 | The select poems of Dr. Thomas Dunn English (exclusive of the "Battle lyrics") |  |
I.
Harmanus Van Brunck was an old Knickerbocker,Who long sailed a ship in the Rotterdam trade;
Then retired from the sea, with “some shot in the locker,”
To build him a fig-tree, and sit in its shade.
So on Murray Hill he erected a mansion,
With a sort of indefinite sky-ward expansion;
A brown-stone front of the Folderol order,
With curlicues spread over every casement;
The ceilings dove-colored, with blue and gold border;
Gas introduced from the attic to basement;
Encaustic tiles for the pavement of halls,
Rosewood furniture, paintings on walls—
The first, in the style of Louis Quatorze;
The second bought cheap, through “the terrible wars,”
The dealer averred, with a wink so sly,
“In Europe,” but really “all in my eye”;
Curtains of silk to each window and bed,
And the costliest carpets to deaden the tread.
Never before was a fig-tree grown,
Of such beautiful mortar, and bricks and stone;
And sitting beneath its comforting shade,
Like Selkirk, the “monarch of all he surveyed,”
Van Brunck exclaimed—“I've left the seas,
Nothing to do, but to do as I please;
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Let the howling winds blow high, blow low—
Come heat, come cold, come rain, come snow,
Care or trouble no more I'll know.”
| The select poems of Dr. Thomas Dunn English (exclusive of the "Battle lyrics") | |