Uncollected Poems of James Russell Lowell

Πολλων δ' ανθρωπων ιδην αστεα, και νοον εγνω.
Quae regio in terris NOSTRI non plena laboris?
Full many cities he hath seen and many great men known;
What place on earth but testifies the labors of OUR OWN?

DIGRESSION A

Our Own in mounting Pegasus,
Takes such impetuous stride

That, with a downcome ominous,
He falls o' the other side.

Sirs, Editors of Putnam's (if it's right to use the plural),
I wish to recommend myself to—tooral, looral, looral!
This strikes you as an oddish way of winding up a distich?
As something rather wild, incomprehensible, and mystic?
Well, to confess the truth at once, I'm something new at verses,
No fairy gave me rhymes at birth in Fortunatus-purses;
Rhymes, I opine, like Plato's souls, are born in incompleteness,
Pining, mere bachelors, till they meet their destined linkéd sweetness;
And some men, never finding halves sans those they should be pinned to,
Scrawl rhyme as easily as Jack Frost scrawls rime upon a window:
That's not my luck;—the prior verse, before I've time to think, 's at hand,
While that which ought to marry it plays spinster in my inkstand,
Immovable as the proverb's horse that can both nod and wink stand;
So, having written my first line, and ended it with plural,
I could not light on any mate but Ural, mural, crural,
All very crooked sticks (just try yourselves, good Messieurs Editors,—
When you have turned it twenty ways, you'll own I might have said it worse);
So baffled like poor Nap. the Third, for fear of worse miscarriage,
I sought some friendly assonance, a morganatic marriage;
Failing in that, with Butler's rule I can my weakness bolster,
And 'gainst a lock-less pistol match the flask in t'other holster,
Or, better yet, with Tennyson's authority can cure all,—
If he says tirra-lirra, why mayn't I say tooral-looral?

DIGRESSION B

With foot in stirrup, hand on mane,
Our Own makes prudent pause,
Swings o'er the careful leg again,
And tight the curb-rein draws.

There's naught so hard, Lord Byron says, as getting under way;
The wilted sails droop from the yard, oil-smooth the windless bay,
The tide slips wimpling by, the same that weeks ago, perhaps,
Round coral-reefs in Indian seas, shimmered with whispering lapse;
The same that, sweeping northward still, to Arctic snows may bear
Great leaves, scarce disenchanted yet of drowsy tropic air,
Such as may vex stout Franklin's dreams, where unrelenting lines
Of icepeaks whitening endlessly o'ertop his useless pines;—

The tide slips by and there you lie, the anchor at the peak,
The captain swearing inwardly, the mate with quid in cheek;
There's not a hope of any breeze before, beside, behind,
And, though with ingots laden deep, you cannot raise the wind;
Fair cousins, kissed and bid good-bye, gaze awkward from the pier,
Sorry they wiped their eyes so soon, because their second tear
Declines to fill the other's place; the cambric from the bags
Is taken once again and waved; the slow time drags and dra-a-ags;
He (whom in childhood's guileless prime, you used to lick), your brother,
Spells this exhausted leg, or that, with the exhausted other;
The children go too near the edge, and fuss, and screw, and wriggle;
Tommy's best cap falls overboard and no one dares to giggle;
You strive to make the feeling stay that misted both your eyes,
But thoughts of luggage intervene, and the tired feeling dies;
The farewell, mixed of smiles and tears, so painful-sweet before,
Drawn out into an hour, becomes impertinence and bore,
As if too literal Jove should grant the lovers' prayed-for bliss,
And glue them Siamesely tight in one eternal kiss;
In such case what do captains, even of clippers swift as arrows?
They take a prosy steam-tug till they get beyond the Narrows;
That's what I've done, and, being now safe in the open main,
Set stu'nsails (that is, mend my pen), and take my start again.

PROGRESSION A—THE INVOCATION

He now, with wise spurs so inclined
That each the flank evades,
Nor gives a mettle undesigned,
Invokes two mighty blades.

Sirs, Editors of Putnam's, then, if you indeed be plural,
Or if you the Howadji be, who, sitting crucicrural
(A habit learned in Egypt), through the anaconda coils,
Of his effendi sucks the rare ulemah's fragrant spoils,
And on the best papyrus with a split reed splutters down
An article on Banking that will startle half the town,
(Proving our system all is due to some old Coptic file
Because before that Ramsay reigned, who helped at Babel's pile,
Deposits constantly were made on both banks of the Nile);
Then claps hands languidly (hands lotus-soft) to bring A lad in,
Allah ed deen he calls him—'tis a dyed Milesian clad in

A bloomer bought in Chatham-street and a bandanna turban,
Pure Saracenic in his style like certain cots suburban:—
Or if you Harry Franco be, who, though he e'er so far goes,
Remembers in his secret heart the dear, flat, dull sea's Argos,
And, as a mild suggestion of the customs of Nantucket,
To any kind of elbow-chair prefers an o'erturned bucket;
Who (as the Persian Envoy to old Louis the Magnificent
A turf brought with him piously, that he might always sniff a scent
Of the natale solum) keeps an oilcask in the closet,
(One that has made a v'y'ge, too), lays a harpoon across it,
And with strange rites, left wisely to the fancy of my Reader,
Consults the bunghole's Delphic deeps before he writes a leader;—
Or if you be that gentle youth, so tall and slim and pale,
Who fitted to his Pegasus a Scandinavian Tale,
Who the Pathfinder's leaders made, yet could not find the way
With next-day-after-never to displace our poor to-day,
And nothing met but humbergs, where Charles Fourier (on his slate)
Had cleared the Northwest Passage to a better Social State;—
Or if you be that Moses who, from Modern Egypt's wrecks adust,
Unto their Canaan of Brook Farm the New Lights safely Exodused;
Where life's clean page was never more to be defaced with fresh spots,
As soon as Theory could be made as fattening as the flesh-pots;
Where the new manner, dropt from heaven, should so nerve hand and brain,
That he who nothing did before, should do't as well again;
Where with fresh water from the spring they warmed their stoic lunch,
Biding the time when Fourier said the sea would be milk-punch,
When gold into the public chest like water was to run
For phalansterian beets (that cost two shillings every one),
And Time should wander Ripleying along o'er golden sand,
When forty heads could dig as well as one experienced hand;—
If you are one or all, or if you're ne'er a one of those,
Hear, by what title suits you best, the plan I now propose!

