Poems of home and country :: :: University of Virginia Library

I suppose I'm the aim of your eloquent battery,
And you wish for my rhymes as the pay for your flattery;
I own it accords with the ways of society,
And humbly I yield to the laws of propriety.

You'll pardon my verse, if 't is undiplomatical,
Not Republican, Mugwump, or pure Democratical;
My calling is not to discussions political,
Nor yours, at a banquet, to be sharply critical.

To raise to a city this place of our habitat,
With aldermen, mayor, common council, and all of that,
Was better than marring the town and dividing it,
Or trotting some hobby out boldly and riding it,—
Making twain what is one by right systematical,
And calling that two which is one, geographical.
For praising it, people may charge us with vanity;
Not praising it, people would call it—insanity.
Our city régime was not sour grapes, pendulous;
But clusters, the fairest, of these we were emulous.
The young city, launched, like a ship on the sea to sail,
Was manned by a crew whose lot never should be to fail;

121

But, as good men and true need to props and no garnishing,
'T were useless to take up the business of varnishing.
My verse is sincere and hearty in praising them;
The people were wise to such office in raising them.
Fair city! they struck for success in beginning it,
And with every new year their successors are winning it.
It is just to speak well of the people who merit it;
Their praise, it is fair that their sons should inherit it.
They were temperate men, never charged with ebriety,
Whose walk, like a deacon's, was marked by sobriety;
Not ruled by some party end, blindly and slavishly,
Not planning, and fencing, and junketing knavishly;
Not famed, in debate, for their fluent loquacity,
Not noted, in contracts, for grasping rapacity;
Not eager to seek entertainments aquatical;
Not puffed, like balloons, with soaring ecstatical;
Not privily chasing some shadow they 're driving at,
And blind to foresee the ends they 're arriving at;
With their fame nibbled thin, by their secret chicanery,
Like fair ears of corn by a mouse in the granary;
Above playing fast, playing loose with their politics,
Like lobbyists, zealously plying their jolly tricks:
The men for the times,—and the times were a rarity,—
The times and the men were a wonderful parity.
Expenses, 't is true, in the ledger are debited,
But good things unnumbered, per contra, are credited.
So the first city fathers, we'll not rate them badly, sir,
But praise them, and toast them, and honor them gladly, sir.
Your power, good sirs, is a thing of the preterite,
If you did not rule well, 't is too late to better it;
Still, government measures are often a mystery,
But, foolish, or wise,—one year makes them history.

122

Methinks as we sit here, now eating, now talking fast,
The shades of the fathers are seen grimly stalking past,
Peering here, peering there, with their ancient eyes critical,
Charging this, charging that, as new-fangled, or mystical.
They list to the sound of our steam-engines, clattering;
They hear, in our fountains, the bright water pattering,
They see, in our grounds, fruits and flowers exotical,
And brand our new schemes as insane or quixotical;
Deem some things we do proofs of maddest audacity,
And some,—they must own,—showing highest capacity;
Accusing our speeches of bombast and platitude,
As if lack of depth could be made up in latitude.
O shades of the fathers, suspend your opinions, do,
Or hasten away to your silent dominions, do!
You judge Time's inventions amiss, from not knowing them,
Like men who judge fruits from the seeds, without sowing them;
We know these new things are too good to dispute on, sirs,
And we 're proud of the first city fathers of Newton, sirs.