The poetical writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck, with extracts from those of Joseph Rodman Drake ::

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

MARCO BOZZARIS.

Marco Bozzaris, one of the best and bravest of the modern Greek chieftains. He fell in a night attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient Platæa, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory.

At midnight, in his guarded tent,
The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power:
In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring:
Then pressed that monarch's throne—a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden bird.

At midnight, in the forest shades,
Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,
True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.
There had the Persian's thousands stood,

There had the glad earth drunk their blood
On old Platæa's day;
And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike and soul to dare,
As quick, as far as they.

An hour passed on—the Turk awoke;
That bright dream was his last;
He woke—to hear his sentries shriek,
“To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!”
He woke—to die midst flame, and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,
And death-shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain-cloud;
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band:
“Strike—till the last armed foe expires;
Strike—for your altars and your sires;
Strike—for the green graves of your sires;
God—and your native land!”

They fought—like brave men, long and well;
They piled that ground with Moslem slain,
They conquered—but Bozzaris fell,
Bleeding at every vein.
His few surviving comrades saw
His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
And the red field was won;

Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night's repose,
Like flowers at set of sun.

Come to the bridal-chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels,
For the first time, her first-born's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean-storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet-song, and dance and wine;
And thou art terrible—the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.
Come, when his task of fame is wrought—
Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood bought—
Come in her crowning hour—and then
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight

Of sky and stars to prisoned men:
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese.
When the land wind, from woods of palm,
And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave
Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
Rest thee—there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
She wore no funeral-weeds for thee,
Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume
Like torn branch from death's leafless tree
In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,
The heartless luxury of the tomb:
But she remembers thee as one
Long loved and for a season gone;
For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed,
Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
For thee she rings the birthday bells;
Of thee her babes' first lisping tells;
For thine her evening prayer is said
At palace-couch and cottage-bed;
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;

His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears:
And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,
The memory of her buried joys,
And even she who gave thee birth,
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
Talk of thy doom without a sigh:
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's;
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.

ALNWICK CASTLE.

Alnwick Castle, Northumberlandshire, a seat of the Duke of Northumberland. Written in October, 1822, after visiting the “Home of the Percy's high-born race.”

Home of the Percy's high-born race,
Home of their beautiful and brave,
Alike their birth and burial-place,
Their cradle and their grave!
Still sternly o'er the castle gate
Their house's Lion stands in state,
As in his proud departed hours;
And warriors frown in stone on high,
And feudal banners “flout the sky”
Above his princely towers.

A gentle hill its side inclines,
Lovely in England's fadeless green,
To meet the quiet stream which winds
Through this romantic scene
As silently and sweetly still,
As when, at evening, on that hill,
While summer's wind blew soft and low,
Seated by gallant Hotspur's side,
His Katherine was a happy bride,
A thousand years ago.

Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile:
Does not the succoring ivy, keeping
Her watch around it, seem to smile,
As o'er a loved one sleeping?
One solitary turret gray
Still tells, in melancholy glory,
The legend of the Cheviot day,
The Percy's proudest border story.
That day its roof was triumph's arch;
Then rang, from aisle to pictured dome,
The light step of the soldier's march,
The music of the trump and drum;
And babe, and sire, the old, the young,
And the monk's hymn, and minstrel's song,
And woman's pure kiss, sweet and long,
Welcomed her warrior home.

Wild roses by the Abbey towers
Are gay in their young bud and bloom:
They were born of a race of funeral-flowers
That garlanded, in long-gone hours,
A templar's knightly tomb.
He died, the sword in his mailed hand,
On the holiest spot of the Blessed land,
Where the Cross was damped with his dying breath,
When blood ran free as festal wine,
And the sainted air of Palestine
Was thick with the darts of death.

Wise with the lore of centuries,
What tales, if there be “tongues in trees,”
Those giant oaks could tell,
Of beings born and buried here;
Tales of the peasant and the peer,
Tales of the bridal and the bier,
The welcome and farewell,
Since on their boughs the startled bird
First, in her twilight slumbers, heard
The Norman's curfew-bell!

I wandered through the lofty halls
Trod by the Percys of old fame,
And traced upon the chapel walls
Each high, heroic name,
From him

One of the ancestors of the Percy family was an Emperor of Constantinople.

who once his standard set
Where now, o'er mosque and minaret,
Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons;
To him who, when a younger son,
Fought for King George at Lexington,

The late duke. He commanded a detachment of the British army, in the affair at Lexington and Concord, in 1775.

A major of dragoons.

That last half stanza—it has dashed
From my warm lip the sparkling cup;
The light that o'er my eyebeam flashed,
The power that bore my spirit up
Above this bank-note world—is gone;
And Alnwick's but a market town,
And this, alas! its market day,

And beasts and borderers throng the way;
Oxen and bleating lambs in lots,
Northumbrian boors and plaided Scots,
Men in the coal and cattle line;
From Teviot's bard and hero land,
From royal Berwick's

Berwick was formerly a principality. Richard II. was styled “King of England, France, and Ireland, and Berwick-upon-Tweed.”

beach of sand,
From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

These are not the romantic times
So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes,
So dazzling to the dreaming boy:
Ours are the days of fact, not fable,
Of knights, but not of the round table,
Of Bailie Jarvie, not Rob Roy:
'Tis what “our President,” Monroe,
Has called “the era of good feeling:”
The Highlander, the bitterest foe
To modern laws, has felt their blow,
Consented to be taxed, and vote,
And put on pantaloons and coat,
And leave off cattle-stealing:
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglass in red herrings;
And noble name and cultured land,
Palace, and park, and vassal-band,
Are powerless to the notes of hand
Of Rothschild or the Barings.

The age of bargaining, said Burke,
Has come: to-day the turbaned Turk
(Sleep, Richard of the lion heart!
Sleep on, nor from your cerements start)
Is England's friend and fast ally;
The Moslem tramples on the Greek,
And on the Cross and altar-stone,
And Christendom looks tamely on,
And hears the Christian maiden shriek,
And sees the Christian father die;
And not a sabre-blow is given
For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven,
By Europe's craven chivalry.

You'll ask if yet the Percy lives
In the armed pomp of feudal state?
The present representatives
Of Hotspur and his “gentle Kate,”
Are some half-dozen serving-men
In the drab coat of William Penn;
A chambermaid, whose lip and eye,
And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling,
Spoke Nature's aristocracy;
And one, half groom, half seneschal,
Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall,
From donjon-keep to turret wall,
For ten-and-sixpence sterling.

BURNS.

TO A ROSE, BROUGHT FROM NEAR ALLOWAY KIRK, IN AYRSHIRE, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1822.

Wild Rose of Alloway! my thanks;
Thou 'mindst me of that autumn noon
When first we met upon “the banks
And braes o' bonny Doon.”

Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough,
My sunny hour was glad and brief,
We've crossed the winter sea, and thou
Art withered—flower and leaf.

And will not thy death-doom be mine—
The doom of all things wrought of clay—
And withered my life's leaf like thine,
Wild rose of Alloway?

Not so his memory, for his sake
My bosom bore thee far and long,
His—who a humbler flower could make
Immortal as his song,

The memory of Burns—a name
That calls, when brimmed her festal cup,
A nation's glory and her shame,
In silent sadness up.

A nation's glory—be the rest
Forgot—she's canonized his mind;
And it is joy to speak the best
We may of human kind.

I've stood beside the cottage-bed
Where the Bard-peasant first drew breath;
A straw-thatched roof above his head,
A straw-wrought couch beneath.

And I have stood beside the pile,
His monument—that tells to Heaven
The homage of earth's proudest isle
To that Bard-peasant given!

Bid thy thoughts hover o'er that spot,
Boy-minstrel, in thy dreaming hour;
And know, however low his lot,
A Poet's pride and power:

The pride that lifted Burns from earth,
The power that gave a child of song
Ascendency o'er rank and birth,
The rich, the brave, the strong;

And if despondency weigh down
Thy spirit's fluttering pinions then,
Despair—thy name is written on
The roll of common men.

There have been loftier themes than his,
And longer scrolls, and louder lyres,
And lays lit up with Poesy's
Purer and holier fires:

Yet read the names that know not death;
Few nobler ones than Burns are there;
And few have won a greener wreath
Than that which binds his hair.

His is that language of the heart,
In which the answering heart would speak,
Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start,
Or the smile light the cheek;

And his that music, to whose tone
The common pulse of man keeps time,
In cot or castle's mirth or moan,
In cold or sunny clime.

And who hath heard his song, nor knelt
Before its spell with willing knee,
And listened, and believed, and felt
The Poet's mastery

O'er the mind's sea, in calm and storm,
O'er the heart's sunshine and its showers,
O'er Passion's moments bright and warm,
O'er Reason's dark, cold hours;

On fields where brave men “die or do,”
In halls where rings the banquet's mirth,
Where mourners weep, where lovers woo,
From throne to cottage-hearth?

What sweet tears dim the eye unshed,
What wild vows falter on the tongue,
When “Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,”
Or “Auld Lang Syne” is sung!

Pure hopes, that lift the soul above,
Come with his Cotter's hymn of praise,
And dreams of youth, and truth, and love,
With “Logan's” banks and braes.

And when he breathes his master-lay
Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall,
All passions in our frames of clay
Come thronging at his call.

Imagination's world of air,
And our own world, its gloom and glee,
Wit, pathos, poetry, are there,
And death's sublimity.

And Burns—though brief the race he ran,
Though rough and dark the path he trod,
Lived—died—in form and soul a Man,
The image of his God.

Through care, and pain, and want, and woe,
With wounds that only death could heal,
Tortures—the poor alone can know,
The proud alone can feel;

He kept his honesty and truth,
His independent tongue and pen,
And moved, in manhood as in youth,
Pride of his fellow-men.

Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong,
A hate of tyrant and of knave,
A love of right, a scorn of wrong,
Of coward and of slave;

A kind, true heart, a spirit high,
That could not fear and would not bow,
Were written in his manly eye
And on his manly brow.

Praise to the bard! his words are driven,
Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown,
Where'er, beneath the sky of heaven,
The birds of fame have flown.

Praise to the man! a nation stood
Beside his coffin with wet eyes,
Her brave, her beautiful, her good,
As when a loved one dies.

And still, as on his funeral-day,
Men stand his cold earth-couch around,
With the mute homage that we pay
To consecrated ground.

And consecrated ground it is,
The last, the hallowed home of one
Who lives upon all memories,
Though with the buried gone.

Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined—
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.

Sages, with wisdom's garland wreathed,
Crowned kings, and mitred priests of power,
And warriors with their bright swords sheathed,
The mightiest of the hour;

And lowlier names, whose humble home
Is lit by fortune's dimmer star,
Are there—o'er wave and mountain come,
From countries near and far;

Pilgrims whose wandering feet have pressed
The Switzer's snow, the Arab's sand,
Or trod the piled leaves of the West,
My own green forest-land.

All ask the cottage of his birth,
Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung,
And gather feelings not of earth
His fields and streams among.

They linger by the Doon's low trees,
And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr,
And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries!
The poet's tomb is there.

But what to them the sculptor's art,
His funeral columns, wreaths and urns?
Wear they not graven on the heart
The name of Robert Burns?

WYOMING.

The allusion in the following stanzas can be understood by those only who have read Campbell's beautiful poem, “Gertrude of Wyoming:” but who has not read it?

“Dites si la Nature n'a pas fait ce beau pays pour une Julie, pour une Claire, et pour un St. Preux, mais ne les y cherchez pas.”

Rousseau.

I.

Thou com'st, in beauty, on my gaze at last,
“On Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming!”
Image of many a dream, in hours long past,
When life was in its bud and blossoming,
And waters, gushing from the fountain-spring
Of pure enthusiast thought, dimmed my young eyes,
As by the poet borne, on unseen wing,
I breathed, in fancy, 'neath thy cloudless skies,
The summer's air, and heard her echoed harmonies.

II.

I then but dreamed: thou art before me now,
In life, a vision of the brain no more.
I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow,
That beetles high thy lovely valley o'er;
And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore,
Within a bower of sycamores am laid;
And winds, as soft and sweet as ever bore
The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade,
Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head.

III.

Nature hath made thee lovelier than the power
Even of Campbell's pen hath pictured: he
Had woven, had he gazed one sunny hour
Upon thy smiling vale, its scenery
With more of truth, and made each rock and tree
Known like old friends, and greeted from afar:
And there are tales of sad reality,
In the dark legends of thy border war,
With woes of deeper tint than his own Gertrude's are.

IV.

But where are they, the beings of the mind,
The bard's creations, moulded not of clay,
Hearts to strange bliss and suffering assigned—
Young Gertrude, Albert, Waldegrave—where are they?
We need not ask. The people of to-day
Appear good, honest, quiet men enough,
And hospitable too—for ready pay;
With manners like their roads, a little rough,
And hands whose grasp is warm and welcoming, though tough.

V.

Judge Hallenbach, who keeps the toll-bridge gate,
And the town records, is the Albert now
Of Wyoming: like him, in church and state,
Her Doric column; and upon his brow

The thin hairs, white with seventy winters' snow,
Look patriarchal. Waldegrave 'twere in vain
To point out here, unless in yon scare-crow,
That stands full-uniformed upon the plain,
To frighten flocks of crows and blackbirds from the grain.

VI.

For he would look particularly droll
In his “Iberian boot” and “Spanish plume,”
And be the wonder of each Christian soul
As of the birds that scare-crow and his broom.
But Gertrude, in her loveliness and bloom,
Hath many a model here; for woman's eye,
In court or cottage, wheresoe'er her home,
Hath a heart-spell too holy and too high
To be o'erpraised even by her worshipper—Poesy.

VII.

There's one in the next field—of sweet sixteen—
Singing and summoning thoughts of beauty born
In heaven—with her jacket of light green,
“Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn,”
Without a shoe or stocking—hoeing corn.
Whether, like Gertrude, she oft wanders there,
With Shakespeare's volume in her bosom borne,
I think is doubtful. Of the poet-player
The maiden knows no more than Cobbett or Voltaire.

VIII.

There is a woman, widowed, gray, and old,
Who tells you where the foot of Battle stepped
Upon their day of massacre. She told
Its tale, and pointed to the spot, and wept,
Whereon her father and five brothers slept
Shroudless, the bright-dreamed slumbers of the brave,
When all the land a funeral mourning kept.
And there, wild laurels planted on the grave
By Nature's hand, in air their pale-red blossoms wave.

IX.

And on the margin of yon orchard hill
Are marks where timeworn battlements have been,
And in the tall grass traces linger still
Of “arrowy frieze and wedgèd ravelin.”
Five hundred of her brave that valley green
Trod on the morn in soldier-spirit gay;
But twenty lived to tell the noonday scene—
And where are now the twenty? Passed away.
Has Death no triumph hours, save on the battle-day?

ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE,

OF NEW YORK, SEPT., 1820.

“The good die first,
And they, whose hearts are dry as summer dust,
Burn to the socket.”
Wordsworth.

Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.

Tears fell when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep,
And long, where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.

