disk re-
veals ;
Soft as of old each silken petal feels ;
The birch's rind its flavor still retains,
Its boughs still ringing with the self-same
strains ;
Above, around, rekindling Nature claims
Her glorious altars wreathed in living flames ;
Undimmed, unshadowed, far as morning shines
Feeds with fresh incense her eternal shrines.
Lost in her arms, her burning life I share.
Breathe in the wild freedom of her perfumed
air.
From Heaven's fair face the long-drawn
shadows roll.
And all its sunshine floods my opening soul !
Yet in the darksome crypt I felt so late,
Whose only altar is its rusted grate, —
Sepulchral, rayless, joyless as it seems.
Shamed by the glare of May's refulgent
beams, —
While the dim seasons dragged their shrouded
train.
Its paler splendors were not quite in vain.
ASTRJEA. 163
From these dull bars the cheerful firelight's
glow
Streamed through the casement o'er the spec-
tral snow ;
Here, while the night wind wreaked its frantic
will
On the loose ocean and the rock-bound hill,
Rent the cracked topsail for its quiveiiiii,^ yard,
And rived the oak a thousand storms had
scarred.
Fenced by these walls the peaceful taper shone,
Nor felt a breath to swerve its trembling cone.
Not all unblest the mild interior scene
When the red curtain spread its folded screen ;
O'er some light task the lonely hours were past,
And the evening only flew too fast ;
Or the wide chair its leathern arms would lend
In genial welcome to some easy friend,
Stretched on its bosom with relaxing nerves.
Slow moulding, plastic, to its hollow curves ;
Perchance undulging, if of generous creed,
In brave Sir Walter's dream-compelling weed.
Or, happier still, the evening hour would bring
To the round table its expected ring,
And while the punch bowl's sounding depths
were stirred, —
Its silver cherubs smihng as they heard, —
1 64 ASTE.EA.
O'er caution's head the blinding hood was flung,
And friendship loosed the jesses of the tongue.
Such the warm life this dim retreat has
known,
Not quite deserted when its guests were flown ;
Nay, filled with friends, an unobtrusive set.
Guiltless of calls and cards and etiquette.
Ready to answer, never known to ask,
Claiming no service, prompt for every task.
On those dark shelves no housewife tool pro-
fanes.
O'er his mute files the monarch foho reigns ;
A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time,
That talk all tongues and breathe of every
clime ;
Each knows his place, and each may clahii his
part
In some quaint corner of his master's heart.
This old Decretal, won from Kloss's boards.
Thick-leafed, brass-cornered, ribbed with oaken
boards.
Stands the gray patriarch of the graver rows,
Its fourth ripe century narrowing to its close ;
Not daily conned, but glorious still to view
With glistening letters wrought in red and blue.
ASTE.EA. 1 65
There towers Stagira's all-embracing sage,
The Aldine anchor on his opening page ;
There sleep the birth of Plato's heavenly mind
In yon dark tome by jealous clasps confined,
" Ohm e libris " — (dare I call it mine ?)
Of Yale's great Head and Killingsvvorth's
divine !
In those square sheets the songs of Maro fill
The silvery types of smooth-leafed Baskerville ;
High over all, in close compact array,
Their classic wealth the Elzevirs display.
In lower regions of the sacred space
Range the dense volumes of a humbler race ;
There grim chirurgeons all their mysteries
teach
In spectral pictures, or in crabbed speech;
Harvey and Fuller, fresh from Nature's page,
Shoulder the dreamers of an earlier age,
Lully and Geber, and the learned crew
That loved to talk of all they could not do.
Why count the rest, — those names of later days
That many love and all agree to praise, —
Or point the titles where a glance may read
The dangerous lines of party or of creed ?
Too well, perchance, the chosen list would show
What few may care and none can claim to
know.
1 66 ASTR.EA.
Each has his feature, whose exterior seal
A brush may copy or a sunbeam steal ;
Go to his study, — on the nearest shelf
Stands the mosaic portrait of himself.
What though for months the tranquil dust
descends,
Whitening the heads of these mine ancient
friends,
While the damp offspring of the modern press
Flaunts on my table with its pictured dress ;
Not less I love each dull famihar face,
Nor less should miss it from the appointed
place ;
I snatch the book along whose burning leaves
His scarlet web our wild romancer weaves,
Yet, while proud Hester's fiery pangs I share.
My old Magnalia must be standing there !
See, while I speak, my fireside joys return.
The lamp rekindles and the ashes burn,
The dream of summer fades before their ray.
As in red firelight sunshine dies away.
A two-fold picture ; ere the first was gone.
The deepening outline of the next was drawn.
