University of Virginia Library

Does College life feel no ambitious cares?
Are students only free from all her snares?
Fancy, for one short fraction of an hour,
That we are gifted with Asmodeus' power,
Then snugly seated on old Harvard's cap,
We'll take a look, or if you please, a nap,—
If it may chance that my unworthy strain
Bring rest to one, I have not sung in vain.
Now then, you must n't mind the chilly breeze,
We're seated, look around you, if you please.

Mark yon enthusiast, his lamp grows dim,
His pale fire smoulders, but 't is nought to him!
What's paltry coal compared with endless fame,
Or wasting tapers to the muses' flame?
His gilt-edged superfine devoted lies
In virgin purity before his eyes,
Save where, (sole token of poetic rage,)
“Sonnet” stands staring from the modest page.
Poor guiltless word! long doomed to pine alone,
Like aged toad imbedded deep in stone!
Harvardiana's pages bid him seek
“An immortality of near a week.”
Ambition lends him industry, and she,—
May one day make a bard of even me!
Methinks e'en now the poet's eye may look
With prophet vision on the future's book,
And see, like Dædalus, the minstrel rise
On self-invented pinions to the skies,
Spur his racked hobby in the muses' teeth,
And snatch in triumph at the deathless wreath!
And as stout Vulcan's axe impetuous clove
The blue-eyed Goddess from the scull of Jove,
So labor beats from dulness' brain ideas
While each more brilliant than the last appears,
Until at length, his patent wings full spread,
Enormous epics blossom round his head!
Perchance improvement, in some future time,
May soften down the rugged path of rhyme,
Build a nice railroad to the sacred mount,
And run a steamboat to the muses' fount!
O happy days! when “steaming” to renown,
Each bard shall rise, the wonder of his town!
O happy days! when every well-filled car,
With stubborn rhymes in rugged strife shall jar,
And every scribbler's tuneless lyre shall squeak,
When whizzing swiftly up Parnassus' Peak!

Stop! hear you not that concourse of sweet notes,
Thrilling the soul as on the breeze it floats?
Ah music's votaries! full well ye know
To win the senses from dull study's woe,
To lull the mind to quiet, yet to keep
Your drowsy neighbors from too sound a sleep.
'T is sweet to hear, when sinking to a doze,
Some tuneful neighbor chanting through his nose,
Just when, oblivious of sublunar things,
Free fancy soars away on dreamy wings,
When, themes well finished or postponed awhile,
Light Somnus greets one with Pickwickian smile,—
'T is sweet to be awakened, though 't is true
There's pleasure in a calm siesta too.
But ah, much sweeter, when the night has thrown
Her sable mantle round her starlit throne,
When the day's weariness has given zest
To the soft pillow and the soothing rest,
To be awakened by the mingled sound
Of many laboring instruments around,
Far more melodious than the startling call,
That shattered Jericho's embattled wall.
“Ah!” one exclaims, “this music is a bore,
They might have let me sleep a little more,
With windows closed, I think they well might spare
‘To waste their sweetness on the desert air!’”
No! what were music, if it were not known
Who pealed the loudest, who the sweetest tone?
Ambition fills them all, they all aspire
To get on string of Phœbus' silver lyre.
Full many such “oft in the stilly night”
Exert their voices with stentorian might,
“From morn till night, from night till startled morn,”
Twang loud alarums on the groaning horn,
Or when they should be chewing learning's root,
Wring heartfelt moanings from the tortured flute.
All, all, have ears; though some more highly blest
Have ears much longer than the luckless rest;
Yet amidst sizes of near every sort,
None, (I must say it,) are at all too short!