When hearts, whose truth was proven,
Like thine, are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth;

And I who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,

Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine:

It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
But I've in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.

While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply
That mourns a man like thee.

TWILIGHT.

There is an evening twilight of the heart,
When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest,
And the eye sees life's fairy scenes depart,
As fades the daybeam in the rosy west.
'Tis with a nameless feeling of regret
We gaze upon them as they melt away,
And fondly would we bid them linger yet,
But Hope is round us with her angel lay,
Hailing afar some happier moonlight hour;
Dear are her whispers still, though lost their early power.

In youth her cheek was crimsoned with her glow;
Her smile was loveliest then; her matin song
Was heaven's own music, and the note of woe
Was all unheard her sunny bowers among.
Life's little word of bliss was newly born;
We knew not, cared not, it was born to die,
Flushed with the cool breeze and the dews of morn,
With dancing heart we gazed on the pure sky,
And mocked the passing clouds that dimmed its blue,
Like our own sorrows then—as fleeting and as few.

And manhood felt her sway too—on the eye,
Half realized, her early dreams burst bright,
Her promised bower of happiness seemed nigh,
Its days of joy, its vigils of delight;
And though at times might lower the thunder-storm,
And the red lightnings threaten, still the air
Was balmy with her breath and her loved form,
The rainbow of the heart was hovering there.
'Tis in life's noontide she is nearest seen,
Her wreath the summer flower, her robe of summer green.

But though less dazzling in her twilight dress,
There's more of heaven's pure beam about her now;
That angel-smile of tranquil loveliness,
Which the heart worships, glowing on her brow;
That smile shall brighten the dim evening star
That points our destined tomb, nor e'er depart
Till the faint light of life is fled afar,
And hushed the last deep beating of the heart:
The meteor-bearer of our parting breath,
A moonbeam in the midnight cloud of death.

PSALM CXXXVII.

“By the rivers of Babylon.”

We sat us down and wept,
Where Babel's waters slept,
And we thought of home and Zion as a long-gone, happy dream;
We hung our harps in air
On the willow-boughs, which there,
Gloomy as round a sepulchre, were drooping o'er the stream.

The foes whose chain we wore,
Were with us on that shore,
Exulting in our tears that told the bitterness of woe.
“Sing us,” they cried aloud,
“Ye once so high and proud,
The songs ye sang in Zion ere we laid her glory low.”

And shall the harp of heaven
To Judah's monarch given
Be touched by captive fingers, or grace a fettered hand?

No! sooner be my tongue
Mute, powerless, and unstrung,
Than its words of holy music make glad a stranger land.

May this right hand, whose skill
Can wake the harp at will,
And bid the listener's joys or griefs in light or darkness come,
Forget its godlike power,
If for one brief, dark hour,
My heart forgets Jerusalem, fallen city of my home!

Daughter of Babylon!
Blessed be that chosen one,
Whom God shall send to smite thee when there is none to save:
He from the mother's breast,
Shall pluck the babe at rest,
And lay it in the sleep of death beside its father's grave.

TO ---.

The world is bright before thee,
Its summer flowers are thine,
Its calm blue sky is o'er thee,
Thy bosom Pleasure's shrine;
And thine the sunbeam given
To Nature's morning hour,
Pure, warm, as when from heaven
It burst on Eden's bower.

There is a song of sorrow,
The death-dirge of the gay,
That tells, ere dawn of morrow,
These charms may melt away,
That sun's bright beam be shaded,
That sky be blue no more,
The summer flowers be faded,
And youth's warm promise o'er.

Believe it not—though lonely
Thy evening home may be;
Though Beauty's bark can only
Float on a summer sea;
Though Time thy bloom is stealing,
There's still beyond his art
The wild-flower wreath of feeling,
The sunbeam of the heart.

THE FIELD OF THE GROUNDED ARMS.

SARATOGA.

Strangers! your eyes are on that valley fixed
Intently, as we gaze on vacancy,
When the mind's wings o'erspread
The spirit-world of dreams.

True, 'tis a scene of loveliness—the bright
Green dwelling of the summer's first-born Hours,
Whose wakened leaf and bud
Are welcoming the morn.

And morn returns the welcome, sun and cloud
Smile on the green earth from their home in heaven,
Even as a mother smiles
Above her cradled boy,

And wreath their light and shade o'er plain and mountain,
O'er sleepless seas of grass, whose waves are flowers,
The river's golden shores,
The forest of dark pines.

The song of the wild bird is on the wind,
The hum of the wild bee, the music wild
Of waves upon the bank,
Of leaves upon the bough.

But all is song and beauty in the land,
Beneath her skies of June; then journey on,
A thousand scenes like this
Will greet you ere the eve.

Ye linger yet—ye see not, hear not now,
The sunny smile, the music of to-day,
Your thoughts are wandering up,
Far up the stream of time;

And boyhood's lore and fireside-listened tales
Are rushing on your memories, as ye breathe
That valley's storied name,
Field of the grounded arms.

Strangers no more, a kindred “pride of place,”
Pride in the gift of country and of name,
Speaks in your eye and step—
Ye tread your native land.

And your high thoughts are on her glory's day,
The solemn sabbath of the week of battle,
Whose tempests bowed to earth
Her foeman's banner here.

The forest-leaves lay scattered cold and dead,
Upon the withered grass that autumn morn,
When, with as widowed hearts
And hopes as dead and cold,

A gallant army formed their last array
Upon that field, in silence and deep gloom,
And at their conqueror's feet
Laid their war-weapons down.

Sullen and stern, disarmed but not dishonored;
Brave men, but brave in vain, they yielded there:
The soldier's trial-task
Is not alone “to die.”

Honor to chivalry! the conqueror's breath
Stains not the ermine of his foeman's fame,
Nor mocks his captive's doom—
The bitterest cup of war.

But be that bitterest cup the doom of all
Whose swords are lightning-flashes in the cloud
Of the Invader's wrath,
Threatening a gallant land!

His armies' trumpet-tones wake not alone
Her slumbering echoes; from a thousand hills
Her answering voices shout,
And her bells ring to arms!

Then danger hovers o'er the Invader's march,
On raven wings, hushing the song of fame,
And glory's hues of beauty
Fade from the cheek of death.

A foe is heard in every rustling leaf,
A fortress seen in every rock and tree,
The eagle eye of art
Is dim and powerless then,

And war becomes a people's joy, the drum
Man's merriest music, and the field of death
His couch of happy dreams,
After life's harvest-home.

He battles heart and arm, his own blue sky
Above him, and his own green land around,
Land of his father's grave,
His blessing and his prayers:

Land where he learned to lisp a mother's name,
The first beloved in life, the last forgot,
Land of his frolic youth,
Land of his bridal eve—

Land of his children—vain your columned strength,
Invaders! vain your battles' steel and fire!
Choose ye the morrow's doom—
A prison or a grave.

And such were Saratoga's victors—such
The Yeomen-Brave, whose deeds and death have given
A glory to her skies,
A music to her name.

In honorable life her fields they trod,
In honorable death they sleep below;
Their sons' proud feelings here
Their noblest monuments.

RED JACKET.

“Red Jacket” appeared originally in 1828, soon after the publication of Mr. Cooper's “Notions of the Americans.”

A Chief of the Indian Tribes, the Tuscaroras. ON LOOKING AT HIS PORTRAIT BY WEIR.

Cooper, whose name is with his country's woven,
First in her files, her Pioneer of mind—
A wanderer now in other climes, has proven
His love for the young land he left behind;

And throned her in the senate-hall of nations,
Robed like the deluge rainbow, heaven-wrought;
Magnificent as his own mind's creations,
And beautiful as its green world of thought:

And faithful to the Act of Congress, quoted
As law authority, it passed nem. con.:
He writes that we are, as ourselves have voted,
The most enlightened people ever known:

That all our week is happy as a Sunday
In Paris, full of song, and dance, and laugh;
And that, from Orleans to the Bay of Fundy,
There's not a bailiff or an epitaph:

And furthermore—in fifty years, or sooner,
We shall export our poetry and wine;
And our brave fleet, eight frigates and a schooner,
Will sweep the seas from Zembla to the Line.

If he were with me, King of Tuscarora!
Gazing, as I, upon thy portrait now,
In all its medalled, fringed, and beaded glory,
Its eye's dark beauty, and its thoughtful brow—

Its brow, half martial and half diplomatic,
Its eye, upsoaring like an eagle's wings;
Well might he boast that we, the Democratic,
Outrival Europe, even in our Kings!

For thou wast monarch born. Tradition's pages
Tell not the planting of thy parent tree,
But that the forest tribes have bent for ages
To thee, and to thy sires, the subject knee.

Thy name is princely—if no poet's magic
Could make Red Jacket grace an English rhyme,
Though some one with a genius for the tragic
Hath introduced it in a pantomime—

Yet it is music in the language spoken
Of thine own land, and on her herald-roll;
As bravely fought for, and as proud a token
As Cœur de Lion's of a warrior's soul.

Thy garb—though Austria's bosom-star would frighten
That medal pale, as diamonds the dark mine,
And George the Fourth wore, at his court at Brighton
A more becoming evening dress than thine;

Yet 'tis a brave one, scorning wind and weather,
And fitted for thy couch, on field and flood,
As Rob Roy's tartan for the Highland heather,
Or forest green for England's Robin Hood.

Is strength a monarch's merit, like a whaler's?
Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong
As earth's first kings—the Argo's gallant sailors,
Heroes in history and gods in song.

Is beauty?—Thine has with thy youth departed;
But the love-legends of thy manhood's years,
And she who perished, young and broken-hearted,
Are—but I rhyme for smiles and not for tears.

Is eloquence?—Her spell is thine that reaches
The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport;
And there's one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches,
The secret of their mastery—they are short.

The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding,
The birth-hour gift, the art Napoleon,
Of winning, fettering, moulding, wielding, banding
The hearts of millions till they move as one:

Thou hast it. At thy bidding men have crowded
The road to death as to a festival;
And minstrels, at their sepulchres, have shrouded
With banner-folds of glory the dark pall.

Who will believe? Not I—for in deceiving
Lies the dear charm of life's delightful dream;
I cannot spare the luxury of believing
That all things beautiful are what they seem;

Who will believe that, with a smile whose blessing
Would, like the Patriarch's, soothe a dying hour,
With voice as low, as gentle, and caressing,
As e'er won maiden's lip in moonlit bower:

With look like patient Job's eschewing evil;
With motions graceful as a bird's in air;
Thou art, in sober truth, the veriest devil
That e'er clinched fingers in a captive's hair!

That in thy breast there springs a poison fountain,
Deadlier than that where bathes the Upas-tree;
And in thy wrath a nursing cat-o'-mountain
Is calm as her babe's sleep compared with thee!

And underneath that face, like summer ocean's,
Its lip as moveless, and its cheek as clear,
Slumbers a whirlwind of the heart's emotions,
Love, hatred, pride, hope, sorrow—all save fear:

Love—for thy land, as if she were thy daughter,
Her pipe in peace, her tomahawk in wars;
Hatred—of missionaries and cold water;
Pride—in thy rifle-trophies and thy scars;

Hope—that thy wrongs may be, by the Great Spirit,
Remembered and revenged when thou art gone;
Sorrow—that none are left thee to inherit
Thy name, thy fame, thy passions, and thy throne!

LOVE.

.... The imperial votress passed on
In maiden meditation, fancy free.
Midsummer Night's Dream.

Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again?
Benedict, in Much Ado about Nothing.

When the tree of Love is budding first,
Ere yet its leaves are green,
Ere yet, by shower and sunbeam nursed
Its infant life has been;
The wild bee's slightest touch might wring
The buds from off the tree,
As the gentle dip of the swallow's wing
Breaks the bubbles on the sea.

But when its open leaves have found
A home in the free air,
Pluck them, and there remains a wound
That ever rankles there.
The blight of hope and happiness
Is felt when fond ones part,
And the bitter tear that follows is
The life-blood of the heart.

When the flame of love is kindled first,
'Tis the fire-fly's light at even,
'Tis dim as the wandering stars that burst
In the blue of the summer heaven.
A breath can bid it burn no more,
Or if, at times, its beams
Come on the memory, they pass o'er
Like shadows in our dreams.

But when that flame has blazed into
A being and a power,
And smiled in scorn upon the dew
That fell in its first warm hour,
'Tis the flame that curls round the martyr's head,
Whose task is to destroy;
'Tis the lamp on the altars of the dead,
Whose light but darkens joy.

Then crush, even in their hour of birth,
The infant buds of Love,
And tread his glowing fire to earth,
Ere 'tis dark in clouds above;
Cherish no more a cypress-tree
To shade thy future years,
Nor nurse a heart-flame that may be
Quenched only with thy tears.

A SKETCH.

Her Leghorn hat was of the bright gold tint
The setting sunbeams give to autumn clouds;
The ribbon that encircled it as blue
As spots of sky upon a moonless night,
When stars are keeping revelry in heaven;
A single ringlet of her clustering hair
Fell gracefully beneath her hat, in curls
As dark as down upon the raven's wing;
The kerchief, partly o'er her shoulders flung,
And partly waving in the wind, was woven
Of every color the first rainbow wore,
When it came smiling in its hues of beauty
A promise from on high to a lost world,
Her robe seemed of the snow just fallen to earth,
Pure from its home in the far winter clouds,
As white, as stainless; and around her waist
(You might have spanned it with your thumb and finger),
A girdle of the hue of Indian pearls
Was twined, resembling the faint line of water
That follows the swift bark o'er quiet seas.
Her face I saw not: but her shape, her form,
Was one of those with which creating bards

People a world of their own fashioning,
Forms for the heart to love and cherish ever,
The visiting angels of our twilight dreams.
Her foot was loveliest of remembered things,
Small as a fairy's on a moonlit leaf
Listening the wind-harp's song, and watching by
The wild-thyme pillow of her sleeping queen,
When proud Titania shuns her Oberon.
But 'twas that foot which broke the spell—alas!
Its stocking had a deep, deep tinge of blue—
I turned away in sadness, and passed on.

DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.

[OMITTED] The only bliss
Of Paradise that has survived the fall.

I.

“Beside the nuptial curtain bright,”
The bard of Eden sings,
“Young Love his constant lamp will light,
And wave his purple wings.”
But rain-drops from the clouds of care
May bid that lamp be dim,
And the boy Love will pout and swear
'Tis then no place for him.

II.

So mused the lovely Mrs. Dash
('Tis wrong to mention names)
When for her surly husband's cash
She urged in vain her claims.
“I want a little money, dear,
For Vandervoort and Flandin,
Their bill, which now has run a year,
To-morrow mean to hand in.”

III.

“More?” cried the husband, half asleep,
“You'll drive me to despair;”
The lady was too proud to weep,
And too polite to swear.
She bit her lip for very spite,
He felt a storm was brewing,
And dreamed of nothing else all night,
But brokers, banks, and ruin.

IV.

He thought her pretty once, but dreams
Have sure a wondrous power,
For to his eye the lady seems
Quite altered since that hour;
And Love, who on their bridal eve
Had promised long to stay,
Forgot his promise, took French leave,
And bore his lamp away.