And wavering fancy hardly dares to choose
The first or last of her dissolving views.
ASTUTE A. 167
No Delphic sage is wanted to divine
The shape of Truth beneath my gauzy Hne ;
Yet there are truths, — hke schoolmates, once
well known.
But half remembered, not enough to own, —
That lost from sight in life's bewildering train.
May be, like strangers, introduced again.
Dressed in new feathers, as from time to time
May please our friends, the milliners of rhyme.
Trust not, it says, the momentary hue
Whose false complexion paints the present
view;
Red, yellow, violet stain the rainbow's light,
The prism dissolves, and all again is white.
When o'er the street the morning peal is flung
From yon tall belfry with the brazen tongue,
Its wide vibrations, wafted by the gale,
To each far listener tell a different tale.
The sexton, stooping to the quivering floor
Till the great caldron spills its brassy roar.
Whirls the hot axle, counting, one by one,
Each dull concussion, till his task is done.
Toil's patient daughter, when the welcome
note
Clangs through the silence from the steeple's
throat.
1 68 ASTRJEA.
Streams, a white unit, to the checkered street,
Demure, but guessing whom she soon shall
meet ;
The bell, responsive to her secret flame,
With every note repeats her lover's name.
The lover tenant of the neighboring lane,
Sighing and fearing lest he sigh in vain,
Hears the stern accents, as they come and go.
Their only burden one despairing No !
Ocean's rough child, whom many a shore
has known
Ere homeward breezes swept him to his own,
Starts at the echo, as it circles round,
A thousand memories kindling with the sound ;
The early favorite's unforgotten charms,
Whose blue initials stain his tawny arms ;
His first farewell, his flapping canvas spread.
The seaward streamers crackling o'er his head.
His kind, pale mother, not ashamed to weep
Her first-born's bridal with the haggard deep.
While the brave father stood with tearless eye.
Smiling and choking with his last good bye.
'Tis but a wave, whose spreading circle
beats,
With the same impulse, every nerve it meets,
Yet who shall count the varied shapes that ride
On the round surge of that aerial tide !
ASTRJEA. 169
O child of earth ! If floating sounds hke
these
Steal from thyself their power to wound or
please,
If here or there thy changing %vill inclines,
As the bright zodiac shifts its rolling signs.
Look at thy heart, and when its depths are
known
Then try thy brother's, judging by thine own,
But keep thy wisdom to the narrower range,
While its own standards are the sport of
change.
Nor ask mankind to tremble, and obey
The passing breath that holds thy passion's
sway.
But how, alas I among our eager race.
Shall smiling candor show her girlish face ?
What place is secret to the meddling crew,
Whose trade is settling what we all shall do ?
What verdict sacred from the busy fools,
That sell the jargon of their outlaw schools ?
What pulpit certain to be never vexed
With libels sanctioned by a holy text ?
Where, O my country, is the spot that yields
The freedom fought for on a hundred fields ?
I70 ASTR^A.
Not one strong tyrant holds the servile chain,
Where all may vote and each may hope to
reign ;
One sturdy cord a single limb may bind,
And leave the captive only half confined,
But the free spirit finds its legs and wings
Tied with unnumbered Lilliputian strings,
Which, like the spider's undiscovered fold,
In countless meshes round the prisoner rolled,
With silken pressure that he scarce can feel.
Clamp every fibre as in bands of steel !
Hard is the task to point in civil phrase
One's own dear people's foolish works or ways;
Wo to the friend that marks a touchy fault.
Himself obnoxious to the world's assault !
Think what an earthquake is a nation's hiss,
That takes its circuit through a land Hke this ;
Count with the census, would you be precise.
From sea to sea, from oranges to ice ;
A thousand are its virile lungs,
A thousand myriads its contralto tongues !
And oh, remember the indignant press ;
Honey is bitter to its fond caress.
But the black venom that its hate lets fall
Would shame to sweetness the hyena's gall !
AS TILE A. 171
Briefly and gently let the task be tried
To touch some frailties on their tender side ;
Not to dilate on each imagined wrong,
And spoil at once our temper and our song,
But once or twice a passing gleam to throw
On some rank failings ripe enough to show,
Patterns of others, — made of common stuff, —
The world will furnish parallels enough, —
Such as bewilder their contracted view,
Who make one pupil do the work of two ;
Who following Nature, where her tracks divide,
Drive all their passions on the narrower side,
And pour the phials of their virtuous wrath
On half mankind that take the wider path.
Nature is liberal to her inmost soul,
She loves alike the tropic and the pole,
The storm's wild anthem, and the sunshine's
calm.