PROGRESSION B LEADING TO DIGRESSION C

Our Own then states his business,
Sets forth the why and how,
Begins in safety to progress
But brings up in a slough.

I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam,
And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam;
But what's my pedigree to you? That I will soon unravel;
I've sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, therefore desire to travel,

And, as a natural consequence, presume I needn't say,
I wish to write some letters home and have those letters***
[I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next thorns that mount,
Clump, clump, the stairways of the brain with—sir, my small account,
That, after every good we gain—Love, Fame, Wealth, Wisdom—still,
As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill,
The garçons in our Café of Life, by dreaming us forgot—
Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and musing God knows what,—
Till they say, bowing, s'il vous plait, voilà, Messieurs, la note!]
I should not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day,
The tollman Debt, who drops the bar across the world's highway,
Great Cæsar in mid-march would stop if Cæsar could not pay;
Pilgriming's dearer than it was: men cannot travel now
Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a simple vow;
Nay, as long back as Bess's time, when Walsingham went over
Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover
He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land,
He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the knaves in hand:
If I with staff and scallop-shell should try my way to win,
Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in?
Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on,
And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison?
I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true;
'Tis out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new:
The question boath for men and meates longe voyages yt beginne
Lyes in a notshell, rather saye lyes in a case of tinne.
But, though men may not travel now, as in the middle ages,
With self-sustaining retinues of little gilt-edged pages,
Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er he likes to roam,
By sending his small pages (at so much per small page) home;
And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve so well as then,
Our outlay is about as small—just paper, ink, and pen.
Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew;
Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view,
Then take an alias, change the sign, and the old trade renew;
Indeed, 'tis wondrous how each Age, though laughing at the Past,
Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last;
How it is sure its system would break up at once without

The bunnian which it will believe hereditary gout;
How it takes all its swans for geese, nay, stranger yet and sadder,
Sees in its treadmill's fruitless jog a heavenward Jacob's-ladder,
Shouts—Lo, the Shining Heights are reached! one moment more aspire!
Trots into cramps its poor, dear legs, gets never an inch the higher,
And, like the others, ends with pipe and mug beside the fire.
There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips and watches with a sneer
The green recruits that trudge and sweat where it had swinked whilere,
And sighs to think this soon spent zeal should be in simple truth
The only interval between old Fogyhood and Youth:
“Well,” thus it muses, “well, what odds? 'Tis not for us to warn;
“'Twill be the same when we are dead, and was ere we were born;
“Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our store of winter's corn?
“Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent. received from Treadmill shares,
“We might. ... but these poor devils at last will get our easy-chairs;
“High aims and hopes have great rewards, they, too, serene and snug,
“Shall one day have their—soothing pipe and their enlivening mug;
“From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath always heard the hum
“Of Good Times Coming, and will hear until the last day come;
“Young ears hear forward, old ones back, and, while the earth rolls on,
“Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps of Good Times Gone;
“Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an egg was laid!
“Cack-cack-cack-cackle! rang around, the scratch for worms was stayed,
“Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut! from this egg the coming cock shall stalk!
“The great New Era dawns, the age of Deeds and not of Talk!
“And every stupid hen of us hugged close his egg of chalk,
“Thought,—sure, I feel life stir within, each day with greater strength,
“I have not sat these years in vain, the world is saved at length;—
“When lo, the chick! from former chicks he differed not a jot,
“But grew and crew and scratched and went, like those before, to pot!”
So muse the dim Emeriti, and, mournful though it be,
I must confess a kindred thought hath sometimes come to me,
Who, though but just of forty turned, have heard the rumorous fame
Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all—coming till they came.
Pure Mephistopheles all this? the vulgar nature jeers;
Good friend, while I was writing it, my eyes were dim with tears;
Thrice happy he who cannot see, or who his eyes can shut,
Life's deepest sorrow is contained in that small word there—But!

See the COMPLEAT AMBASSADOR, 1655, p. 21.

DIGRESSION D

Caught in the mire, he argufies,
Shows how 'twas done by rules,

And proves outright that nonsense lies
Beyond the reach of fools.