MAGDALEN.

Written in 1823, for a love-stricken young officer on his way to Greece. The reader will have the kindness to presume that he died there.

I.

A sword, whose blade has ne'er been wet
With blood, except of freedom's foes;
That hope which, though its sun be set,
Still with a starlight beauty glows;
A heart that worshipped in Romance
The Spirit of the buried Time,
And dreams of knight, and steed, and lance,
And ladye-love, and minstrel-rhyme;
These had been, and I deemed would be
My joy, whate'er my destiny.

II.

Born in a camp, its watch-fires bright
Alone illumed my cradle-bed;
And I had borne with wild delight
My banner where Bolivar led,
Ere manhood's hue was on my cheek,
Or manhood's pride was on my brow.
Its foes are furled—the war-bird's beak
Is thirsty on the Andes now;
I longed, like her, for other skies
Clouded by Glory's sacrifice.

III.

In Greece, the brave heart's Holy Land,
Its soldier-song the bugle sings;
And I have buckled on my brand,
And waited but the sea-wind's wings,
To bear me where, or lost or won
Her battle, in its frown or smile,
Men live with those of Marathon,
Or die with those of Scio's isle;
And find in Valor's tent or tomb,
In life or death, a glorious home.

IV.

I could have left but yesterday
The scene of my boy-years behind,
And floated on my careless way
Wherever willed the breathing wind.
I could have bade adieu to aught
I've sought, or met, or welcomed here,
Without an hour of shaded thought,
A sigh, a murmur, or a tear.
Such was I yesterday—but then
I had not known thee, Magdalen.

V.

To-day there is a change within me,
There is a weight upon my brow,
And Fame, whose whispers once could win me
From all I loved, is powerless now.

There ever is a form, a face
Of maiden beauty in my dreams,
Speeding before me, like the race
To ocean of the mountain-streams—
With dancing hair, and laughing eyes,
That seem to mock me as it flies.

VI.

My sword—it slumbers in its sheath;
My hopes—their starry light is gone;
My heart—the fabled clock of death
Beats with the same low, lingering tone:
And this, the land of Magdalen,
Seems now the only spot on earth
Where skies are blue and flowers are green;
And here I build my household hearth,
And breathe my song of joy, and twine
A lovely being's name with mine.

VII.

In vain! in vain! the sail is spread;
To sea! to sea! my task is there;
But when among the unmourned dead
They lay me, and the ocean air
Brings tidings of my day of doom,
Mayst thou be then, as now thou art,
The load-star of a happy home;
In smile and voice, in eye and heart
The same as thou hast ever been,
The loved, the lovely Magdalen.

FROM THE ITALIAN.

Eyes with the same blue witchery as those
Of Psyche, which caught Love in his own wiles;
Lips of the breath and hue of the red rose,
That move but with kind words and sweetest smiles;
A power of motion and of look, whose art
Throws, silently, around the wildest heart
The net it would not break; a form which vies
With that the Grecian imaged in his mind,
And gazed upon in dreams, and sighed to find
His breathing marble could not realize.
Know ye this picture? There is one alone
Can call its pencilled lineaments her own.
She whom, at morning, when the summer air
Wanders, delighted, o'er her face of flowers,
And lingers in the ringlets of her hair,
We deem the Hebe of Jove's banquet-hours;
She who, at evening, when her fingers press
The harp, and wake its harmonies divine,
Seems sweetest-voiced and loveliest of the Nine,
The minstrel of the bowers of happiness,
She whom the Graces nurtured—at her birth,
The sea-born Goddess and the Huntress maid,

Beings whose beauty is not of the earth,
Came from their myrtle home and forest shade,
Blending immortal joy with mortal mirth
And Dian said, “Fair sister, be she mine
In her heart's purity, in beauty thine.”
The smiling infant listened and obeyed.

TRANSLATION.

FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE.

Again ye come, again ye throng around me,
Dim, shadowy beings of my boyhood's dream!
Still shall I bless, as then, your spell that bound me?
Still bend to mists and vapors as ye seem?
Nearer ye come: I yield me as ye found me
In youth your worshipper; and as the stream
Of air that folds you in its magic wreaths,
Flows by my lips, youth's joy my bosom breathes.

Lost forms and loved ones ye are with you bringing,
And dearest images of happier days,
First-love and friendship in your path upspringing,
Like old tradition's half-remembered lays,
And long-slept sorrows waked, whose dirge-like singing
Recalls my life's strange labyrinthine maze,
And names the heart-mourned many a stern doom,
Ere their year's summer, summoned to the tomb.

They hear not these my last songs, they whose greeting
Gladdened my first; my spring-time friends have gone,

And gone, fast journeying from that place of meeting,
The echoes of their welcome, one by one.
Though stranger crowds, my listeners since, are beating
Time to my music, their applauding tone
More grieves than glads me, while the tried and true,
If yet on earth, are wandering far and few.

A longing long unfelt, a deep-drawn sighing
For the far Spirit-World o'erpowers me now;
My song's faint voice sinks fainter, like the dying
Tones of the wind-harp swinging from the bough,
And my changed heart throbs warm, no more denying
Tears to my eyes or sadness to my brow;
The near afar off seems, the distant nigh,
The now a dream, the past reality.

WOMAN.

WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF AN UNKNOWN LADY.

Lady, although we have not met,
And may not meet, beneath the sky;
And whether thine are eyes of jet,
Gray, or dark blue, or violet,
Or hazel—Heaven knows, not I;

Whether around thy cheek of rose
A maiden's glowing locks are curled,
And to some thousand kneeling beaux
Thy frown is cold as winter's snows,
Thy smile is worth a world;

Or whether, past youth's joyous strife,
The calm of thought is on thy brow,
And thou art in thy noon of life,
Loving and loved, a happy wife,
And happier mother now—

I know not: but, whate'er thou art,
Whoe'er thou art, were mine the spell,
To call Fate's joys or blunt his dart,
There should not be one hand or heart
But served or wished thee well.

For thou art woman—with that word
Life's dearest hopes and memories come,
Truth, Beauty, Love—in her adored,
And earth's lost Paradise restored
In the green bower of home.

What is man's love? His vows are broke,
Even while his parting kiss is warm;
But woman's love all change will mock,
And, like the ivy round the oak,
Cling closest in the storm.

And well the Poet at her shrine
May bend, and worship while he woos;
To him she is a thing divine,
The inspiration of his line,
His Sweetheart and his Muse.

If to his song the echo rings
Of Fame—'tis woman's voice he hears;
If ever from his lyre's proud strings
Flow sounds like rush of angel-wings,
'Tis that she listens while he sings,
With blended smiles and tears:

Smiles—tears—whose blessed and blessing power,
Like sun and dew o'er summer's tree,
Alone keeps green through Time's long hour,
That frailer thing than leaf or flower,
A poet's immortality.

A POET'S DAUGHTER.

FOR THE ALBUM OF MISS ---, AT THE REQUEST OF HER FATHER.

“A lady asks the Minstrel's rhyme.”
A Lady asks? There was a time
When musical as play-bell's chime
To wearied boy,
That sound would summon dreams sublime
Of pride and joy.

But now the spell hath lost its sway,
Life's first-born fancies first decay,
Gone are the plumes and pennons gay
Of young Romance;
There linger but her ruins gray,
And broken lance.

'Tis a new world—no more to maid,
Warrior, or bard, is homage paid;
The bay-tree's, laurel's, myrtle's shade,
Men's thoughts resign;
Heaven placed us here to vote and trade,
Twin tasks divine!

“Tis youth, 'tis beauty asks; the green
And growing leaves of seventeen
Are round her; and, half hid, half seen,
A violet flower,
Nursed by the virtues she hath been
From childhood's hour.”

Blind passion's picture—yet for this
We woo the life-long bridal kiss,
And blend our every hope of bliss
With hers we love;
Unmindful of the serpent's hiss
In Eden's grove.

Beauty—the fading rainbow's pride,
Youth—'twas the charm of her who died
At dawn, and by her coffin's side
A grandsire stands,
Age-strengthened, like the oak storm-tried
Of mountain-lands.

Youth's coffin—hush the tale it tells!
Be silent, memory's funeral bells!
Lone in one heart, her home, it dwells
Untold till death,
And where the grave-mound greenly swells
O'er buried faith.

“But what if hers are rank and power,
Armies her train, a throne her bower,
A kingdom's gold her marriage-dower,
Broad seas and lands?
What if from bannered hall and tower
A queen commands?”

A queen? Earth's regal moons have set.
Where perished Marie Antoinette?
Where's Bordeaux's mother? Where the jet-
Black Haytian dame?
And Lusitania's coronet?
And Angoulême?

Empires to-day are upside down,
The castle kneels before the town,
The monarch fears a printer's frown
A brickbat's range;
Give me, in preference to a crown,
Five shillings change.

“But she who asks, though first among
The good, the beautiful, the young,
The birthright of a spell more strong
Than these hath brought her;
She is your kinswoman in song,
A Poet's daughter.”

A Poet's daughter? Could I claim
The consanguinity of fame,
Veins of my intellectual frame!
Your blood would glow
Proudly to sing that gentlest name
Of aught below.

A Poet's daughter—dearer word
Lip hath not spoken nor listener heard,
Fit theme for song of bee and bird
From morn till even,
And wind-harp by the breathing stirred
Of starlit heaven.

My spirit's wings are weak, the fire
Poetic comes but to expire,
Her name needs not my humble lyre
To bid it live;
She hath already from her sire
All bard can give.

CONNECTICUT.

FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

“The woods in which we had dwelt pleasantly rustled their green leaves in the song, and our streams were there with the sound of all their waters.”

Montrose.

I.

Still her gray rocks tower above the sea
That crouches at their feet, a conquered wave;
'Tis a rough land of earth, and stone, and tree,
Where breathes no castled lord or cabined slave;
Where thoughts, and tongues, and hands are bold and free,
And friends will find a welcome, foes a grave;
And where none kneel, save when to Heaven they pray,
Nor even then, unless in their own way.

II.

Theirs is a pure republic, wild, yet strong,
A “fierce democracie,” where all are true
To what themselves have voted—right or wrong—
And to their laws denominated blue;
(If red, they might to Draco's code belong;)
A vestal state, which power could not subdue,
Nor promise win—like her own eagle's nest,
Sacred—the San Marino of the West.

III.

A justice of the peace, for the time being,
They bow to, but may turn him out next year;
They reverence their priest, but disagreeing
In price or creed, dismiss him without fear;
They have a natural talent for foreseeing
And knowing all things; and should Park appear
From his long tour in Africa, to show
The Niger's source, they'd meet him with—“we know.”

IV.

They love their land, because it is their own,
And scorn to give aught other reason why;
Would shake hands with a king upon his throne,
And think it kindness to his majesty;
A stubborn race, fearing and flattering none.
Such are they nurtured, such they live and die;
All—but a few apostates, who are meddling
With merchandise, pounds, shillings, pence, and peddling;

V.

Or wandering through the Southern countries teaching
The A B C from Webster's spelling-book;
Gallant and godly, making love and preaching,
And gaining by what they call “hook and crook,”
And what the moralists call overreaching,
A decent living. The Virginians look

Upon them with as favorable eyes
As Gabriel on the devil in paradise.

VI.

But these are but their outcasts. View them near
At home, where all their worth and pride is placed;
And there their hospitable fires burn clear,
And there the lowliest farmhouse hearth is graced
With manly hearts, in piety sincere,
Faithful in love, in honor stern and chaste,
In friendship warm and true, in danger brave,
Beloved in life, and sainted in the grave.

VII.

And minds have there been nurtured, whose control
Is felt even in their nation's destiny;
Men who swayed senates with a statesman's soul,
And looked on armies with a leader's eye;
Names that adorn and dignify the scroll,
Whose leaves contain their country's history,
And tales of love and war—listen to one
Of the Green-Mountaineer—the Stark of Bennington.

VIII.

When on that field his band the Hessians fought,
Briefly he spoke before the fight began:
“Soldiers! those German gentlemen are bought
For four pounds eight and sevenpence per man,

By England's king; a bargain, as is thought.
Are we worth more? Let's prove it now we can;
For we must beat them, boys, ere set of sun,
Or Mary Stark's a widow.” It was done.

IX.

Hers are not Tempe's nor Arcadia's spring,
Nor the long summer of Cathayan vales,
The vines, the flowers, the air, the skies, that fling
Such wild enchantment o'er Boccaccio's tales
Of Florence and the Arno; yet the wing
Of life's best angel, Health, is on her gales
Through sun and snow; and in the autumn-time
Earth has no purer and no lovelier clime.

X.

Her clear, warm heaven at noon—the mist that shrouds
Her twilight hills—her cool and starry eves,
The glorious splendor of her sunset clouds,
The rainbow beauty of her forest-leaves,
Come o'er the eye, in solitude and crowds,
Where'er his web of song her poet weaves;
And his mind's brightest vision but displays
The autumn scenery of his boyhood's days.

XI.

And when you dream of woman, and her love;
Her truth, her tenderness, her gentle power;

The maiden listening in the moonlight grove,
The mother smiling in her infant's bower;
Forms, features, worshipped while we breathe or move,
Be by some spirit of your dreaming hour
Borne, like Loretto's chapel, through the air
To the green land I sing, then wake, you'll find them there.

XII.

[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]

XIII.

They burnt their last witch in Connecticut
About a century and a half ago;
They made a school-house of her forfeit hut,
And gave a pitying sweet-brier leave to grow
Above her thankless ashes; and they put
A certified description of the show
Between two weeping-willows, craped with black,
On the last page of that year's almanac.

XIV.

Some warning and well-meant remarks were made
Upon the subject by the weekly printers;
The people murmured at the taxes laid
To pay for jurymen and pitch-pine splinters,
And the sad story made the rose-leaf fade
Upon young listeners' cheeks for several winters,

When told at fire-side eves by those who saw
Executed—the lady and the law.

XV.

She and the law found rest: years rose and set;
That generation, cottagers and kings,
Slept with their fathers, and the violet
Has mourned above their graves a hundred springs:
Few persons keep a file of the Gazette,
And almanacs are sublunary things,
So that her fame is almost lost to earth,
As if she ne'er had breathed; and of her birth,

XVI.

And death, and lonely life's mysterious matters,
And how she played, in our forefathers' times,
The very devil with their sons and daughters;
And how those “delicate Ariels” of her crimes,
The spirits of the rocks, and woods, and waters,
Obeyed her bidding when in charmèd rhymes,
She muttered, at deep midnight, spells whose power
Woke from brief dream of dew the sleeping summer flower,

XVII.

And hushed the night-bird's solitary hymn,
And spoke in whispers to the forest-tree,

Till his awed branches trembled, leaf and limb,
And grouped her churchyard shapes of fantasie
Round merry moonlight's meadow-fountain's brim,
And mocking for a space the dread decree,
Brought back to dead, cold lips the parted breath,
And changed to banquet-board the bier of death,

XVIII.

None knew—except a patient, precious few,
Who've read the folios of one Cotton Mather,
A chronicler of tales more strange than true,
New-England's chaplain, and her history's father;
A second Monmouth's Geoffrey, a new
Herodotus, their laurelled victor rather,
For in one art he soars above them high:
The Greek or Welshman does not always lie.