The arctic fungus, and the desert palm ;
Loves them ahke, and wills that each maintain
Its destined share of her divided reign ;
No creeping moss refuse her crystal gem.
No soaring pine her diadem !
Alas ! her children, borrowing but in part
The flowing pulses of her generous heart.
172 ASTR.EA.
Shame their kind mother with eternal strife
At all the crossings of their mingled life ;
Each age, each people finds its ready shifts
To quarrel stoutly o'er her choicest gifts.
History can tell of ages dim,
When man's chief glory was strength of hmb ;
Then the best patriot gave the hardest knocks,
The height of virtue was to fell an ox ;
111 fared the babe of questionable mould.
Whom its stern father happened to behold ;
In vain the mother with her ample vest
Hid the poor nursling on her throbbing breast ;
No tears could save him from the kitten's fate,
To live an insult to the warlike state.
This weakness passed, and nations owned
once more,
Man was still human, measuring five feet four.
The anti-cripples ceased to domineer,
And owned Napoleon worth a grenadier.
In these mild times the ancient bully's sport
Would lead its hero to a well known court ;
Olympian athletes, though the pride of Greece
Must face the justice if they broke the peace,
And valor find some inconvenient checks.
If strolling Theseus met Policeman X.
ASTEuEA. 173
Perhaps too far in these far considerate days
Has patience carried her submissive ways ;
Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek,
To take one blow and turn the other cheek ;
It is not written what a man shall do,
If the rude caitiff strike the other too !
Land of our fathers, in thine hour of need
God help thee, guarded by the passive creed !
As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl,
When through the forest rings the gray wolf's
howl ;
As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow
When the black cosair slants athwart her bow •
»
As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien,
Trusts to his feathers, shining golden green,
W^hen the dark plumage with the crimson beak
Has rustled shadowy from its splintered peak ;
So trust thy friends, whose idle tongues would
charm
The lifted sabre from thy foeman's arm,
Thy torches ready for the answering peal
From bellowing fort and thunder-freighted
keel!
Yet when thy Champion's stormy task is
done,
The frigate silenced and the fortress won.
174 ASm.EA.
When toil-worn valor claims his laurel wreath,
His reeking cutlass slumbering in its sheath,
The fierce declaimer shall be heard once more.
Whose twang was smoothed by the conflict's
roar ;
Heroes shall fall that strode unharmed away-
Through the red heaps of many a doubtful day.
Hacked in his sermons, riddled in his prayers.
The broadcloth slashing what the broadsword
spares !
Untaught by trial, ignorance might suppose
That all our fighting must be done with blows ;
Alas ! not so ; between the lips and brain
A dread artillery masks its loaded train ;
The smooth portcullis of the smiling face
Veils the grim battery with deceptive grace.
But in the flashes of its open fire,
Truth, Honor, Peace and Love expire.
Yon whey-faced brother, who delights to
wear
A weedy flux of ill-conditioned hair.
Seems of the sort that in a crowded place
One elbows freely into smallest space ;
A timid creature, lax of knee and hip ;
One of those harmless spectacled machines.
Ignored by waiters when they call for greens.
ASTE.EA. 175
Whom schoolboys question if their walk trans-
cends
The last advices of maternal friends,
Whom John, obedient to his master's sign.
Conducts, laborious, up to ninety-nine,
While Peter, glistening with luxurious scorn,
Husks his white ivories like an ear of corn ;
Dark in the brow and bilious in the cheek.
Whose yellowish linen flowers but once a week.
Conspicuous, annual, in their threadbare suits,
And the laced high-lows which they call their
boots.
Well may'st thou shun that dingy front severe,
But him, O stranger, him thou canst not fear !
Be slow to judge, and slower to despise,
Man of broad shoulders and heroic size !
The tiger, writhing from the boa's rings.
Drops at the fountain where the cobra stings.
In that lean phantom, whose extended glove
Points to the text of universal love,
Behold the master that can tame thee down
To crouch, the vassal of his Sunday frown ;
His velvet throat against thy corded wrist,
His loosened tongue against thy doubled fist !
The MoiiAL Bully, though he never swears,
Nor kicks intruders down his entry stairs.
176 ASTRJEA.
Though meekness plants his backward sloping
hat,
And non-resistance ties his white cravat,
Thought his black broadcloth glories to be seen
In the same plight with Shylock's gaberdine.
Hugs the same passion to his narrow breast.
That heaves the cuirass on the trooper's chest,
Hears the same hell-hounds yelling in his rear.
That chase from port the maddened buccaneer,
Feels the same comfort while his acrid words
Turns the sweet milk of kindness into curds,
Or with grim logic prove, beyond debate.