That's pure digression, then, you think? Now, just to prove 'tis not,
I shall begin a bigger one upon this very spot:
At any rate, 'tis naught, you say; precisely, I admit it,
For, in convicting it of that, you virtually acquit it;
You have conjectured, I suppose,—(come, never look despondent!)
That I intend to offer as an OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT,
And by what method more direct could I avouch my fitness
Than by exhibiting such art as the above may witness?
I had one Nothing; and, by dint of turning and displaying it,
I've occupied the time thus far in seeming to be saying it,
And have it, good as new, till comes the moment for conveying it.
Each creature must get forward in his own peculiar sort;
The crab slants sideway to his end, and finds the way as short,
You'd make him go forth rightly, eh? pray try your hand, Sir dab,—
Well, you have bettered Providence, but Nature wants her crab;
Sir, in that awful Congress there, where sit th' assembled Fates,
Of which the unconscious newspapers report the slow debates,
Thank God, you can't be lobbying, log-rolling, and all that;—
A world that suited you, O Smith, might be a trifle flat.
Fate, Idiosyncrasy, or what is just the same thing, custom,
Leads every mortal by the ear, though he be strong as Rustem,
Makes him do quite impossible things,—then, with a spear of grass
Marks the thin line none else can see, but which he cannot pass;
That son of yours, so pale and slim, with whom the master fails,
What claps him in the fo'c'stle rude, and sends him after whales?
And Samson, there, your burly boy, what takes him by the nape
And sets him at the counter's back to measure thread and tape?
The servant-man you hired last year, who, for a paltry fee
Surrendered all his nature up, and would if he'd had three,
To suit your whimsies, and who seemed to find all drudgery sweet,
Left you in tears,—he could not take that bundle through the street;
Centripetal, centrifugal, these the conditions two,
Some cling like moss, and other some fling off, their whole lives through;
My style's centrifugal; mark plain the settled boundary-line,
And, till it gets on t'other side, 'twill fret and fume and pine:
Or call't the polypean style; each verse contains, at any rate,
A polypus that in its turn new polypi can generate,

And if I the temptation strong that lurks in any verse shun,
'Tis certain that the next will breed new centres of dispersion;
A brief attempt would shortly prove that I should be much worse if
I tried to curb my natural bent of being too discursive,
But I forbear, I spare you this experimentum crucis,
And shall, instead, proceed to show that Nonsense hath its uses;
I mean good nonsense, there are men enough who have a leaning to
Write nonsense in great solemn tomes, nor have the wit of meaning to—
Tomes, the hop-pillows of the mind, that vanquish readers stout,
And which no gentleman's library can be complete without,
Pernoctent nobis, bedward turned, take one and feel no doubt;
What a profound narcotic spell your fading senses greets,
'Tis just like getting into bed to look between their sheets;
[I mean to make a list of them, some rainy day, to be a
Fasciculus first to my complete librorum Pharmacopœia.]
And now, because so hard of faith, this omnibus and gas age,
From an old author I translate the following deep passage;
(See preface to the Moriæ Encomium of Erasmus,
Recensuit et præfationem addidit Gelasmus:
'Tis the easiest matter, in one sense,
To write very passable nonsense;
There are those who do naught but create your
Poor stuff from mere thinness of nature;
But to do it with art and intention,
To never let fancy or pen shun
Any kind of odd lurches, twists, waggeries,
Absurdities, quibbles, and vagaries;
To roll your Diogenes-puncheon
The vext reader's toes with a crunch on,
Making one quip the mere cotyledon
For the seed of another to feed on,
Is a matter—why, just reckon how many
Have fared well enough with Melpomene,
And how very few have come by a
Mere prosperous look from Thalia;
Who since has contrived to hit off an ease

That in hard work will match A---s?
Hath even great Swift in his shabby lays
Come near the hop-skip prose of R---s?
The deep-quibbling, sage-clown of S---e,
From among all the wits can you rake his peer?
Are they not, my dear sir, rari nantes
Who can jingle the bells with C---s?
How many great clerks in one turn could
Be both zany and wise man as S---e could?
And who could with such a wise knack array
Great Jeames's phonetics as T---y?
Your head is too small if it happen
That you can't keep the noble fool's-cap on.
So he goes maundering on and on, he's almost worse than I am,
And every line he writes begets as many sons as Priam;
All this, good Messieurs Editors, is simply introduction
To show how nothing could be said in endless reproduction;
I also wished to smooth the way for scribbling off some jolly
Good, topsy-turvy, head-o'er-heels, unmeaning, wholesome folly;
We're pretty nearly crazy here with change and go-ahead,
With flinging our caught bird away for two ne'er caught instead,
With butting 'gainst the wall which we declare shall be a portal,
And questioning Deeps that never yet have said a word to mortal;
We're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and out of all condition,
With mediums and prophetic chairs, and crickets with a mission,
(The most astounding oracles since Balaam's donkey spoke,
'T would seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak).
Make but the public laugh, be sure, 'twill take you to be somebody;
'Twill wrench its button from your clutch, my densely-earnest, glum body;
'Tis good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why
Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie?
Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop,
And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop?
Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then
Why draw them sternly when you wish to cut your nails or pen?

Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff;
But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh;—
No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny,
And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey,
From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a club-lick,
So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public.
Look how the dead leaves melt their way down through deep-drifted snow;
They take the sun-warmth down with them—pearls could not conquer so;
There is a moral here, you see; if you would preach, you must
Steep all your truths in sun that they may melt down through the crust;
Brave Jeremiah, you are grand and terrible, a sign
And wonder, but were never quite a popular divine;
Fancy the figure you would cut among the nuts and wine!
I, on occasion, too, could preach, but hold it wiser far
To give the public sermons it will take with its cigar,
And morals fugitive, and vague as are these smoke-wreaths light
In which. ... I trace ... a. ... let me see—bless me! 'tis out of sight.
When I my commentators have (who serve dead authors brave
As Turks do bodies that are sworn to stir within the grave,—
Unbury, make minced-meat of them, and bury them again),
They'll find deep meanings underneath each sputter of my pen,
Which I, a blissful shade (perhaps in teapoy pent, by process
Of these new moves in furniture, this wooden metempsychosis),
Accept for mine, unquestioning, as prudent Göthe choused
The critics out of all the thoughts they found for him in Fast.