XIX.

Know ye the venerable Cotton? He
Was the first publisher's tourist on this station;
The first who made, by labelling earth and sea,
A huge book, and a handsome speculation:
And ours was then a land of mystery,
Fit theme for poetry's exaggeration,
The wildest wonder of the month; and there
He wandered freely, like a bird or bear,

XX.

And wove his forest dreams into quaint prose,
Our sires his heroes, where, in holy strife,
They treacherously war with friends and foes;
Where meek religion wears the assassin's knife,
And “bids the desert blossom like the rose,”
By sprinkling earth with blood of Indian life,
And rears her altars o'er the indignant bones
Of murdered maidens, wives, and little ones.

XXI.

Herod of Galilee's babe-butchering deed
Lives not on history's blushing page alone;
Our skies, it seems, have seen like victims bleed,
And our own Ramahs echoed groan for groan:
The fiends of France, whose cruelties decreed
Those dextrous drownings in the Loire and Rhone,
Were at their worst, but copyists second-hand
Of our shrined, sainted sires, the Plymouth pilgrim-band,

XXII.

Or else fibs Mather. Kindred wolves have bayed
Truth's moon in chorus, but believe them not!
Beneath the dark trees that the Lethe shade,
Be he, his folios, followers, facts, forgot;
And let his perishing monument be made
Of his own unsold volumes: 'tis the lot

Of many, may be mine; and be it Mather's,
That slanderer of the memory of our fathers.

XXIII.

And who were they, our fathers? In their veins
Ran the best blood of England's gentlemen;
Her bravest in the strife on battle-plains,
Her wisest in the strife of voice and pen;
Her holiest, teaching, in her holiest fanes,
The lore that led to martyrdom; and when
On this side ocean slept their wearied sails,
And their toil-bells woke up our thousand hills and dales,

XXIV.

Shamed they their fathers? Ask the village-spires
Above their Sabbath-homes of praise and prayer;
Ask of their children's happy household-fires,
And happier harvest noons; ask summer's air,
Made merry by young voices, when the wires
Of their school-cages are unloosed, and dare
Their slanderers' breath to blight the memory
That o'er their graves is “growing green to see!”

XXV.

If he has “writ their annals true;” if they,
The Christian-sponsored and the Christian-nursed,

Clouded with crime the sunset of their day
And warmed their winter's hearths with fires accursed;
And if the stain that time wears not away
Of guilt was on the pilgrim axe that first
Our wood-paths' roses blest with smiles from heaven,
In charity forget, and hope to be forgiven.

XXVI.

Forget their story's cruelty and wrong;
Forget their story-teller; or but deem
His facts the fictions of a minstrel's song,
The myths and marvels of a poet's dream.
And are they not such? Suddenly among
My mind's dark thoughts its boyhood's sunrise beam
Breathes in spring balm and beauty o'er my page—
Joy! joy! my patriot wrath hath wronged the reverend sage.

XXVII.

Welcome! young boyhood, welcome! Of thy lore,
Thy morning-gathered wealth of prose and rhyme,
Of fruit the flower, of gold the infant ore,
The roughest shuns not manhood's stormy clime,
But loves wild ocean's winds and breakers' roar;
While, of the blossoms of the sweet spring-time,
The bonniest, and most bountiful of joy,
Shrink from the man, and cling around the boy.

XXVIII.

But now, like doves “with healing on their wings,”
Blossom and fruit with gladdening kindness come,
Charming to sleep my murmuring song, that sings
Unworthy dirges over Mather's tomb:
Welcome the olive-branch their message brings!
It bids me wish him not the mouldering doom
Of nameless scribes of “mémoires pour servir,”
Dishonest “chroniclers of time's small-beer.”

XXIX.

No: a born Poet, at his cradle-fire
The muses nursed him as their bud unblown,
And gave him as his mind grew high and higher,
Their ducal strawberry-leaf's enwreathed renown.
Alas! that mightiest masters of the lyre,
Whose pens above an eagle's heart have grown,
In all the proud nobility of wing,
Should stoop to dip their points in passion's poison-spring!

XXX.

Yet Milton, weary of his youth's young wife,
To her, to king, to church, to law untrue,
Warred for divorce and discord to the knife,
And proudest wore his plume of darkest hue:
And Dante, when his Florence, in her strife,
Robbed him of office and his temper, threw

'Mongst friends and foes a bomb-shell of fierce rhymes,
Shivering their names and fames to all succeeding times.

XXXI.

And our own Mather's fire-and-fagot tale
Of Conquest, with her “garments rolled in blood,”
And banners blackening, like a pirate's sail,
The Mayflower's memories of the brave and good,
Though but a brain-born dream of rain and hail,
And in his epic but an episode,
Proves mournfully the strange and sad admission
Of much sour grape-juice in his disposition.

XXXII.

O Genius! powerful with thy praise or blame,
When art thou feigning? when art thou sincere?
Mather, who banned his living friends with shame,
In funeral-sermons blessed them on their bier,
And made their death-beds beautiful with fame—
Fame true and gracious as a widow's tear
To her departed darling husband given;
Him whom she scolded up from earth to heaven.

XXXIII.

Thanks for his funeral-sermons; they recall
The sunshine smiling through his folio's leaves,
That makes his readers' hours in bower or hall
Joyous as plighted hearts on bridal eves;

Chasing, like music from the soul of Saul,
The doubt that darkens, and the ill that grieves;
And honoring the author's heart and mind,
That beats to bless, and toils to ennoble human kind.

XXXIV.

His chaplain-mantle worthily to wear,
He fringed its sober gray with poet-bays,
And versed the Psalms of David to the air
Of Yankee-Doodle, for Thanksgiving-days;
Thus hallowing with the earnestness of prayer,
And patriotic purity of praise,
Unconscious of irreverence or wrong,
Our manliest battle-tune and merriest bridal song.

XXXV.

The good the Rhine-song does to German hearts,
Or thine, Marseilles! to France's fiery blood;
The good thy anthemed harmony imparts,
“God save the Queen!” to England's field and flood,
A home-born blessing, Nature's boon, not Art's;
The same heart-cheering, spirit-warming good,
To us and ours, where'er we war or woo,
Thy words and music, Yankee-Doodle!—do.

XXXVI.

Beneath thy Star, as one of the Thirteen,
Land of my lay! through many a battle's night

Thy gallant men stepped steady and serene,
To that war-music's stern and strong delight.
Where bayonets clinched above the trampled green,
Where sabres grappled in the ocean-fight;
In siege, in storm, on deck or rampart, there
They hunted the wolf Danger to his lair,
And sought and won sweet Peace, and wreaths for Honor's hair!

XXXVII.

And with thy smiles, sweet Peace, came woman's, bringing
The Eden-sunshine of her welcome kiss,
And lovers' flutes, and children's voices singing
The maiden's promised, matron's perfect bliss,
And heart and home-bells blending with their ringing
Thank-offerings borne to holier worlds than this,
And the proud green of Glory's laurel-leaves,
And gold, the gift to Peace, of Plenty's summer sheaves.

MUSIC.

TO A BOY OF FOUR YEARS OLD, ON HEARING HIM PLAY ON THE HARP.

Sweet boy! before thy lips can learn
In speech thy wishes to make known,
Are “thoughts that breathe and words that burn,”
Heard in thy music's tone.

Were Genius tasked to prove the might,
The magic of her hidden spell,
She well might name thee with delight
As her own miracle.

Who that hath heard, from summer trees,
The sweet wild song of summer birds,
When morning to the far-off breeze
Whispers her bidding words;

Or listened to the bird of night,
The minstrel of the starlight hours,
Companion of the firefly's flight,
Cool dews, and closèd flowers;

But deemed that spirits of the air
Had left their native homes in heaven,
And that the music warbled there
To earth a while was given?

For with that music came the thought
That life's young purity was theirs,
And love, all artless and untaught,
Breathed in their woodland airs.

And when, sweet boy! thy baby fingers
Wake sounds of heaven's own harmony,
How welcome is the thought that lingers
Upon thy lyre and thee!

It calls up visions of past days,
When life was infancy and song
To us; and old remembered lays,
Unheard, unheeded long,

Revive in joy or grief within us,
Like lost friends wakened from their sleep,
With all their early power to win us
Alike to smile or weep.

And when we gaze upon that face,
Blooming in innocence and truth,
And mark its dimpled artlessness,
Its beauty and its youth;

We think of better worlds than this,
Of other beings pure as thou,
Who breathe, on winds of Paradise,
Music as thine is now.

And know the only emblem meet
Of that pure Faith the heart adores,
To be a child like thee, whose feet
Are strangers on Life's shores.

ON THE DEATH OF LIEUT. WILLIAM HOWARD ALLEN,

He commanded the U. S. sloop-of-war Alligator, and was mortally wounded on the 9th of November, 1822, in an action with pirates, near Matanzas, in the Island of Cuba. His mother, a few hours after hearing of his death, died—literally of a broken heart.

OF THE AMERICAN NAVY.

He hath been mourned as brave men mourn the brave,
And wept as nations weep their cherished dead,
With bitter, but proud tears, and o'er his head
The eternal flowers whose root is in the grave,
The flowers of Fame, are beautiful and green;
And by his grave's side pilgrim feet have been,
And blessings, pure as men to martyrs give,
Have there been breathed by those he died to save.
—Pride of his country's banded chivalry,
His fame their hope, his name their battle-cry;
He lived as mothers wish their sons to live,
He died as fathers wish their sons to die.
If on the grief-worn cheek the hues of bliss,
Which fade when all we love is in the tomb,
Could ever know on earth a second bloom,
The memory of a gallant death like his
Would call them into being; but the few,
Who as their friend, their brother, or their son,
His kind warm heart and gentle spirit knew,

Had long lived, hoped, and feared for him alone;
His voice their morning music, and his eye
The only starlight of their evening sky,
Till even the sun of happiness seemed dim,
And life's best joys were sorrows but with him;
And when, the burning bullet in his breast,
He dropped, like summer fruit from off the bough,
There was one heart that knew and loved him best—
It was a mother's—and is broken now.

TO WALTER BOWNE, ESQ.,

Walter Bowne, then, and for two years previous, a Senator at Albany, and member of the Council of Appointment. He was afterward Mayor of New York, where he died in August, 1846.

MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL OF APPOINTMENT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, AT ALBANY, 1821.

“Stand not upon the order of your going,
But go at once.”

“I cannot but remember such things were,
And were most precious to me.”

Macbeth.

We do not blame you, Walter Bowne,
For a variety of reasons;
You're now the talk of half the town,
A man of talent and renown,
And will be for perhaps two seasons.
That face of yours has magic in it;
Its smile transports us in a minute
To wealth and pleasure's sunny bowers;
And there is terror in its frown,
Which, like a mower's scythe, cuts down
Our city's loveliest flowers.

We therefore do not blame you, sir,
Whate'er our cause of grief may be;
And cause enough we have to “stir
The very stones to mutiny.”

You've driven from the cash and cares
Of office, heedless of our prayers,
Men who have been for many a year
To us and to our purses dear,
And will be to our heirs forever.
Our tears, thanks to the snow and rain,
Have swelled the brook in Maiden Lane
Into a mountain river;
And when you visit us again,
Leaning at Tammany on your cane,
Like warrior on his battle-blade,
You'll mourn the havoc you have made.

There is a silence and a sadness
Within the marble mansion now;
Some have wild eyes that threaten madness,
Some think of “kicking up a row.”
Judge Miller will not yet believe
That you have ventured to bereave
The city and its hall of him:
He has in his own fine way stated,
“The fact must be substantiated,”
Before he'll move a single limb.
He deems it cursed hard to yield
The laurel won in every field
Through sixteen years of party war,
And to be seen at noon no more,
Enjoying at his office door
The luxury of a tenth segar.

Judge Warner says that, when he's gone,
You'll miss the true Dogberry breed;
And Christian swears that you have done
A most UN-Christian deed.

How could you have the heart to strike
From place the peerless Pierre Van Wyck?
And the twin colonels, Haines and Pell,
Squire Fessenden, and Sheriff Bell;
Morrell, a justice and a wise one,
And Ned McLaughlin the exciseman;
The two health-officers, believers
In Clinton and contagious fevers;
The keeper of the city's treasures,
The sealer of her weights and measures,
The harbor-master, her best bower
Cable in party's stormy hour;
Ten auctioneers, three bank directors,
And Mott and Duffy, the inspectors
Of whiskey and of flour!

It was but yesterday they stood
All (ex-officio) great and good.
But by the tomahawk struck down
Of party and of Walter Bowne,
Where are they now? With shapes of air,
The caravan of things that were,
Journeying to their nameless home,
Like Mecca's pilgrims from her tomb;

With the lost Pleiad; with the wars
Of Agamemnon's ancestors;
With their own years of joy and grief,
Spring's bud, and autumn's faded leaf;
With birds that round their cradles flew;
With winds that in their boyhood blew;
With last night's dream and last night's dew.

Yes, they are gone; alas! each one of them;
Departed—every mother's son of them.
Yet often, at the close of day,
When thoughts are winged and wandering, they
Come with the memory of the past,
Like sunset clouds along the mind,
Reflecting, as they're flitting fast
In their wild hues of shade and light,
All that was beautiful and bright
In golden moments left behind.

THE IRON GRAYS.

We twine the wreath of honor
Around the warrior's brow,
Who, at his country's altar, breathes
The life-devoting vow,
And shall we to the Iron Grays
The meed of praise deny,
Who freely swore, in danger's days,
For their native land to die?

For o'er our bleeding country
Ne'er lowered a darker storm,
Than bade them round their gallant chief
The iron phalanx form.
When first their banner waved in air,
Invasion's bands were nigh,
And the battle-drum beat long and loud,
And the torch of war blazed high!

Though still bright gleam their bayonets,
Unstained with hostile gore,
Far distant yet is England's host,
Unheard her cannon's roar.
Yet not in vain they flew to arms;
It made the foeman know

That many a gallant heart must bleed
Ere freedom's star be low.

Guards of a nation's destiny!
High is that nation's claim,
For not unknown your spirit proud,
Nor your daring chieftain's name.
'Tis yours to shield the dearest ties
That bind to life the heart,
That mingle with the earliest breath,
And with our last depart.

The angel-smile of beauty
What heart but bounds to feel?
Her fingers buckled on the belt,
That sheathes your gleaming steel
And if the soldier's honored death
In battle be your doom,
Her tears shall bid the flowers be green
That blossom round your tomb.

Tread on the path of duty,
Band of the patriot brave,
Prepared to rush, at honor's call,
“To glory or the grave.”
Nor bid your flag again be furled
Till proud its eagles soar,
Till the battle-drum has ceased to beat,
And the war-torch burns no more.

AN EPISTLE TO ---.