That all we love is worthiest of our hate,
As the scarred ruffian of the pirate's deck,
When his long swivel rakes the staggering
wreck !
Heaven keep us all ! Is every rascal clown,
Whose arm is stronger, free to knock us down ?
Has every scarecrow, whose cachectic soul
Seems fresh from Bedlam, airing on parole,
Who, though he carries but a doubtful trace
Of angel visits on his hungry face,
From lack of marrow or the coins to pay.
Has dodged some vices in a shabby way,
The right to stick us with his cut-throat terms,
And bait his homilies with his brother worms ?
ASTR.EA. 177
If generous fortune give me leave to choose
My saucy neighbors barefoot or in shoes,
I leave the hero blustering while he dares
On platforms furnished with posterior stairs,
Till prudence drives him to his "earnest" legs
With large bequest of disappointed eggs.
And take the brawler whose unstudied dress
Becomes him better, and protects him less ;
Give me the bullying of the scoundrel crew,
If swaggering virtue wont insult me too !
Come, let us breathe ; a something not divine
Has mingled, bitter, with the flowing hne.
Pause for a moment while our soul forgets
The noisy tribe in panta-loons or -lets ;
Nor pass, ungrateful, by the debt we owe
To those who teach us half of all we know,
Not; in rude Hcense, or unchristian scorn.
But hoping, loving, pitying, while they warn !
Sweep out the pieces ! Round a careless
room
The feather duster follows up the broom ;
If the last target took a round of grape
To knock its beauty something out of shape.
The next asks only, if the listener please,
A schoolboy's blowpipe and a gill of peas.
178 ASTR.EA.
This creeping object, caught upon the brink
Of an old teacup filled with muddy ink,
Lives on a leaf that buds from time to time
In certain districts of a temperate clime.
O'er this he toils in silent corners snug,
And leaves a track behind him, like a slug ;
The leaves he stains a humbler tribe devours.
Thrown off in monthly or in weekly showers ;
Himself kept savage on a starving fare,
Of such exuviae as his friends can spare.
Let the bug drop, and view him if we can
In his true aspect as a quasi man.
The httle wretch, whose terebrating powers
Would bore a Paixhan in a dozen hours.
Is called a Critic by the heavy friends
That help to pay his minus dividends.
The pseudo-critic-editorial race
Owns no allegiance but the law of place ;
Each to his region sticks through thick and
thin,
Stiff as a beetle spiked upon a pin.
Plant him in Boston, and his sheet he fills
With all the slipslop of his threefold hills.
Talks as if Nature kept her choicest smiles
Within his radius of a dozen miles,
ASTEuEA. 179
And nations waited till his next Review
Had made it plain what Providence must do.
Would you believe him, water is not damp
Except in buckets with the Hingham stamp,
And Heaven should build the walls of Paradise
Of Quincy granite lined with Wenham ice.
But Hudson's banks, with more congenial
skies
Swell the small creature to alarming size ;
A gayer pattern wraps his flowery chest,
A sham more brilliant sparkles on his breast.
An eyeglass, hanging from a gilded chain.
Taps the white leg that tips his rakish cane ;
Strings of new names, the glories of the age,
Hang up to dry on his exterior page.
Titanic pygmies, shining light obscure.
His favored sheets have managed to secure,
Whose wide renown beyond their own abode
Extends for miles along the Harlaem road ;
New radiance lights his patronizing smile,
New airs distinguish his patrician style.
New sounds are mingled with his fatal hiss,
Oftenest, " provincial " and " metropolis."
He cry " provincial," with imperious brow !
The half-bred rogue, that groomed his mother's
i8o ASTR.EA.
Fed on coarse tubers and yEolian beans
Till clownish manhood crept among his teens,
When, after washing and unheard of pains
To lard with phrases his refractory brains,
A third-rate college licked him to the shape,
Not of the scholar, but the scholar's ape !
God bless Manhatten ! Let her fairly claim,
With all the honors due her ancient name,
Worth, wisdom, wealth, abounding and to
spare.
Rags, riots, rogues, at least her honest share ;
But not presume, because, by sad mischance.
The mobs of Paris wring the neck of France,
Fortune has ordered she shall turn the poise
Of thirty Empires with her Bowery boys !
The poorest hamlet on the mountain's side
Looks on her glories with a sister's pride ;
When the first babes her fruitful ship-yards
wean,
Play round the breasts of Ocean's conquered
queen,
The shout of millions, borne on every breeze,
Sweeps with Excelsior o'er the enfranchised
seas !