“Nullitates scribere tam facile est quam bibere; sed scribere intelligenter quod sit inintelligibile; insanire perfrequenter, motu proprio, libenter; vertere in risibile quod plane impossible, sic ut titillat imum pectus,—hoc est summum intellectus,” et cætera. Praefatio Gelasmi pp. XCIX. et seqq.

To avoid all suspicion of personality, I have omitted the names here. Though dead for centuries, an enraged satirist might revenge himself on me, nowadays, through the columns of the Spiritual Telegraph, or the legs of some dithyrambic centre-table.

PROGRESSION C

Our Own displays him just the man
To do the thing proposed,
Though what that thing is, nor his plan,
He hath not yet disclosed.

Travel (my theory is) suits least the race called Anglo-Saxon,
They come back loaded from each land they set their fullish tracks on
With every folly they can pile their mental and bodily backs on;
So at the outset let me state I do not mean to budge
And see the persons, places, things, I shall describe and judge,
Because when men have cheated you, or when they've tea'd and fed you, 'tis
The hardest thing to feel unbribed and clear the mind of prejudice;

Therefore, 'tis wasting honest time, this squandering round the earth,
And I, who once sold wooden clocks, should know what time is worth.
Next as to how I'm qualified,—but let us first agree
What things deserve a wise man's eyes and ears across the sea;
PERSONS: I'm forty, and have led, as you will see ere long,
A multifarious Yankee life, so there I'm rather strong;
I've tended bar, worked farms to halves, been twice to the South seas,
Sold clocks (I mentioned that before), done something in herb teas,
Hawked books, kept district school (and thus, inspired with thirst for knowledge,
Pegged shoes till I have saved enough to put me through Yale College),
Invented a cheap stove (the famed Antidotum Gehennæ,
So fuel-saving that no skill could coax it to burn any—
If you have lectured in small towns, you've probably seen many),
Driven stage, sold patent strops, by dint of interest at the White House,
Got nominated keeper of the Finback Island Light-house,
Where, just before a Northeast blow, the clockwork got ungeared,
And I revolved the light myself nine nights until it cleared;
(I took it as a quiet place to invent perpetual motion,—
This large dose of the real thing quite cured me of the notion;
It was, perhaps, the bitterest drop e'er mingled in my cup,
I rowed ashore so thoroughly sick, I threw the light-house up;)
Then I went through the Bankrupt Act, merely from general caution—
For, if you're prudent, you'll take heed, and every chance's claws shun,
Nor leave old blankets lying about for adverse fates to toss ye on;
Then I stood round a spell, and then bought out an Indian Doctor,
Then—but I have a faint surmise your credence may be shocked, or
I might go on, but I have said enough, no doubt, to show
That, to judge characters and men, I need not wait to grow;—
PERSONS thus well provided for, the next thing is the strictures
On works of Art in general; and first, we'll take the PICTURES.
Even here you cannot turn my flank,—I began life a painter,
Worked 'prentice first, then journeyman, with Major-General Taintor,
And did, myself, the sausages and the great round of beef
On the new market-house's sign, still prized for bold relief;—
SCULPTURE: I think that more than half the Sculptors that have risen
Should hammer stone to some good end, sent all to Sing Sing prison;
I'm sick of endless copyings of what were always bores,
Their dreary women on one toe, their Venuses by scores;
(That's in the ignorant, slashing style,—if you prefer a judge
Mildly appreciative, deep,—just give my tap a nudge,
'Twill run æsthetic folderol, and best high-German fudge;)—
MUSIC: when cousin Arad Cox at muster hurt his hand,

I played the bass-drum twice or more in the East Haddam band;—
BUILDINGS: I saved them till the last, for there I feel at home—
Perhaps you never heard about the city of New Rome?
'Twould not disgrace you deeply if you hadn't, for, you see,
It stayed in the potential mood, and was but going to be;
We merely staked a pasture out, christened the poor thing Forum,
And chose two natural architects—OUR OWN was unus horum;
'Twas he who planned the Meeting-house, a structure pure and winning,
With specimens of every style 'twixt vane and underpinning;
Unhappily it ne'er was built; New Rome, with nine good hills,
Remains unsettled to this day,—so do, alas! its bills,—
But the experience thus obtained entitles me to hope
My architectural criticism will be allowed full scope.

PROGRESSION D

Our Own, his various qualities
And aptitudes defined,
Descends, and makes more close replies
To the inquiring mind.

But what, in these your voyagings, do you propose to do?
I might retort, O, highborn Smythe, with—what is that to you?
These twenty times I've bit my nails, and my left ear-tip scratched,
Wondering why you should wish to count my chickens ere they're hatched;
But, if you further will insist, I'll answer (if I can);
My plan is—let me see—my plan is just to have no plan;
In laying out a pleasure-ground (the rule is not in Price),
Be tipsy when you mark the paths, or you'll be too precise;
And do it upon Burgundy, 'twill give a curvi-line
More sure of gentlemanly grace than any thinner wine;
Precision is a right good thing, like olives, in its place,
But (still like olives) it comes in a long way after Grace.
Suppose I told you that I meant (as vines do, when they climb)
To wander where my clasp was wooed by any jutting rhyme?
Or said that, like a river deep, lost first in bogs and sedges,
I soon should march to meet the sea with cities on my edges?
(This seemingly mixed simile, at which the Highborn frowns,
Refers to sketches I shall give of European towns;)
However, you shall have a peep; come, children, form a ring,