Dear ---, I am writing not to you, but at you,
For the feet of you tourists have no resting-place;
But wherever with this the mail-pigeon may catch you,
May she find you with gayety's smile on your face;
Whether chasing a snipe at the Falls of Cohoes,
Or chased by the snakes upon Anthony's Nose;
Whether wandering, at Catskill, from Hotel to Clove,
Making sketches, or speeches, puns, poems, or love
Or in old Saratoga's unknown fountain-land,
Threading groves of enchantment, half bushes, half sand;
Whether dancing on Sundays at Lebanon Springs,
With those Madame Hutins of Religion, the Shakers;
Or, on Tuesdays, with maidens who seek wedding-rings
At Ballston, as taught by mammas and match-makers;
Whether sailing St. Lawrence, with unbroken neck,
From her thousand green isles to her castled Quebec;
Or sketching Niagara, pencil on knee
(The giant of waters, our country's pet lion),
Or dipped at Long Branch, in the real salt sea,

With a cork for a dolphin, a Cockney Arion;
Whether roaming earth, ocean, or even the air,
Like Dan O'Rourke's eagle—good luck to you there.

For myself, as you'll see by the date of my letter,
I'm in town, but of that fact the least said the better;
For 'tis vain to deny (though the city o'erflows
With well-dressed men and women, whom nobody knows)
That one rarely sees persons whose nod is an honor,
A lady with fashion's own impress upon her;
Or a gentleman blessed with the courage to say,
Like Morris (the Prince Regent's friend, in his day),
“Let others in sweet shady solitudes dwell,
Oh! give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall.”

Apropos—our friend A. chanced this morning to meet
The accomplished Miss B. as he passed Contoit's Garden,

Contoit's Garden, open to the public under the auspices of a Frenchman of that name, on the west side of Broadway, between Leonard and Franklin Streets.

Both in town in July!—he crossed over the street,
And she entered the rouge-shop of Mrs. St. Martin.

Madame Saint Martin, the proprietress of a milliner's and perfumery shop on Broadway, next door to the Garden.

Resolved not to look at another known face,
Through Leonard and Church Streets she walked to Park Place,
And he turned from Broadway into Catharine Lane,
And coursed, to avoid her, through alley and by-street,
Till they met, as the devil would have it, again,
Face to face, near the pump at the corner of Dey Street.

Yet, as most of “The Fashion” are journeying now,
With the brown hues of summer on cheek and on brow,
The few “gens comme il faut” who are lingering here,
Are, like fruits out of season, more welcome and dear,
Like “the last rose of summer, left blooming alone,”
Or the last snows of winter, pure ice of haut ton,
Unmelted, undimmed by the sun's brightest ray,
And, like diamonds, making night's darkness seem day.
One meets them in groups, that Canova might fancy,
At our new lounge at evening, the Opera Français,

The “Opera Francais,” a name given during the summer season, while occupied by a troupe of French actors from New Orleans, to the Chatham Garden Theatre of Mr. Palmo, situated on the west side of Chatham Street, between Duane and Pearl. The “Opera” was a place of fashionable resort, and patronized particularly by the distinguished personages named Mrs. President J. Q. Adams and Joseph Bonaparte, ex-King of Spain. The three “danseuses” mentioned were among the principal performers attached to the Opera.

In nines like the Muses, in threes like the Graces,
Green spots in a desert of commonplace faces.
The Queen, Mrs. Adams, goes there sweetly dressed
In a beautiful bonnet, all golden and flowery;
While the King, Mr. Bonaparte, smiles on Celeste,
Heloise, and Hutin, from his box at the Bowery.

For news, Parry still the North Sea is exploring,
And the Grand Turk has taken, they say, the Acropolis,
And we, in Swamp Place,

“Swamp Place,” a name given, either in jest or earnest, to a plot of ground in the neighborhood of Jacob and Ferry Streets, near which some medical Columbus of the time had found or fancied a mineral spring of imperishable merit. Unfortunately, it proved itself to be less than a “nine days' wonder,” by vanishing one morning, like a dream.

have discovered, in boring,
A mineral spring to refine the metropolis.
The day we discovered it was, by-the-way,
In the life of the Cockneys, a glorious day.
For we all had been taught, by tradition and reading,
That to gain what admits us to levees of kings,
The gentleness, courtesy, grace of high breeding,
The only sure way was to “visit the Springs.”
So the whole city visited Swamp Spring en masse,

From attorney to sweep, from physician to pavior,
To drink of cold water at sixpence a glass,
And learn true politeness and genteel behavior.
Though the crowd was immense till the hour of departure,
No gentleman's feelings were hurt in the rush,
Save a grocer's, who lost his proof-glass and bung-starter,
And a chimney-sweep's, robbed of his scraper and brush.
They lingered till sunset and twilight had come,
When, wearied in limb, but much polished in manners,
The sovereign people moved gracefully home,
In the beauty and pride of “an army with banners.”
As to politics—Adams

The names of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, De Witt Clinton, Andrew Jackson, and Daniel Webster, which occur on this page, belong to history.

and Clinton yet live,
And reign, we presume, as we never have missed 'em,
And woollens and Webster continue to thrive
Under something they call the American System,
If you're anxious to know what the country is doing,
Whether ruined already or going to ruin,
And who her next President will be, please Heaven,
Read the letters of Jackson, the speeches of Clay,
All the party newspapers, three columns a day,
And Blunt's Annual Register,

The “Annual Register,” edited by Joseph Blunt, a young lawyer of ability, then in progress; soon after discontinued.

year 'twenty-seven.

FANNY.

“A fairy vision
Of some gay creatures of the clement,
That in the colors of the rainbow live,
And play in the plighted clouds.”
Milton.

101

I.

Fanny

Of this young lady and her worthy father, to whose exemplary and typical career the author was indebted for the theme of his story, we are not permitted to reveal more than that they wish to be known and remembered only in the words from Milton, on the title-page, among—

“Gay creatures of the element,
That in the colors of the rainbow live,
And play in the plighted clouds.”

was younger once than she is now,
And prettier of course; I do not mean
To say that there are wrinkles on her brow;
Yet, to be candid, she is past eighteen—
Perhaps past twenty—but the girl is shy
About her age, and Heaven forbid that I

II.

Should get myself in trouble by revealing
A secret of this sort; I have too long
Loved pretty women with a poet's feeling,
And when a boy, in day-dream and in song,
Have knelt me down and worshipped them: alas!
They never thanked me for't—but let that pass.

102

III.

I've felt full many a heartache in my day,
At the mere rustling of a muslin gown,
And caught some dreadful colds, I blush to say,
While shivering in the shade of beauty's frown.
They say her smiles are sunbeams—it may be—
But never a sunbeam would she throw on me.

IV.

But Fanny's is an eye that you may gaze on
For half an hour, without the slightest harm;
E'en when she wore her smiling summer face on
There was but little danger, and the charm
That youth and wealth once gave, has bade farewell:
Hers is a sad, sad tale—'tis mine its woes to tell.

V.

Her father kept, some fifteen years ago,
A retail dry-good shop in Chatham Street,
And nursed his little earnings, sure though slow,
Till, having mustered wherewithal to meet
The gaze of the great world, he breathed the air
Of Pearl Street—and “set up” in Hanover Square.

VI.

Money is power, 'tis said—I never tried;
I'm but a poet—and bank-notes to me

103

Are curiosities, as closely eyed,
Whene'er I get them, as a stone would be,
Tossed from the moon on Doctor Mitchill's

Doctors Mitchill, Hosack, and Francis, then (1819) eminent physicians in New York, highly distinguished, not only in their profession, and as authors of popular works connected with medicine and general knowledge, but as active and useful leaders in the social, literary, and scientific institutions of the city. Doctor Mitchill, moreover, had won the name of a philosopher by his frequent discoveries, more or less important, in geology and other conjectural sciences.

table,
Or classic brickbat from the tower of Babel.

VII.

But he I sing of well has known and felt
That money hath a power and a dominion;
For when in Chatham Street the good man dwelt,
No one would give a sous for his opinion.
And though his neighbors were extremely civil,
Yet, on the whole, they thought him—a poor devil.

VIII.

A decent kind of person; one whose head
Was not of brains particularly full;
It was not known that he had ever said
Any thing worth repeating—'twas a dull,
Good, honest man—what Paulding's

James K. Paulding, one of the best and most popular of early American authors. The quotation is from his poem, “The Backwoodsman,” then recently published. He afterward rose, or fell, from literature to politics, and became navy agent at New York, and Secretary of the Navy during President Van Buren's administration.

muse would call
A “cabbage-head”—but he excelled them all

IX.

In that most noble of the sciences,
The art of making money; and he found
The zeal for quizzing him grew less and less,
As he grew richer; till upon the ground
Of Pearl Street, treading proudly in the might
And majesty of wealth, a sudden light

104

X.

Flashed like the midnight lightning on the eyes
Of all who knew him: brilliant traits of mind,
And genius, clear, and countless as the dyes
Upon the peacock's plumage; taste refined,
Wisdom and wit, were his—perhaps much more—
'Twas strange they had not found it out before.

XI.

In this quick transformation, it is true
That cash had no small share; but there were still
Some other causes, which then gave a new
Impulse to head and heart, and joined to fill
His brain with knowledge; for there first he met
The editor of the New York Gazette—

XII.

The sapient Mr. Lang. The world of him
Knows much, yet not one-half so much as he
Knows of the world. Up to its very brim
The goblet of his mind is sparkling free
With lore and learning. Had proud Sheba's queen,
In all her bloom and beauty, but have seen

XIII.

This modern Solomon,

The “Modern Solomon,” a nom de plume given to Mr. Lang by the pleasantry of his brethren of the press. The front door of his office was surmounted by the figure-head of his assumed prototype, Doctor Franklin, mentioned in stanza 49. The bust and statue therein named as specimens of the fine arts in America at the period were to be seen, the one in plaster at the Academy of Arts (stanza 51), the one in wax at Scudder's Museum (stanza 68). Poor McDonald Clarke, the mad poet of New York, having been called in Lang's paper a person with “zig-zag brains,” immediately responded in the following neat epigram:

“I can tell Johnny Lang, in the way of a laugh,
In reply to his rude and unmannerly scrawl,
That in my humble sense it is better by half
To have brains that are zig-zag than to have none at all.”

the Israelite,
Earth's monarch as he was, had never won her.

105

He would have hanged himself for very spite,
And she, blessed woman, might have had the honor
Of some neat “paragraphs”—worth all the lays
That Judah's minstrel warbled in her praise.

XIV.

Her star arose too soon; but that which swayed
Th' ascendant at our merchant's natal hour
Was bright with better destiny—its aid
Led him to pluck within the classic bower
Of bulletins, the blossoms of true knowledge,
And Lang supplied the loss of school and college.

XV.

For there he learned the news some minutes sooner
Than others could; and to distinguish well
The different signals, whether ship or schooner,
Hoisted at Staten Island; and to tell
The change of wind, and of his neighbor's fortunes,
And, best of all—he there learned self-importance.

XVI.

Nor were these all the advantages derived
From change of scene; for near his domicil
He of the pair of polished lamps then lived,
And in my hero's promenades, at will,
Could he behold them burning—and their flame
Kindled within his breast the love of fame—

Cadwallader D. Colden, then Mayor of the city, before whose door, in accordance with immemorial usage, two prominent lamps were placed, in token of his magisterial position, to remain during and after his mayoralty. His residence, and the office of Mr. Lang, the editor of the New-York Gazette (see stanzas 11 and 49), were in the neighborhood of Pearl Street and Hanover Square.

106

XVII.

And politics, and country; the pure glow
Of patriot ardor, and the consciousness
That talents such as his might well bestow
A lustre on the city; she would bless
His name; and that some service should be done her,
He pledged “life, fortune, and his sacred honor.”

XVIII.

And when the sounds of music and of mirth,
Bursting from Fashion's groups assembled there,
Were heard, as round their lone plebeian hearth
Fanny and he were seated—he would dare
To whisper fondly that the time might come
When he and his could give as brilliant routs at home.

XIX.

And oft would Fanny near that mansion linger,
When the cold winter moon was high in heaven,
And trace out, by the aid of Fancy's finger,
Cards for some future party, to be given
When she in turn should be a belle, and they
Had lived their little hour, and passed away.

XX.

There are some happy moments in this lone
And desolate world of ours, that well repay

107

The toil of struggling through it, and atone
For many a long, sad night and weary day.
They come upon the mind like some wild air
Of distant music, when we know not where,

XXI.

Or whence, the sounds are brought from, and their power,
Though brief, is boundless. That far, future home,
Oft dreamed of, beckons near—its rose-wreathed bower,
And cloudless skies before us: we become
Changed on the instant—all gold leaf and gilding;
This is, in vulgar phrase, called “castle-building.”

XXII.

But these, like sunset clouds, fade soon; 'tis vain
To bid them linger longer, or to ask
On what day they intend to call again;
And, surely, 'twere a philosophic task,
Worthy a Mitchill, in his hours of leisure,
To find some means to summon them at pleasure.

XXIII.

There certainly are powers of doing this,
In some degree at least—for instance, drinking.
Champagne will bathe the heart a while in bliss,
And keep the head a little time from thinking

108

Of cares or creditors—the best wine in town
You'll get from Lynch

Dominick Lynch, a popular importer of French wines, who ranked among the prominent merchants of the city. He was well known in social circles by his elegant entertainments at his residence, No. 1 Greenwich Street. One of his sons sang Moore's melodies with taste and deep feeling.

—the cash must be paid down.

XXIV.

But if you are a bachelor, like me,
And spurn all chains, even though made of roses,
I'd recommend cigars—there is a free
And happy spirit, that, unseen, reposes
On the dim shadowy clouds that hover o'er you,
When smoking quietly with a warm fire before you.

XXV.

Dear to the exile is his native land,
In memory's twilight beauty seen afar:
Dear to the broker is a note of hand,
Collaterally secured—the polar star
Is dear at midnight to the sailor's eyes,
And dear are Bristed's

John Bristed, an English gentleman, then recently arrived in America. He was a graduate of Oxford University, a highly accomplished scholar, and the author of several ably-written works on various topics, published in New York, among them the one entitled “The Resources of Great Britain in Time of Peace,” alluded to in stanza 141. He married a daughter of John Jacob Astor.

volumes at “half price;”

XXVI.

But dearer far to me each fairy minute
Spent in that fond forgetfulness of grief;
There is an airy web of magic in it,
As in Othello's pocket-handkerchief,
Veiling the wrinkles on the brow of Sorrow,
The gathering gloom to-day, the thunder-cloud tomorrow.

109

XXVII.

And these are innocent thoughts—a man may sit
Upon a bright throne of his own creation:
Untortured by the ghastly sprites that flit
Around the many, whose exalted station
Has been attained by means 'twere pain to hint on,
Just for the rhyme's sake—instance Mr. Clinton.

XXVIII.

He struggled hard, but not in vain, and breathes
The mountain-air at last; but there are others
Who strove, like him, to win the glittering wreaths
Of power, his early partisans and brothers,
That linger yet in dust from whence they sprung,
Unhonored and unpaid, though, luckily, unhung.

XXIX.