ASTHMA. i8i
Yet not too rashly let her think to bind
Beneath her circlet all the nation's mind ;
Our star-crowned mother, whose informing
soul
Clings to no fragment, but pervades the whole,
\'iews with a smile the clerk of Maiden Lane,
Who takes her ventral ganghon for her brain !
No fables tell us of Minervas born
From bags of cotton or from sacks of corn ;
The halls of Ley den Science used to cram.
While dulness snored in purse-proud Amster-
dam !
But those old Burghers had a foggy clime.
And better luck may come the second time ;
What though some churls of doubtful sense de-
clare
That poison lurks in her commercial air,
Her buds of genius dying premature.
From some malaria draining cannot cure ;
Nay, that so dangerous is her golden soil,
Whate'er she borrows, she contrives to spoil ;
That drooping minstrels in a few brief years
Lose their sweet voice, the gift of other spheres ;
That wafted singing from their native shore.
They touch the battery, and are heard no
more : —
1 82 A8TR^A.
By those twinned waves that wear the varied
gleams
Beryle or sapphire mingles in their streams,
Till the fair sisters o'er her yellow sands,
Clasping their soft and snowy ruffled hands,
Lay on her footstool with their silver keys
Strength from the mountains, freedom from the
seas, —
Some future day may see her rise sublime
Above her counters, — only give her time !
When our first Soldiers' swords of honor gild
The stately mansions that her tradesmen build ;
When our first Statesmen take the Broadway
track,
Our first Historians following at their back ;
When our first Painters, dying, leave behind
On her proud walls the shadows of their mind ;
When our first poets flock from farthest scenes
To take in hand her pictured Magazines ;
When our first scholars are content to dwell
Where their own printers teach them how to
spell ;
When world-known Science crowds toward her
gates,
Then shall the children of our hundred States
Hail her a true ]\Ietropolis of men.
The nation's centre. Then, and not till then !
ASTR.EA. 183
The song is failing. Yonder clanging tower
Shakes in its cup the more than brimming
hour ;
The full-length gallery which the fates deny,
A colored Moral briefly must supply.
No life worth naming ever comes to good
If always nourished on the self-same food ;
The creeping mite may live so if he please,
And feed on Stilton till he turns to cheese,
But cool Magendie proves beyond a doubt.
If mammals try it, that their eyes drop out.
No reasoning natures find it safe to feed
For their sole diet on a single creed ;
It chills their hearts, alas ! it fills their lung^.
And spoils their eyeballs while it spares their
tongues.
When the first larvae on the elm are seen.
The crawling wretches, like its leaves, are
green ;
Ere chill October shakes the latest down.
They, like the foliage, change their tint to
brown ;
On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy,
You stretch to pluck it — 'tis a butterfly ;
1 84 ASTR^A.
The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark,
They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark:
The woodcock, stiffening to fictitious mud,
Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for his
blood.
So by long living on a single lie,
Nay, on one truth, will creatures get its dye ;
Red, yellow, green, they take their subjects
hue, —
Except when squabbling turns them black and
blue!
The song is passing. Let its meaning rise
To loftier notes before its echo dies,
Nor leave, ungracious, in its parting train
A trivial flourish or discordant strain.
These lines may teach, rough-spoken though
they be,
Thy gentle creed, divinest Charity !
Truth is at heart not always as she seems.
Judged by our sleeping or our waking dreams.
We trust and doubt, we question and believe.
From fife's dark threads a trembling faith to
weave,
ASTHJEA. 185
Frail as the web that misty night has spun,
Whose dew-gemmed awnings glitter in the sun.
Though Sovereign Wisdom, at his creatures'
call,
Has taught us much, he has not taught us all ;
When Sinai's summit was Jehovah's throne.
The chosen Prophet knew his voice alone ;
When Pilate's hall that awful question heard.
The Heavenly Captive answered not a word.
Eternal Truth ! Beyond our hopes and fears
Sweep the vast orbits of thy myriad spheres !
From age to age, while History carves sublime
On her waste rock the flaming curves of time.
How the wild swayings of our planet show
That worlds unseen surround the world we
know !
The song is hushed. Another moment parts
This breathing zone, this belt of living hearts;
Ah, think not thus that parting moment ends
The soul's embrace of new discovered friends.
Sleep on my heart, thou long expected hour.
Time's new-born daughter, with thine infant
dower,
1 86 ASTRJEA.
One sad, sweet look from those expiring charms
The clasping centuries strangler in their arms,
Dreams of old halls, and shadow arches green,
And kindly faces loved as soon as seen !
Sleep, till the fires of manhood fade away,
The sprinkled locks have saddened into. gray.
And age, oblivious, blends thy memories old
With hoary legends that his sire has told !
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