University of Virginia Library

A Festival of the Sky Club.

The Sky Club was a small association
Of men retired from lofty navigation,
To join which none need cultivate pretensions,
Who had not made at least thirteen ascensions.
This club, who, half their lives, with clouds were floating,
And through air-waves had, so to speak, been boating,
Now crawled about, with hands and feet to aid them,
As Nature meant, when wingless first she made them.
One had one good arm, but it was the only;
Another's leg had many years walked lonely;
And almost all bore some eraseless markings
Attendant on aerial disembarkings.
The emblems of this club were simple, very,
And made unthinking minds unduly merry:
A rooster, sheep, and duck, of lofty manners,
Comprised the heraldry upon their banners
(The first-named animals that history mentions
That were addicted to balloon ascensions,
Before men made of fear so great a stranger
That they themselves incurred aerial danger);
Their walls bore prints of men of every nation
Who'd overcome the curse of gravitation:
Of Dædalus, ingenious artist-Grecian—
Who made him wings, with wax their sole cohesion;
Escaped Crete's monarch's rage-compounded virus,
And flew to Sicily (upon papyrus);
Of Icarus, his son, who started nicely
Equipped, it seems, with similar wings precisely;
But making, for ambition or diversion,
A sunward trip—a little branch excursion—
Found that the sun of wing-wax was a melter,
And dropped into the ocean, helter-skelter;
Of old Archytas, who made, with much trying,
A pigeon out of wood, and set it flying
(Which should have less in webs of wonder wound us,
Than genuine live ones floating all around us);
Of Roger Bacon, who by book suggested
That lofty navigation should be tested;
Thought we could sail, with proper means and motion,
Top of the air, the same as of the ocean;
And, daring sceptic earth-worms to deny it,
Was sagely anxious some one else should try it;
Of those French aeronauts, Montgolfier Brothers,
Who also left their goings up to others;
But over these, and twice as large, were staring
Rozier and Arlandes, who, with NEW daring,
In the hushed sight of curious, breathless legions,
First travelled up to hyper-mundane regions;
And Blanchard, who scored sixty good ascensions,
Then died in bed, with purse of poor pretensions;
Of Mrs. B., his wife, who, metal-sinewed,
Her husband's business at th' old stand continued:
Fired rockets off while in the air suspended,
Caught fire herself, and like a stick descended;
Of young Guerin, the little French boy-peasant,
Who, being at a balloon-landing present,
The flying bag, with its hooked anchor, fished for,
Gave him as high a time as boy e'er wished for;
Clung to his waistbands, until fame it earned him,
Then gently to his parents' arms returned him
(Well known he is to balloon history-browsers,
This lad of tender years and sturdy trousers);
Of Thurston, who, his balloon sudden starting
A second trip, when from its basket parting,
Feared loss of what was costly in the getting,
And risked his life, and sprang into the netting;
And, as the sailor by his life-raft lingers,
Clung, until Death unclasped his freezing fingers;
Of Donaldson, who thought to spurn the ocean,
But found Lake Michigan a fatal potion;
Of Hogan, who, a new-made air-ship trying,
Straightway into eternity went flying;
And many others, Memory does not mention,
Secured this club's pictorial attention.
This club, whose zeal no cloak of age could smother,
Were very interesting to each other;
For all with strange, adventurous deeds were swelling,
Which pained them till divested of by telling;
And he who'd make five dollars contribution
(Which went to aeronauts in destitution)
Could tell a tale of half an hour's duration,
And three miles high; this was the limitation.
And he before correction's bar was cited,
Who went to sleep before the man alighted.
One winter night the chilly blast was crooning
Fierce odes against the science of ballooning,
And all out-doors with frosty burrs was bristling,
And loud the witches of the air were whistling,
And snow-squalls tried the windows till they trembled,
The club within their sanctum were assembled,
And one old sky-dog, having bought attention,
Achieved the following narrative-ascension:

THE CHILD-THIEF.

The Club absorbed this fragment of narration,
With mild and rather frosty approbation;
Though now and then an old balloonist listened
With ears that heard, and eager eyes that glistened;
For pure love, in its ever-blessèd mission,
Strikes some old sinners' hearts with strange precision.
But most of them, polite attention feigning,
Found this mild tale not over-entertaining;
They wanted things unsafer and more thrilling—
Some sudden death, or close escape from killing;
And a young man the story-fee then tendered,
And this sad tale of love and death was rendered:

A LEAP FOR LOVE.

FLIGHT OF THE AGED BALLOONIST.