'Twas theirs to fill with gas the huge balloon
Of party; and they hoped, when it arose,
To soar like eagles in the blaze of noon,
Above the gaping crowd of friends and foes.
Alas! like Guillé's

Monsieur Guillé, an aeronaut, recently from France, whose balloon ascensions, then a rare and exciting exhibition, had proved a failure.

car, it soared without them,
And left them with a mob to jeer and flout them.

XXX.

Though Fanny's moonlight dreams were sweet as those
I've dwelt so long upon—they were more stable;

110

Hers were not “castles in the air” that rose
Based upon nothing; for her sire was able,
As well she knew, to “buy out” the one-half
Of Fashion's glittering train, that nightly quaff

XXXI.

Wine, wit, and wisdom, at a midnight rout,
From dandy coachmen, whose “exquisite” grin
And “ruffian” lounge flash brilliantly without,
Down to their brother dandies ranged within,
Gay as the Brussels carpeting they tread on,
And sapient as the oysters they are fed on.

XXXII.

And Rumor (she's a famous liar, yet
'Tis wonderful how easy we believe her)
Had whispered he was rich, and all he met
In Wall Street, nodded, smiled, and “tipped the beaver;”
All,—from Mr. Gelston

David Gelston, the collector of the customs.

, the collector,
Down to the broker, and the bank director.

XXXIII.

A few brief years passed over, and his rank
Among the worthies of that street was fixed;
He had become director of a bank,
And six insurance offices, and mixed

111

Familiarly, as one among his peers,
With grocers, dry-good merchants, auctioneers,

XXXIV.

Brokers of all grades—stock and pawn—and Jews
Of all religions, who at noonday form,
On 'Change, that brotherhood the moral muse
Delights in, where the heart is pure and warm,
And each exerts his intellectual force
To cheat his neighbor—legally, of course.

XXXV.

And there he shone a planetary star,
Circled around by lesser orbs, whose beams
From his were borrowed. The simile is not far
From truth—for many bosom friends, it seems,
Did borrow of him, and sometimes forget
To pay—indeed, they have not paid him yet.

XXXVI.

But these he deemed as trifles, when each mouth
Was open in his praise, and plaudits rose
Upon his willing ear, “like the sweet south
Upon a bank of violets,” from those
Who knew his talents, virtues, and so forth;
That is—knew how much money he was worth.

112

XXXVII.

Alas! poor human nature; had he been
But satisfied with this, his golden days
Their setting hour of darkness had not seen,
And he might still (in the mercantile phrase)
Be living “in good order and condition;”
But he was ruined by that jade Ambition,

XXXVIII.

“That last infirmity of noble minds,”
Whose spell, like whiskey, your true patriot liquor,
To politics the lofty heart inclines
Of all, from Clinton

De Witt Clinton, then Governor of the State of New York; Martin Van Buren, then its Attorney-General, afterward President of the United States; and Daniel D. Tompkins, Vice-President of the United States. These prominent and popular statesmen require no introduction to the reader.

down to the bill-sticker
Of a ward-meeting. She came slyly creeping
To his bedside, where he lay snug and sleeping.

XXXIX.

Her brow was turbaned with a bucktail wreath,
A brooch of terrapin her bosom wore,
Tompkins's letter was just seen beneath
Her arm, and in her hand on high she bore
A National Advocate

The “National Advocate,” a daily newspaper,conducted by Mordecai M. Noah, a veteran editor, highly distinguished in the political strife of words, for wielding, alike powerfully and playfully, the pen of a “ready writer.” As the champion of a party (his party, for the time being), he was a faithful friend and a formidable antagonist. He was favorably known as the author of an interesting book of travels in Europe, etc., and of several dramas successful on the stage.

—Pell's polite Review

A political pamphlet, by Ferris Pell, an enterprising young lawyer and politician.

Lay at her feet—'twas pommelled black and blue.

XL.

She was in fashion's elegant undress,
Muffled from throat to ankle; and her hair

113

Was all “en papillotes,” each auburn trees
Prettily pinned apart. You well might swear
She was no beauty; yet, when “made up” ready
For visitors, 'twas quite another lady.

XLI.

Since that wise pedant, Johnson, was in fashion,
Manners have changed as well as moons; and he
Would fret himself once more into a passion,
Should he return (which Heaven forbid!) and see
How strangely from his standard dictionary
The meaning of some words is made to vary.

XLII.

For instance, an undress at present means
The wearing a pelisse, a shawl, or so;
Or any thing you please, in short, that screens
The face, and hides the form from top to toe;
Of power to brave a quizzing-glass, or storm—
'Tis worn in summer, when the weather's warm.

XLIII.

But a full dress is for a winter's night.
The most genteel is made of “woven air;”
That kind of classic cobweb, soft and light,
Which Lady Morgan's Ida used to wear.
And ladies, this aërial manner dressed in,
Look Eve-like, angel-like, and interesting.

114

XLIV.

But, Miss Ambition was, as I was saying,
“Déshabillée”—his bedside tripping near,
And, gently on his nose her fingers laying,
She roared out “Tammany!” in his frighted ear.
The potent word awoke him from his nap,
And then she vanished, whispering verbum sap.

XLV.

The last words were beyond his comprehension,
For he had left off schooling, ere the Greek
Or Latin classics claimed his mind's attention:
Besides, he often had been heard to speak
Contemptuously of all that sort of knowledge,
Taught so profoundly in Columbia College.

XLVI.

We owe the ancients something. You have read
Their works, no doubt—at least in a translation;
Yet there was argument in what he said,
I scorn equivocation or evasion,
And own it must, in candor, be confessed
They were an ignorant set of men at best.

XLVII.

'Twas their misfortune to be born too soon
By centuries, and in the wrong place too;

115

They never saw a steamboat, or balloon,
Velocipede, or Quarterly Review;
Or wore a pair of Baehr's black satin breeches,
Or read an Almanac, or Clinton's Speeches.

Christian Baehr, one of the fashionable tailors of the period, and a colonel in the militia.

XLVIII.

In short, in every thing we far outshine them,—
Art, science, taste, and talent; and a stroll
Through this enlightened city would refine them
More than ten years' hard study of the whole
Their genius has produced of rich and rare—
God bless the Corporation and the Mayor!

XLIX.

In sculpture, we've a grace the Grecian master,
Blushing, had owned his purest model lacks;
We've Mr. Bogart in the best of plaster,
The Witch of Endor in the best of wax,
Besides the head of Franklin on the roof
Of Mr. Lang, both jest and weather-proof.

L.

And on our City Hall a Justice stands;
A neater form was never made of board,
Holding majestically in her hands
A pair of steelyards and a wooden sword;
And looking down with complaisant civility—
Emblem of dignity and durability.

116

LI.

In painting, we have Trumbull's proud chef d'œuvre,
Blending in one the funny and the fine:
His “Independence” will endure forever,
And so will Mr. Allen's

S. & M. Allen and Waite & Co. (see stanza 55), dealers in lottery tickets.

lottery-sign;
And all that grace the Academy of Arts,

A society of artists and amateurs, among whose presiding officers and patrons, Doctor Hosack, John G. Bogart (see stanza 49), and Colonel Trumbull, the celebrated painter, were honorably conspicuous. On the formation, soon after, of the present “National Academy of the Arts of Design,” it ceased to exist.

From Dr. Hosack's face to Bonaparte's.

LII.

In architecture, our unrivalled skill
Cullen's magnesian shop

A soda-water, etc., establishment, on the corner of Broadway and Park Place, rivalled in its embellishments by the cottage of Mr. Gautier, at Hoboken, near the ferry.

has loudly spoken
To an admiring world; and better still
Is Gautier's fairy palace at Hoboken.
In music, we've the Euterpian Society,

An association of amateur musicians occasionally giving public concerts.

And amateurs, a wonderful variety.

LIII.

In physic, we have Francis and McNeven,

One of the ablest and purest of the banished Irish patriots of '98. His excellent personal character, without reference to political antecedents, insured him a warm reception in New York, and soon placed him among the most cherished of her adopted citizens. His monument stands in St Paul's Churchyard, New York, near that of his friend Thomas Addis Emmet.

Famed for long heads, short lectures, and long bills;
And Quackenboss

Doctor Quackenbos, in spite of his name, a young physician in good repute.

and others, who from heaven
Were rained upon us in a shower of pills;
They'd beat the deathless Æsculapius hollow,
And make a starveling druggist of Apollo.

LIV.

And who, that ever slumbered at the Forum,

A society of young and promising lawyers and others emulating the “Speculative Society” of Edinburgh. Their meetings for debate were public, and drew flattering and fashionable audiences.

But owns the first of orators we claim:

117

Cicero would have bowed the knee before 'em—
And for law eloquence, we've Doctor Graham.

The Nestor of the New-York bar. His legal merits had gained him the diploma of Doctor of Laws. He was among the last of the gentlemen of the “old school,” and remarkable for the courtesy and dignity of his manners.

Compared with him, their Justins and Quintilians
Had dwindled into second-rate civilians.

LV.

For purity and chastity of style,
There's Pell's preface, and puffs by Horne

An advertising physician of New-York City. The motto at the head of his advertisements was “Salus Populi Suprema Lex.”

and Waite.
For penetration deep, and learned toil,
And all that stamps an author truly great,
Have we not Bristed's ponderous tomes? a treasure
For any man of patience and of leisure.

LVI.

Oxonian Bristed! many a foolscap page
He, in his time, hath written, and moreover
(What few will do in this degenerate age)
Hath read his own works, as you may discover
By counting his quotations from himself—
You'll find the books on any auction-shelf.

LVII.

I beg Great Britain's pardon; 'tis not meant
To claim this Oxford scholar as our own;
That he was shipped off here to represent
Her literature among us, is well known;
And none could better fill the lofty station
Of Learning's envoy from the British nation.

118

LVIII.

We fondly hope that he will be respected
At home, and soon obtain a place or pension.
We should regret to see him live neglected,
Like Fearon, Ashe, and others we could mention;
Who paid us friendly visits to abuse
Our country, and find food for the reviews.

LIX.

But to return.—The Heliconian waters
Are sparkling in their native fount no more,
And after years of wandering, the nine daughters
Of poetry have found upon our shore
A happier home, and on their sacred shrines
Glow in immortal ink, the polished lines

LX.

Of Woodworth, Doctor Farmer, Moses Scott—

Popular authors of the period, then and previously beginning an honorable literary career.

Names hallowed by their reader's sweetest smile;
And who that reads at all has read them not?
“That blind old man of Scio's rocky isle,”
Homer, was well enough; but would he ever
Have written, think ye, the Backwoodsman? never.

LXI.

Alas! for Paulding—I regret to see
In such a stanza one whose giant powers,

119

Seen in their native element, will be
Known to a future age, the pride of ours.
There is none breathing that can better wield
The battle-axe of satire. On its field

LXII.

The wreath he fought for he has bravely won,
Long be its laurel green around his brow!
It is too true, I'm somewhat fond of fun
And jesting; but for once I'm serious now.
Why is he sipping weak Castalian dews?
The muse has damned him—let him damn the muse.

LXIII.

But to return once more: the ancients fought
Some tolerable battles. Marathon
Is still a theme for high and holy thought,
And many a poet's lay. We linger on
The page that tells us of the brave and free,
And reverence thy name, unmatched Thermopylæ.

LXIV.

And there were spirited troops in other days—
The Roman legion and the Spartan band,
And Swartwout's gallant corps, the Iron Grays—
Soldiers who met their foemen hand to hand,
Or swore, at least, to meet them undismayed;
Yet what were these to General Laight's brigade

A “corps d'armée” quite distinct from the uniformed volunteer companies of the time, and one that Falstaff “would not march through Coventry with.” Its officers were the young aristocracy of the city, but its soldiers were men or boys, who, either from choice or necessity, declined paying a fine of twenty-five dollars for non-attendance on parade days—three times a year—the penalty imposed by the then existing militia law.

120

LXV.

Of veterans? nursed in that Free School of glory,
The New York State Militia

. From Bellevue,
E'en to the Battery flag-staff, the proud story
Of their manœuvres at the last review
Has rung; and Clinton's “order” told afar
He never led a better corps to war.

LXVI.

What, Egypt, was thy magic, to the tricks
Of Mr. Charles

The travelling magician and conjurer of the time.

, Judge Spencer

Then Chief Justice of the State, a judge universally respected for integrity and ability in the discharge of his official duties, but accused by his political opponents of exercising in party politics a controlling power injurious to their interests.

, or Van Buren?
The first with cards, the last in politics,
A conjuror's fame for years have been securing.
And who would now the Athenian dramas read,
When he can get “Wall Street,” by Mr. Mead?

Mead's “Wall Street,” a drama whose characters were designed to be played by STOCK actors only.

LXVII.

I might say much about our lettered men,
Those “grave and reverend seigniors,” who compose
Our learned societies—but here my pen
Stops short; for they themselves, the rumor goes,
The exclusive privilege by patent claim,
Of trumpeting (as the phrase is) their own fame.

LXVIII.

And, therefore, I am silent. It remains
To bless the hour the Corporation took it

121

Into their heads to give the rich in brains
The worn-out mansion of the poor in pocket,
Once “the old almshouse,” now a school of wisdom,
Sacred to Scudder's shells and Dr. Griscom.

A highly-esteemed Quaker physician then delivering lectures upon chemistry, etc. His office was in the building called the “Old Alms-House,” situated in the rear of the City Hall, facing Chambers Street. Its rooms facing Broadway were occupied by the museum of John Scudder, the “illustrious predecessor” of the late world-renowned showman P. T. Barnum. Among its attractions was the band of music commemorated in stanza 175.

LXIX.

But whither am I wandering? The esteem
I bear “this fairy city of the heart,”
To me a dear enthusiastic theme,
Has forced me, all unconsciously, to part
Too long from him, the hero of my story.
Where was he?—waking from his dream of glory.

LXX.

And she, the lady of his dream, had fled,
And left him somewhat puzzled and confused.
He understood, however, half she said;
And that is quite as much as we are used
To comprehend, or fancy worth repeating,
In speeches heard at any public meeting.

LXXI.

And the next evening found him at the Hall;

Tammany Hall, corner of Nassau and Frankfort Streets. —Then the home of the “Saint Tammany Society,” whose members still claim to represent, par excellence, the Democratic party of the country in its pristine purity. Their once famous appellation of “Bucktails” (see stanza 83), was derived from their custom of wearing, when on duty, a deer's tail in their hats as a badge of membership. Among their leading Sachems were William Mooney (stanza 78) and John Targee (see stanzas 72, etc). The latter gentlemen, from his steadfast refusal to accept a money-making office in the gift of the society, an example of self-denial previously unrecorded in their annals, became a sort of mythical personage, like Shakespeare's “Cuckoo in June,” “ne'er seen but wondered at.” The fact, however, enlarged upon in stanzas 73, etc., of his political and musical intimacy with Tom Moore, is one that, in the newspaper phrase, wants confirmation. The Tammany Hall of 1819 is now known as the Sun Building, the Society having erected a more spacious edifice in Fourteenth Street, formally opened on the Fourth of July, 1868. Here the Democratic Convention was held which nominated Horatio Seymour, of New York, for President, and Francis P. Plair, Jr., of Missouri, as their candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the United States.