I'll lift the crust, and let you see the birds are there to sing;
Now then—I shall appear to go from capital to capital,
Pick up what's worth the picking up, and in my letters clap it all;
When aught of interest shall occur, as certain as a star,
I, in our happy western phrase, shall be precisely thar;
If Paris, for example, which is very likely, chooses
To have the periodic fit she's subject to—the Blouses,
And there should be a general row, I, from the very thick of it,
Shall send home thrilling narratives till you are fairly sick of it;
I shall have interviews with kings and men of lower stations,
(Authors—of course,) and send reports of all the conversations;
Shall visit the cathedrals, and, for fear of any blunder,
Call each the finest in the world, a mountain of carved wonder;
Of every building, thing, and scene, that comes within my view,
I shall say something different, something so simply new,
The very Is upon my page shall with surprise grow round,—
And, by the way, lest any one should base enough be found
To steal the phrases got by me at cost of thought profuse,
I here put in a caveat, for some I mean to use,—

As—Architecture's music cooled to zero point of Reaumur;

A statue is a song in stone (the chisel was its Homer);

St. Peter's has an epic dome, beneath whose deeps profound
The papal choir, on Easter eve, build up a dome of sound;

Art is the soul's horizon broad, and, as we onward go,
It moves with us and still recedes, until life's sun is low;

You call those rather goodish thoughts? I have them by the score,
Ne'er yet by mortal man or maid put into words before;
Life's sun I feel quite sure is new; I got it by hard thinking
Only last night at half-past five, just as the sun was sinking;
With these and other ornaments I shall enrich my text,
When, far across the Atlantic wave, I have to write my next.

PROGRESSION E

Our own unfolds another coil
Of his portentous tale,
And shows the torture and the toil
Of riding on a rail.

I left East Haddam by the train—a mode of torture worse
Than any Dante conjured up—the case I will rehearse:

I found the car, then, occupied (I got in rather late,
And 'twas hermetically closed) by victims fifty-eight,
Each one of whom looked headachy and parboiledy and pale,
Having less air a-piece, perhaps, than Jonah in his whale;
They seemed a troop of convict souls let out in search of bail
And, lest they might a mouthful get of unbedevilled air,
A Stygian sheriff's officer went with them every where,
Whose duty was to see that they no atmosphere should know
Cooler than that which Minos' tail had doomed them to below:
In shape he seemed a kind of stove, but by degrees my head
Was squeezed into an iron cap and screwed till I was dead
(Or thought I was), and then there came strange lights into my brain,
And 'neath his thin sheet-iron mask the tipstaff imp was plain.
At intervals another fiend—by mortals Brakeman hight—
Would rouse his fellow-torturer into a fierce delight,
Punching his ribs, and feeding him with lumps of anthracite;
The demon's single eye grew red, and with unholy glee
Exulted as it shrivelled up the very soul in me.
I would have shrieked a maniac shriek, but that I did not dare;
I thought of turning madly round, and seizing by the hair
A soul unblest that sat by me, only somehow I got
A notion that his treacherous scalp would prove to be red-hot.
I sprang to raise the window, but a female spirit of ill

Who all the space around her soured, sharp-nosed, close-lipped, and still,
(A vinegar-cruet incarnate) said, “No gentleman would place
A lady in a thorough-draught that had a swollen face!”
If you have ever chanced to bite a nice unripe persimmon,
You'll have some notion of her tone, but still a faint and dim one
No patent stove can radiate a chill more like the pole
Than such a lady, whose each act true views of grace control,
In doubt about her bonnet-box, secure about her soul.
Thenceforward all is phantasm dire; I dimly recollect
A something 'twixt a nose and voice that said “'most there, I 'xpect,”—
Heavens! almost WHERE? a pang, a flash of fire through either eye shoots,
And I looked momently to see the last scene of Der Frieschutz;
The bland conductor will become that flame-clad individual
Who stamping, Earth will gape, and “Gentlemen, I bid you all,”
He'll shriek, “to lava tea at six,” then crashing through the floor
With a strong smell of brimstone,—but all swam, I saw no more,
Only I vaguely seem to have seen the attendant fiend excite
His principal with further pokes and lumps of anthracite,
While faces featureless as dough, looked on serene and placid,
And nine and fifty pairs of lungs evolved carbonic acid.
There was a scream, but whether 'twas the engine, or the last
Wild prayer for mercy of those eight and fifty as they passed
Down to their several torturings in deepest Malebolge,
As I myself am still in doubt, can't certainly be told ye;
I only know they vanished all, the silent ghastly crew,
But whither, how, why, when,—these things I never fully knew;

I stood with carpet-bag in hand, when the strange spell unbound me.
And five score yelling cabmen danced their frenzied war-dance round me.

PROGRESSION F

Our own, howe'er with Bryon's verse
He may enchanted be,
Finds that he likes the ocean worse,
When trying it per se.

When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And built, with a roof of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!

Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain!