There he was welcomed by the cordial hand,
And met the warm and friendly grasp of all
Who take, like watchmen, there, their nightly stand,
A ring, as in a boxing-match, procuring,
To bet on Clinton, Tompkins, or Van Buren.

122

LXXII.

'Twas a propitious moment; for a while
The waves of party were at rest. Upon
Each complacent brow was gay good-humor's smile:
And there was much of wit, and jest, and pun,
And high amid the circle, in great glee,
Sat Croaker's old acquaintance, John Targee.

LXXIII.

His jokes excelled the rest, and oft he sang
Songs, patriotic, as in duty bound.
He had a little of the “nasal twang
Heard at conventicle;” but yet you found
In him a dash of purity and brightness,
That spoke the man of taste and of politeness.

LXXIV.

For he had been, it seems, the bosom friend
Of England's prettiest bard, Anacreon Moore.
They met, when he, the bard, came here to lend
His mirth and music to this favorite shore;
For, as the proverb saith, “birds of a feather
Instinctively will flock and fly together.”

LXXV.

The winds that wave thy cedar-boughs are breathing,
“Lake of the Dismal Swamp!” that poet's name;

123

And the spray-showers their noonday halos wreathing
Around “Cohoes,” are brightened by his fame.
And bright its sunbeam o'er St. Lawrence smiles,
Her million lilies, and her thousand isles.

LXXVI.

We hear his music in her oarmen's lay,
And where her church-bells “toll the evening chime;”
Yet when to him the grateful heart would pay
Its homage, now, and in all coming time,
Up springs a doubtful question whether we
Owe it to Tara's minstrel or Targee.

LXXVII.

Together oft they wandered—many a spot
Now consecrated, as the minstrel's theme,
By words of beauty ne'er to be forgot,
Their mutual feet have trod; and when the stream
Of thought and feeling flowed in mutual speech,
'Twere vain to tell how much each taught to each.

LXXVIII.

But, from the following song, it would appear
That he of Erin from the sachem took
The model of his “Bower of Bendemeer,”
One of the sweetest airs in Lalla Rookh;

124

'Tis to be hoped that, in his next edition,
This, the original, will find admission:

SONG.

William B. Cozzens.—Then the proprietor of the “Tammany Hall Hotel”—more recently of the princely establishment at West Point known by his name, and now conducted by his son.

There's a barrel of porter at Tammany Hall,
And the bucktails are swigging it all the night long;
In the time of my boyhood 'twas pleasant to call
For a seat and cigar, 'mid the jovial throng.

That beer and those bucktails I never forget;
But oft, when alone, and unnoticed by all,
I think, is the porter-cask foaming there yet?
Are the bucktails still swigging at Tammany Hall?

No! the porter was out long before it was stale,
But some blossoms on many a nose brightly shone,
And the speeches inspired by the fumes of the ale,
Had the fragrance of porter when porter was gone.

How much Cozzens will draw of such beer ere he dies,
Is a question of moment to me and to all;
For still dear to my soul, as 'twas then to my eyes,
Is that barrel of porter at Tammany Hall.

125

SONG.

There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the night long;
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream
To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.

That bower and its music I never forget;
But oft, when alone, in the bloom of the year,
I think, is the nightingale singing there yet?
Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer?

No! the roses soon withered that hung o'er the wave,
But some blossoms were gathered when freshly they shone;
And a dew was distilled from their flowers, that gave
All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone.

Thus memory draws from delight ere it dies,
An essence that breathes of it many a year;
Thus bright to my soul, as 'twas then to my eyes,
Is that bower on the banks of the calm Bendemeer.

LXXIX.

For many months my hero ne'er neglected
To take his ramble there, and soon found out,
In much less time than one could have expected,
What 'twas they all were quarrelling about.

126

He learned the party countersigns by rote,
And when to clap his hands, and how to vote.

LXXX.

He learned that Clinton became Governor
Somehow by chance, when we were all asleep;
That he had neither sense, nor talent, nor
Any good quality, and would not keep
His place an hour after the next election—
So powerful was the voice of disaffection:

LXXXI.

That he was a mere puppet made to play
A thousand tricks, while Spencer touched the springs—
Spencer, the mighty Warwick of his day,
“That setter up and puller down of kings,”
Aided by Miller

An active and influential party leader, for many years surrogate of the city, and a gentleman who was never seen without his inseparable companion—a cigar. As a smoker, he even excelled General Grant.

, Pell, and Doctor Graham,
And other men of equal worth and fame:

LXXXII.

And that he'd set the people at defiance,
By placing knaves and fools in public stations;
And that his works in literature and science
Were but a schoolboy's web of misquotations;
And that he quoted from the devil even—
“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

127

LXXXIII.

To these authentic facts each bucktail swore;
But Clinton's friends averred, in contradiction,
They were but fables, told by Mr. Noah,
Who had a privilege to deal in fiction,
Because he'd written travels, and a melo-
Drama; and was, withal, a pleasant fellow.

LXXXIV.

And they declared that Tompkins was no better
Than he should be; that he had borrowed money,
And paid it—not in cash—but with a letter;
And, though some trifling service he had done, he
Still wanted spirit, energy, and fire;
And was disliked by—Mr. McIntyre.

Members of the State Senate. The one a political opponent of Governor Clinton, the other of ex-Governor Daniel D. Tompkins.

LXXXV.

In short, each one with whom in conversation
He joined, contrived to give him different views
Of men and measures; and the information
Which he obtained, but aided to confuse
His brain. At best, 'twas never very clear;
And now 'twas turned with politics and beer.

LXXXVI.

And he was puffed, and flattered, and caressed
By all, till he sincerely thought that Nature

128

Had formed him for an alderman at least—
Perhaps, a member of the Legislature;
And that he had the talents, ten times over,
Of Henry Meigs, or Peter H. Wendover.

Members of Congress from the city. The former one of the original founders of the “American Institute,” and for a long time its secretary. To the latter is owing the invention of the present legal arrangement of the stars and stripes in the United States flag.

LXXXVII.

The man was mad, 'tis plain, and merits pity,
Or he had never dared, in such a tone,
To speak of two great persons, whom the city
With pride and pleasure points to as her own—
Men wise in council, brilliant in debate,
“The expectancy and rose of the fair state.”

LXXXVIII.

The one—for a pure style and classic manner,
Is—Mr. Sachem Mooney far before;
The other, in his speech about the banner,
Spell-bound his audience until they swore
That such a speech was never heard till then,
And never would be—till he spoke again.

LXXXIX.

Though 'twas presumptuous in this friend of ours
To think of rivalling these, I must allow
That still the man had talents; and the powers
Of his capacious intellect were now
Improved by foreign travel, and by reading,
And at the Hall he'd learned, of course, good-breeding.

129

XC.

He had read the newspapers with great attention,
Advertisements and all; and Riley's book

A somewhat Munchausen-like narrative of his shipwreck on the coast of Africa.

Of travels—valued for its rich invention;
And Day and Turner's Price Current; and took
The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews;
And also Colonel Pell's; and to amuse

XCI.

His leisure hours with classic tale and story,
Longworth's Directory, and Mead's Wall Street,
And Mr. Delaplaine's Repository;

A biographical work published in Philadelphia, valuable for its engraved portraits of the most distinguished men of the day.

And Mitchill's scientific works complete,
With other standard books of modern days,
Lay on his table, covered with green baize.

XCII.

His travels had extended to Bath races;
And Bloomingdale and Bergen he had seen,
And Harlem Heights; and many other places,
By sea and land, had visited; and been,
In a steamboat of the Vice-President's,
To Staten Island once—for fifty cents.

Daniel D. Tompkins.—Then a resident of Staten Island.

XCIII.

And he had dined, by special invitation,
On turtle, with “the party” at Hoboken;

130

And thanked them for his card in an oration,
Declared to be the shortest ever spoken.
And he had strolled one day o'er Weehawk hill:
A day worth all the rest—he recollects it still.

“The Turtle Club.”—From New York, whose frequent open-air festivities, at Hoboken, were devoted to punch and politics.

XCIV.

Weehawken!—In thy mountain scenery yet,
All we adore of Nature, in her wild
And frolic hour of infancy, is met;
And never has a summer's morning smiled
Upon a lovelier scene, than the full eye
Of the enthusiast revels on—when high

XCV.

Amid thy forest solitudes, he climbs
O'er crags, that proudly tower above the deep,
And knows that sense of danger which sublimes
The breathless moment—when his daring step
Is on the verge of the cliff, and he can hear
The low dash of the wave with startled ear—

XCVI.

Like the death-music of his coming doom.
And clings to the green turf with desperate force,
As the heart clings to life; and when resume
The currents in his veins their wonted course,
There lingers a deep feeling—like the moan
Of wearied ocean, when the storm is gone.

131

XCVII.

In such an hour he turns, and on his view,
Ocean, and earth, and heaven, burst before him;
Clouds slumbering at his feet, and the clear blue
Of summer's sky in beauty bending o'er him—
The city bright below; and far away,
Sparkling in golden light, his own romantic bay.

XCVIII.

Tall spire, and glittering roof, and battlement,
And banners floating in the sunny air;
And white sails o'er the calm blue waters bent,
Green isle, and circling shore, are blended there
In wild reality. When life is old,
And many a scene forgot, the heart will hold

XCIX.

Its memory of this; nor lives there one
Whose infant breath was drawn, or boyhood's days
Of happiness were passed beneath that sun,
That in his manhood's prime can calmly gaze
Upon that bay, or on that mountain stand,
Nor feel the prouder of his native land.

C.

“This may be poetry, for aught I know,”
Said an old, worthy friend of mine, while leaning

132

Over my shoulders as I wrote; “although
I can't exactly comprehend its meaning.
For my part, I have long been a petitioner
To Mr. John McComb, the Street Commissioner—

CI.

“That he would think of Weehawk, and would lay it
Handsomely out in avenue and square;
Then tax the land and make its owners pay it
(As is the usual plan pursued elsewhere);
Blow up the rocks, and sell the wood for fuel—
'Twould save us many a dollar, and a duel.”

CII.

“The devil take you and John McComb,” said I;
“Lang, in its praise, has penned one paragraph,
And promised me another. I defy,
With such assistance, yours and the world's laugh;
And half believe that Paulding, on this theme,
Might be a poet—strange as it may seem.”

CIII.

For even our traveller felt, when home returning
From that day's tour, as on the deck he stood,
The fire of poetry within him burning;
“Albeit unused to the rhyming mood;”
And with a pencil on his knee he wrote
The following flaming lines

133

TO THE HORSEBOAT.

1.

Away—o'er the wave to the home we are seeking,
Bark of my hope! ere the evening be gone;
There's a wild, wild note in the curlew's shrieking;
There's a whisper of death in the wind's low moan.

2.

Though blue and bright are the heavens above me,
And the stars are asleep on the quiet sea;
And hearts I love, and hearts that love me,
Are beating beside me merrily:

3.

Yet, far in the west, where the day's faded roses,
Touched by the moonbeam, are withering fast;
Where the half-seen spirit of twilight reposes,
Hymning the dirge of the hours that are past—

4.

There, where the ocean-wave sparkles at meeting
(As sunset dreams tell us) the kiss of the sky,
On his dim, dark cloud is the infant storm sitting,
And beneath the horizon his lightnings are nigh.

134

5.

Another hour—and the death-word is given,
Another hour—and his lightnings are here;
Speed! speed thee, my bark; ere the breeze of even
Is lost in the tempest, our home will be near.

6.

Then away o'er the wave, while thy pennant is streaming
In the shadowy light, like a shooting-star;
Be swift as the thought of the wanderer, dreaming,
In a stranger land, of his fireside afar.

7.

And while memory lingers I'll fondly believe thee
A being with life and its best feelings warm;
And freely the wild song of gratitude weave thee,
Blessed spirit! that bore me and mine from the storm.

CIV.

But where is Fanny? She has long been thrown
Where cheeks and roses wither—in the shade.
The age of chivalry, you know, is gone;
And although, as I once before have said,
I love a pretty face to adoration,
Yet, still, I must preserve my reputation,

135

CV.

As a true dandy of the modern schools.
One hates to be old-fashioned; it would be
A violation of the latest rules,
To treat the sex with too much courtesy.
'Tis not to worship beauty, as she glows
In all her diamond lustre, that the beaux

CVI.

Of these enlightened days at evening crowd,
Where Fashion welcomes in her rooms of light
That “dignified obedience; that proud
Submission,” which, in times of yore, the knight
Gave to his “ladye-love,” is now a scandal,
And practised only by your Goth and Vandal.

CVII.

To lounge in graceful attitudes—be stared
Upon, the while, by every fair one's eye,
And stare one's self, in turn: to be prepared
To dart upon the trays, as swiftly by
The dexterous Simon

A man of color, the orthodox and omni-present caterer for fashionable dinner and supper parties.

bears them, and to take
One's share at least of coffee, cream, and cake,

CVIII.

Is now to be “the ton.” The pouting lip,
And sad, upbraiding eye of the poor girl,

136

Who hardly of joy's cup one drop can sip,
Ere in the wild confusion, and the whirl,
And tumult of the hour, its bubbles vanish,
Must now be disregarded. One must banish

CIX.

Those antiquated feelings, that belong
To feudal manners and a barbarous age.
Time was—when woman “poured her soul” in song,
That all was hushed around. 'Tis now “the rage”
To deem a song, like bugle-tones in battle,
A signal-note, that bids each tongue's artillery rattle.

CX.

And, therefore, I have made Miss Fanny wait
My leisure. She had changed, as you will see, as
Much as her worthy sire, and made as great
Proficiency in taste and high ideas.
The careless smile of other days was gone,
And every gesture spoke “qu'en dira-t-on?”

CXI.

She long had known that in her father's coffers,
And also to his credit in the banks,
There was some cash; and therefore all the offers
Made her, by gentlemen of the middle ranks,
Of heart and hand, had spurned, as far beneath
One whose high destiny it was to breathe,

137

CXII.

Ere long, the air of Broadway or Park Place,
And reign a fairy queen in fairy land;
Display in the gay dance her form of grace,
Or touch with rounded arm and gloveless hand,
Harp or piano.—Madame Catilani
Forgot awhile, and every eye on Fanny.

CXIII.

And in anticipation of that hour,
Her star of hope, her paradise of thought,
She'd had as many masters as the power
Of riches could bestow; and had been taught
The thousand nameless graces that adorn
The daughters of the wealthy and high-born.

CXIV.

She had been noticed at some public places
(The Battery, and the balls of Mr. Whale

An eminent dancing-master, and a fine specimen of the old-school gentlemen. He always appeared in knee-breeches and silk stockings, and was a constant reader at the Society Library, of which venerable institution he was a member.

),
For hers was one of those attractive faces,
That when you gaze upon them, never fail
To bid you look again; there was a beam,
A lustre in her eye, that oft would seem

CXV.

A little like effrontery; and yet
The lady meant no harm; her only aim

138

Was but to be admired by all she met,
And the free homage of the heart to claim;
And if she showed too plainly this intention,
Others have done the same—'twas not of her invention.

CXVI.