So mused a poet, quite as wise as either you or I,
Coughing with dust, as Crassus' coach rolled smoothly-swinging by;
And, if I understand his thought, which may be something trite,
He was (which for a poet's much) within two-thirds of right;
Fond youth, be abstinent, pull not that Hesperidean fruit,
One bite, and you repent too late, and lame your jaw to boot:
Thank God for the Unattainable, it leaves you still a boy,
The wishing for the wishing-cap is that which makes the joy;
Privation gives their charm to things, the glory and the grace,
Beckon and flee—ah, fool, that would'st their frozen zones embrace!
In winter, summer seems most fair, and what enchantment glows
In August o'er those mountain-peaks, ermined with rounding snows!
The frozen Samoiede makes his heaven a place of endless fire,

And, when kind fortune heaps the board, to glut the soul's desire,
Apicius Bufo starves and sighs, and wonders what it means,—
Nectar? Ambrosia?—hum, so-so, but no pig's head and greens?
And thou, oh hero, who hast climbed to scarce-dreamed fame and power,
Think'st only of a little mound which dusky yews embower,
And, sighing, musest what are all these idle sands to me
Since those blue eyes are closed with dust that should be here to see?
Ah, happy eyes that shut so soon, ye only have the might
To keep undimmed the olden spell, for ever warm and bright!
Had village Alice lived, poor fool, thou would'st without remorse
Be sighing for a bride of State, and planning a divorce.

This train of thought I've fallen on, far out here on the sea,
Coiled up, half-frozen underneath the weather-bulwark's lee.
And (faith that last wave soused me through)—and writing on my knee;
The application of it is, that when you're on the land
The sea is every thing that's bright, and broad, and blue, and grand,
And that you'd change what Wordsworth calls your glorious second berth
(Now that you've tried it) for a grave, because 'twould be firm earth;
Perhaps in some October night, when the roused south o'erwhelms,
With surge on surge rolled gathering down the night, the shuddering elms,
You have lain fancying what wild joy there must be in the motion
Of a brave vessel plunging through the broken coils of ocean;
Your mind ran forth and back again, like a fly-watching spider,
Upon that line in Byron of the steed that knows its rider,
And, in your bath next morning, you splash with double glee,
Humming, dear Barry Cornwall's song—the sea! the o-pen sea!
I wish that Barry and Byron both were only here with me!
All well enough this sentiment and stuff upon the shore,
But, when the sea is smoothest, 'tis an Erymanthian bore,
And when 'tis rough, my brace of bards, you'd neither of you sing
Of hands on manes, or blue and fresh, but quite another thing,—
Flat on your backs in jerking berths you scarce could keep your place in,
You'd moan an Amboean sad—quick, steward! quick! a basin!
(Queen's counsel most delectable, I still seem hearing thee
Sing Cameriere through the rain along the Bieler sea.)

How easy 'tis to tyrannize over Taste's hapless lieges!
The poor Achivi still are plucked quidquid delirant reges;

If Hamlet says he sees a whale, Polonius must follow,
And what A swears is beautiful, all down to Z will swallow;
None dares confess he cannot see what great Flapdoddle spies,
And, like potatoes, fools are bred from one another's eyes;
Dear Nyncombe, what sharp agonies I've seen you going through with
Before a statue which your soul had naught on earth to do with,
And what could e'er be finer than your awed, assenting “Oh!”
When I suggested that deep thought in the Apollo's toe?
Don't come to Rome for nothing, man, with some likeminded crony,
Go valiantly and eat a steak down at the Gabione;
'Tis in this way that men are made to say they like the sea,
Flam says he does, and all the rest will be as good as he.
I heard a great man once declare that he had never found
A sailor, yet, who loved the fate to which his life was bound,
And when I asked our brown first-mate, a seaman good and brave,
On shore as helpless as a fish, a viking on the wave,
What life would please him most? he sighed, looked at his tattooed arm,
Studied its hieroglyphs awhile, and said—an inland farm.
And he was right; I cannot, for example, see the least
Pleasure in walking on a deck that's drunk as any beast,
A wet plank, scarcely larger than a white bear's sloppy pen,
That tips you here and slips you there, and trips you back again;
That cheats you with a moment's lull, and, when you think you feel
Quite sure of the companionway, half breaks you on the wheel,
Then slants until you need both hands to keep your hold on that,
And pins you helpless while the wind blows off your second hat.
The steed that throws his rider would be nearer to the fact:
To me it gives no pleasure to be swashed and washed and racked;
To have a three weeks' tipsiness on cold saltwater merely,
With legs that seem like some one's else, they bother you so queerly
Taking you here when you mean there,—no, no, it has no charm,
Although the loveliest cousin may be hanging on your arm.
Of course, I am not seasick, for although that epidemic
(Hic) prostrates all my friends, yet (hic) I only pity them (hic).
Indeed, in this life's pilgrimage, I found this maxim true:
There are four common weaknesses no mortal ever knew,
A headache that was caused by wine, drowsiness late at night,
Seasickness, and a corn that came from wearing boots too tight.
A seasick man I never saw; Our Own leans o'er the rail,
Muses awhile, and then comes back with features doughy pale;

But he had only wandered aft, a Parthian glance to take
At those strange coils of moony fire that mark the writhing wake.
With ghastly calm he takes a pipe; in minutes five (or less) hence,
He'll feel again that ecstasy produced by phosphorescence.

Conceive of an existence in which the great events
Are breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, in which, when Fate relents,
She sends a string of porpoises, perhaps a grampus, too,
Who blunders up beneath the stern, and gives a poo-oo-ooh!
While we immortal souls crowd aft and crush each other's toes
To see this stupid creature blow what he esteems a nose;
Why, I blew thrice my moral and accountable proboscis,
But found no fish so blasé that it ever came across his
Waterlogged brain that it was worth his while to turn and come anon,
Lest he should miss the witnessing of that sublime phenomenon;
Nor would it, though your nose were like fray John's, or even had you a
Verissimo fazzoletto of Saint Antony of Padua,
The Apostle who in Finland had a cure of souls, and sent
Conviction to his hearers that 'twas good to fry in Lent.
There are some goodish things at sea; for instance, one can feel
A grandeur in the silent man for ever at the wheel,
That bit of two-legged intellect, that particle of drill,
Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with reason, brain and will,
And makes the ship, though skies are black and headwinds whistle loud,
Obey her conscience there which feels the loadstar through the cloud;
And when by lusty western gales the full-sailed barque is hurled
Toward the great moon which, sitting on the silent underworld,
Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and shoots a broadening line,
Of palpitant light from crest to crest across the ridgy brine,
Then from the bows look back and feel a thrill that never stales
In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of onward-yearning sails;
Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that you can't make a poem,
Take him aboard a clipper-ship, young Jonathan, and show him
A work of art that in its grace and grandeur may compare
With any thing that any race has fashioned any where;
'Tis not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if you come to that,
We think of Hyde Park corner, and concede you beat us flat
With your equestrian statue to a Nose and a Cocked-hat;
But 'tis not a cathedral; well, e'en that we will allow,
Both statues and cathedrals are anachronistic now;
Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men who conquered you,

You'd sell a bargain, if we'd take the deans and chapters too;
No; mortal men build now-a-days, as always heretofore,
Good temples to the gods which they in very truth adore;
The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all their willing flocks,
Although they bow to stones no more, do bend the knee to stocks,
And churches can't be beautiful though crowded, floor and gallery,
If people worship preacher, and if preacher worship salary;
'Tis well to look things in the face, the god o' the modern universe,
Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and libraries of puny verse,
If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon his ledger—say, per
Contra to loss of so much stone, best Russia duck and paper;
And, after all, about this Art men talk a deal of fudge,
Each nation has its path marked out, from which it must not budge;
The Romans had as little art as Noah in his ark,
Yet somehow on this globe contrived to make an epic mark;
Religion, painting, sculpture, song—for these they ran up jolly ticks
With Greece and Egypt, but they were great artists in their politics,
And if we make no minsters, John, nor epics, yet the Fates
Are not entirely deaf to men who can build ships and states;
(I waive the literary point, contented with observing
That I like Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Bryant, Irving,)
The arts are never pioneers, but men have strength and health
Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a commonwealth,
Nay, can more easily go on and frame them by the dozen,
Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear sympathizing cousin:
And, though our restless Jonathan have not your graver bent, sure he
Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, rapid, nineteenth century;
This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did
When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid,
Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire-tamed lightning now
Replaces Delphos—mend don't leave the steamer for the scow;
What hero, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read
The Iliad, the Shanàmeh, or the Nibelungenlied?
Their public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah, the hairy Graf—
Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; we weary o'er a paragraph;
The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles;
From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles,
As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused jars
Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars;

100

Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking,
The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking,
The newspapers take in the Age, and Stocks do all the thinking.

There's something in a clean fresh page (and I have here begun one)
That sets one thinking of the goods and ills that have been done one,
For all the good books and the bad were first but so much paper
As would have curled Belinda's lock, or lit a bedward taper;
The bit of paper smooth and white is gifted with a spell
Of Mahomet's carpet, and can take the prisoner from his cell,
Can bear him to La Mancha's hills to dream beneath the trees,
Hearing far bells of muleteers, or fitful hum of bees;
'Tis quite a simple recipe—a jail, ink, paper, pen,—
Yet, mixed, they make Don Quixote,—do you think they would agen?
Go steal a trifle, Reader, to put you in the
And see if you can get a lift upon the prophet's rug.
The sheet that's in your desk, dear Sir, potentially contains
More wisdom than has ever yet got out of human brains,
You, young Lorenzo yet may write your billy dukises sweet
On that poor Paddy's tattered shirt, that's digging in the street;
You, Doctor Dodd, may write thereon a very simple note
That singularly shall affect your Reverence's throat;
Yea, on that triangle that shows where he can't see, poor fellow
A greater Shakspeare may begin, a perfecter Othello;
There's magnetism in paper fair that rapidly draws down
The particles of thought that lie stuck fast beneath our crown;
The brain is scrawled with characters in sympathetic ink,
Which with the heat show clearly forth when we begin to think,—
Thoughts, fancies, feelings, memories, just now in darkness shrinking,—
For the imperative paper there compels us into thinking;
Begin; and then Necessity will, like a corkscrew stout,
From the brain's narrow gateway draw the wooden jailor out,
And all that you have bottled there, swipes be it, or Tokay,
Gulluck—gulluck comes gurgling out to wet the reader's clay;
And then, oh Reader, haste to taste; much swipes for Tokay passes
Served up upon a silver tray and poured in Tokay glasses,

101

And thou may'st drink that golden wine with palate dull and neuter
Deeming it poorish swipes because it masquerades in pewter.
Think, pen in hand, wise Göthe said, still hoarding mental pelf
And wise in the economies that save the waste of self.
The paper's virtue being proved, 'tis rather awkward hinting
That all which takes its goodness out's the writing and the printing,
That, while 'tis yet unstained, it keeps it wisdom and its wit in
Until—in short that books are good as long as they're unwritten;
No doubt pure mathematics lie, the undiscovered base
Of all that governs, pleases, or concerns the human race;
Our grandchildren, at common school, may on the blackboard see
The mystery of love resolved by simple a plus b,
And downright Hamlets may produce for exercise at college
By some fourth power of minus x, which now eludes our knowledge,
Till that time comes I've often thought 'twould be a pretty plan
If some not overdeep or grave, but pleasant-thoughted man
Would publish us a small white book, and leave the pages fair,
[Put?] a suggestive index and title here and there,
For Thought to hitch its web upon—Jove! what a book were there!
Its name should be Blank's Essays and to it we'd surrender
Our musing after dinner minds with feet upon the fender,
Meerschaum in mouth, and make the smoke that wavered toward the ceiling
Transmute itself to every shape of fancy thought and feeling.
Twould be in Tartar Doctors' style, who write the medicine's name
Make their poor patients swallow it, and the effect's the same;
Faith, we will try it on the spot, it will not take a minute
I'll leave a short space blank, and write

auf wiedersehen
a rivederci

in it
Let any reader muse on that, and it will plainly show him

102

That he contains within him all he weeps o'er in a poem;
O Edelmann, O Signor Giù, O Storg, does it recall
The pleasant nights, the smokes, the jokes, the songs, the girls, the all?
Or let me leave another space and simply scrawl therein

Sweetbrier Lane—

Now Memory opes forthwith her choicest bin!
Ye twenty maids in muslin gowns who made all else seem chaff,
In whom successively I found my nature's other half,
Who played pianos all day long and had no other care,
Who gave me all those single locks of brown, black, golden hair,
Ye who have been these twenty years the Mrs. Smith and Brown,
Reading those words, how young Romance his long hushed lute takes down,
Wipes off the cobwebs and the dust, gives every key a screw,
And with one stroke across the chords lo, skies forever blue,
Moonlight, slow partings at the gate, pressed roseleaves, and Du! Du!
The last thing that a poet learns is how to throw away
And how to make you thrill and creep with what he doesn't say,
For instance now, to write a song after the style of Poe,
Take the old musty, fusty stock of Everybody and Co;
A moon—we all do know the moon, a sea—we all have seen it,
A dreadful Hint—we all have had—a Fool we all have been it;
Then thus—the black sea moaned beneath and broke in fairy snow,
The moon loomed bloodred in the East, when we met long ago;
That first lush kiss that fierce embrace that parting long and loath—
Avaunt thou pale and patient face! who says I broke my troth?
The music bursts, the dance reels on—ah it is well for thee
Thou hearst no more the muffled beat of that funereal sea;
The dreadful Thing is at my side, its lips are on my lips,
And the sea moans on forevermore, and the frozen seaweed drips!
Tom (nearly eighteen years of age) the dark and silent Man,
Puts on as deep and wild a frown as two white eyebrows can,
Reads it to trembling Sarah Jane, and drops a hint sublime
That he, too, bears the weary weight of some unfathomed crime
And Dick and Harry, who have each an anaconda's appetite,
Feel bound to cheat it of its due and in concealment clap it tight,

103

Envying dark Tom's mysterious gloom (dyspepsia of both kinds)
And blushing for the stomachs strong that give them healthy minds;
Ah, my Lord Byron, it would make a nice statistic question
How many follies had their rise in your diseased digestion;—
But this Digression, banyan-like, plants colonies so fast
And those again new colonies that, on my soul, at last
'Tis only with nice measuring and comparing I can see
Which my discourse's offshoot is and which the mother-tree;
Let but my Muse be once caught up by something to discuss
She's like the one Old Lady that is always in the 'bus,
Who asks the seedy foreigner soon as she takes her seat
Whether they haven't got beyond the End of Something Street,
And, helpless as a bandbox lone, whence the address is torn,
Is set down everywhere except at her appropriate bourne.

Menenius, thou who fain wouldst know how calmly men can pass
Those biting portraits of themselves, disguised as fox or ass,
Go borrow coin enough to buy a full-length psyche-glass,
Engage a rather darkish room in some well-sought position,
And let the town break out with bills, so much per head admission,
GREAT NATURAL CURIOSITY!! THE BIGGEST LIVING FOOL!!
Arrange your mirror cleverly, before it set a stool,
Admit the public one by one, place each upon the seat,
Draw up the curtain, let him look his fill, and then retreat.
Smith mounts and takes a thorough view, then comes serenely down,
Goes home and tells his wife the thing is curiously like Brown;
Brown goes and stares, and tells his wife the wonder's core and pith
Is that 'tis just the counterpart of that conceited Smith.
Life calls us all to such a show: Menenius, trust in me,
While thou to see thy neighbor smil'st, he does the same for thee.
Thou Satirist, who fain would'st know how calmly men can pass
Those clever sketches of themselves in guise of fox or ass,
Go borrow coin enough to buy a full length psyche-glass;
Secure a rather darkish room in some well chosen position
Let all the town break out with bills 25 cts admission;
Just take a look yourself, my friend, and tell me if you see
Yourself or some not quite so much admired and favored he?

104

Go buy a mirror, Satirist, secure a good position,
And advertise a raree-show, twenty-five cents admission
Great natural Curiosity!!! a real Living Fool!!!
Arrange your mirror cleverly, before it set a stool,
Admit the Public one by one, place each upon the seat
Draw up the curtain, let him look his fill and then retreat;
Smith mounts and takes a thorough view, then comes serenely down
Goes home and tells his wife it is the strangest thing in town,
“You must go take a look at it; 'tis curiously like Brown;”
Brown goes and stares and tells his wife the wonder's core and pith,
Is that 'tis just the counterpart of that conceited Smith;
Life calls us all to such a show: Menippus, it may be
While thou to see thy neighbor smilst, he does the same for thee.

University of Virginia Library

OUR OWN,

His Wanderings and Personal Adventures