She shone at every concert; where are bought
Tickets by all who wish them, for a dollar;
She patronized the Theatre, and thought
That Wallack looked extremely well in Rolla;
She fell in love, as all the ladies do,
With Mr. Simpson—talked as loudly, too,

Edmund Simpson and James W. Wallack, managers of the city theatres, and actors highly esteemed, then and now.

CXVII.

As any beauty of the highest grade,
To the gay circle in the box beside her;
And when the pit—half vexed and half afraid,
With looks of smothered indignation eyed her,
She calmly met their gaze, and stood before 'em,
Smiling at vulgar taste and mock decorum.

CXVIII.

And though by no means a bas bleu, she had
For literature a most becoming passion;
Had skimmed the latest novels, good and bad,
And read the Croakers

see note, page 377.

, when they were in fashion;
And Dr. Chalmers' sermons of a Sunday;
And Woodworth's Cabinet

A periodical conducted by the poet of the name.

, and the new Salmagundi.

A continuation, by James K. Paulding, of a work under a similar title, published in 1808, the joint production of himself and his friend Washington Irving.

139

CXIX.

She was among the first and warmest patrons
Of Griscom's conversaziones, where
In rainbow groups, our bright-eyed maids and matrons,
On science bent, assemble; to prepare
Themselves for acting well, in life, their part
As wives and mothers. There she learned by heart

CXX.

Words, to the witches in Macbeth unknown.
Hydraulics, hydrostatics, and pneumatics,
Dioptrics, optics, katoptrics, carbon,
Chlorine, and iodine, and aërostatics;
Also,—why frogs, for want of air, expire;
And how to set the Tappan Sea on fire!

CXXI.

In all the modern languages she was
Exceedingly well-versed; and had devoted,
To their attainment, far more time than has,
By the best teachers, lately been allotted;
For she had taken lessons, twice a week,
For a full month in each; and she could speak

CXXII.

French and Italian, equally as well
As Chinese, Portuguese, or German; and,

140

What is still more surprising, she could spell
Most of our longest English words off-hand;
Was quite familiar in Low Dutch and Spanish,
And thought of studying modern Greek and Danish.

CXXIII.

She sang divinely; and in “Love's young dream”
And “Fanny dearest,” and “The soldier's bride;”
And every song, whose dear delightful theme,
Is “Love, still love,” had oft till midnight tried
Her finest, loftiest “pigeon-wings” of sound,
Waking the very watchmen far around.

CXXIV.

For her pure taste in dress, I can appeal to
Madame Bouquet, and Monsieur Pardessus;

The fashionable milliner and ladies' slipper-maker of the day.

She was, in short, a woman you might kneel to,
If kneeling were in fashion; or if you
Were wearied of your duns and single life,
And wanted a few thousands and a wife.

CXXV.

[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]

141

CXXVI.

“There was a suond of revelry by night;”
Broadway was thronged with coaches, and within
A mansion of the best of brick, the bright
And eloquent eyes of beauty bade begin
The dance; and music's tones swelled wild and high,
And hearts and heels kept tune in tremulous ecstasy.

CXXVII.

For many a week, the note of preparation
Had sounded through all circles far and near;
And some five hundred cards of invitation
Bade beau and belle in full costume appear;
There was a most magnificent variety,
All quite select, and of the first society.

CXXVIII.

That is to say—the rich and the well-bred,
The arbiters of fashion and gentility,
In different grades of splendor, from the head
Down to the very toe of our nobility:
Ladies, remarkable for handsome eyes
Or handsome fortunes—learned men, and wise

CXXIX.

Statesmen, and officers of the militia—
In short, the “first society”—a phrase,

142

Which you may understand as best may fit you;
Besides the blackest fiddlers of those days,
Placed like their sire, Timotheus, on high,
With horsehair fiddle-bows and teeth of ivory.

CXXX.

The carpets were rolled up the day before,
And, with a breath, two rooms became but one,
Like man and wife—and, on the polished floor,
Chalk in the artists' plastic hand had done
All that chalk could do—in young Eden's bowers
They seemed to tread, and their feet pressed on flowers.

CXXXI.

And when the thousand lights of spermaceti
Streamed like a shower of sunbeams—and free tresses
Wild as the heads that waved them—and a pretty
Collection of the latest Paris dresses
Wandered about the room like things divine,
It was, as I was told, extremely fine.

CXXXII.

The love of fun, fine faces, and good eating,
Brought many who were tired of self and home;
And some were there in the high hope of meeting
The lady of their bosom's love—and some
To study that deep science, how to please,
And manners in high life, and high-souled courtesies.

143

CXXXIII.

And he, the hero of the night was there,
In breeches of light drab, and coat of blue.
Taste was conspicuous in his powdered hair,
And in his frequent jeux de mots, that drew
Peals of applauses from the listeners round,
Who were delighted—as in duty bound.

CXXXIV.

'Twas Fanny's father—Fanny near him stood,
Her power, resistless—and her wish, command;
And Hope's young promises were all made good;
“She reigned a fairy queen in fairy land;”
Her dream of infancy a dream no more,
And then how beautiful the dress she wore!

CXXXV.

Ambition with her sire had kept her word.
He had the rose, no matter for its thorn,
And he seemed happy as a summer bird,
Careering on wet wing to meet the morn.
Some said there was a cloud upon his brow;
It might be—but we'll not discuss that now.

CXXXVI.

I left him making rhymes while crossing o'er
The broad and perilous wave of the North River.

144

He bade adieu, when safely on the shore,
To poetry—and, as he thought, forever.
That night his dream (if after-deeds make known
Our plans in sleep) was an enchanting one.

CXXXVII.

He woke, in strength, like Samson from his slumber,
And walked Broadway, enraptured the next day;
Purchased a house there—I've forgot the number—
And signed a mortgage and a bond, for pay.
Gave, in the slang phrase, Pearl Street the go-by,
And cut, for several months, St. Tammany.

CXXXVIII.

Bond, mortgage, title-deeds, and all completed,
He bought a coach and half a dozen horses
(The bill's at Lawrence's

A coach-maker in John Street.

—not yet receipted—
You'll find the amount upon his list of losses),
Then filled his rooms with servants, and whatever
Is necessary for a “genteel liver.”

CXXXIX.

This last removal fixed him: every stain
Was blotted from his “household coat,” and he
Now “showed the world he was a gentleman,”
And, what is better, could afford to be;
His step was loftier than it was of old,
His laugh less frequent, and his manner told

145

CXL.

What lovers call “unutterable things”—
That sort of dignity was in his mien
Which awes the gazer into ice, and brings
To recollection some great man we've seen,
The Governor, perchance, whose eye and frown,
'Twas shrewdly guessed, would knock Judge Skinner down.

De Witt Clinton.—Governor of the State of New York.

CXLI.

And for “Resources,” both of purse and head,
He was a subject worthy Bristed's pen;
Believed devoutly all his flatterers said,
And deemed himself a Crœsus among men;
Spread to the liberal air his silken sails,
And lavished guineas like a Prince of Wales.

“Eastburn's Rooms,” in the building occupied by James Eastburn & Co., booksellers and publishers, on the corner of Broadway and Pine Street—a favorite resort of men of letters and leisure. Bishop Eastburn, of the Episcopal Church, and James W. Eastburn, the young poet, who died at twenty-two, are sons of the worthy bookseller, for whom Mr. Halleck entertained a great friendship, and to whose reading-room he was a constant visitor.

CXLII.

He mingled now with those within whose veins
The blood ran pure—the magnates of the land—
Hailed them as his companions and his friends,
And lent them money and his note of hand.
In every institution, whose proud aim
Is public good alone, he soon became

CXLIII.

A man of consequence and notoriety;
His name, with the addition of esquire,

146

Stood high upon the list of each society,
Whose zeal and watchfulness the sacred fire
Of science, agriculture, art, and learning,
Keep on our country's altars bright and burning.

CXLIV.

At Eastburn's Rooms he met, at two each day,
With men of taste and judgment like his own,
And played “first fiddle” in that orchestra
Of literary worthies—and the tone
Of his mind's music by the listeners caught,
Is traced among them still in language and in thought.

The “Lyceum of Natural History.”—An association of men of science, and patronized by the most highly cultivated of the city scholars, still existing.

CXLV.

He once made the Lyceum a choice present
Of muscle-shells picked up at Rockaway;
And Mitchill gave a classical and pleasant
Discourse about them in the streets that day,
Naming the shells, and hard to put in verse 'twas
“Testaceous coverings of bivalve molluscas.”

CXLVI.

He was a trustee of a Savings Bank,
And lectured soundly every evil-doer,
Gave dinners daily to wealth, power, and rank,
And sixpence every Sunday to the poor;
He was a wit, in the pun-making line—
Past fifty years of age, and five feet nine.

147

CXLVII.

But as he trod to grandeur's pinnacle,
With eagle eye and step that never faltered,
The busy tongue of scandal dared to tell
That cash was scarce with him, and credit altered;
And while he stood the envy of beholders,
The Bank Directors grinned, and shrugged their shoulders.

CXLVIII.

And when these, the Lord Burleighs of the minute,
Shake their sage heads, and look demure and holy,
Depend upon it there is something in it;
For whether born of wisdom or of folly,
Suspicion is a being whose fell power
Blights every thing it touches, fruit and flower.

CXLIX.

Some friends (they were his creditors) once hinted
About retrenchment and a day of doom;
He thanked them, as no doubt they kindly meant it,
And made this speech when they had left the room:
“Of all the curses upon mortals sent,
One's creditors are the most impudent;

CL.

“Now I am one who knows what he is doing,
And suits exactly to his means his ends;

148

How can a man be in the path to ruin,
When all the brokers are his bosom friends?
Yet, on my hopes, and those of my dear daughter,
These rascals throw a bucket of cold water!

CLI.

“They'd wrinkle with deep cares the prettiest face,
Pour gall and wormwood in the sweetest cup,
Poison the very wells of life—and place
Whitechapel needles, with their sharp points up,
Even in the softest feather bed that e'er
Was manufactured by upholsterer.”

CLII.

This said—he journeyed “at his own sweet will,”
Like one of Wordsworth's rivers, calmly on;
But yet, at times, Reflection, “in her still
Small voice,” would whisper, something must be done;
He asked advice of Fanny, and the maid
Promptly and duteously lent her aid.

CLIII.

She told him, with that readiness of mind
And quickness of perception which belong
Exclusively to gentle womankind,
That to submit to slanderers was wrong,
And the best plan to silence and admonish them,
Would be to give “a party”—and astonish them.

149

CLIV.

The hint was taken—and the party given;
And Fanny, as I said some pages since,
Was there in power and loveliness that even,
And he, her sire, demeaned him like a prince,
And all was joy—it looked a festival,
Where pain might smooth his brow, and grief her smiles recall.

CLV.

But Fortune, like some others of her sex,
Delights in tantalizing and tormenting;
One day we feed upon their smiles—the next
Is spent in swearing, sorrowing, and repenting.
(If in the last four lines the author lies,
He's always ready to apologize.)

CLVI.

Eve never walked in Paradise more pure
Than on that morn when Satan played the devil,
With her and all her race. A love-sick wooer
Ne'er asked a kinder maiden, or more civil,
Than Cleopatra was to Antony
The day she left him on the Ionian sea.

CLVII.

The serpent—loveliest in his coilèd ring,
With eye that charms, and beauty that outvies

150

The tints of the rainbow—bears upon his sting
The deadliest venom. Ere the dolphin dies
Its hues are brightest. Like an infant's breath
Are tropic winds before the voice of death

CLVIII.

Is heard upon the waters, summoning
The midnight earthquake from its sleep of years
To do its task of woe. The clouds that fling
The lightning, brighten ere the bolt appears;
The pantings of the warrior's heart are proud
Upon that battle morn whose night-dews wet his shroud;

CLIX.

The son is loveliest as he sinks to rest;
The leaves of autumn smile when fading fast;
The swan's last song is sweetest—and the best
Of Meigs's speeches, doubtless, was his last.
And thus the happiest scene, in these my rhymes,
Closed with a crash, and ushered in—hard times.

CLX.

St. Paul's tolled one—and fifteen minutes after
Down came, by accident, a chandelier;
The mansion tottered from the floor to rafter!
Up rose the cry of agony and fear!
And there was shrieking, screaming, bustling, fluttering,
Beyond the power of writing or of uttering.

151

CLXI.

The company departed, and neglected
To say good-by—the father stormed and swore—
The fiddlers grinned—the daughter looked dejected—
The flowers had vanished from the polished floor,
And both betook them to their sleepless beds,
With hearts and prospects broken, but no heads.

CLXII.

The desolate relief of free complaining
Came with the morn, and with it came bad weather;
The wind was east-northeast, and it was raining
Throughout that day, which, take it altogether,
Was one whose memory clings to us through life,
Just like a suit in Chancery, or a wife.

CLXIII.

That evening, with a most important face
And dreadful knock, and tidings still more dreadful,
A notary came—sad things had taken place;
My hero had forgot to “do the needful;”
A note (amount not stated), with his name on't,
Was left unpaid—in short, he had “stopped payment.”

CLXIV.

I hate your tragedies, both long and short ones
(Except Tom Thumb, and Juan's Pantomime);

152

And stories woven of sorrows and misfortunes
Are bad enough in prose, and worse in rhyme:
Mine, therefore, must be brief. Under protest
His notes remain—the wise can guess the rest.

CLXV.

[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]

CLXVI.

For two whole days they were the common talk;
The party, and the failure, and all that,
The theme of loungers in their morning walk,
Porter-house reasoning, and tea-table chat.
The third, some newer wonder came to blot them,
And on the fourth, the “meddling world” forgot them.

CLXVII.

Anxious, however, something to discover,
I passed their house—the shutters were all closed;
The song of knocker and of bell was over;
Upon the steps two chimney-sweeps reposed;
And on the door my dazzled eyebeam met
These cabalistic words—“This house to let.”

153

CLXVIII.

They live now, like chameleons, upon air
And hope, and such cold, unsubstantial dishes;
That they removed, is clear, but when or where
None knew. The curious reader, if he wishes,
May ask them, but in vain. Where grandeur dwells,
The marble dome—the popular rumor tells;

CLXIX.

But of the dwelling of the proud and poor,
From their own lips the world will never know
When better days are gone—it is secure
Beyond all other mysteries here below,
Except, perhaps, a maiden lady's age,
When past the noonday of life's pilgrimage.

CLXX.

Fanny! 'twas with her name my song began;
'Tis proper and polite her name should end it;
If, in my story of her woes, or plan
Or moral can be traced, 'twas not intended;
And if I've wronged her, I can only tell her
I'm sorry for it—so is my bookseller.

CLXXI.

I met her yesterday—her eyes were wet—
She faintly smiled, and said she had been reading

154

The Treasurer's Report in the Gazette,
McIntyre's speech, and Campbell's “Love lies bleeding;”
She had a shawl on, 'twas not a Cashmere one,
And, if it cost five dollars, 'twas a dear one.

CLXXII.

Her father sent to Albany

Then an important department of the State government, abolished upon the revision of the Constitution in 1821, having become a notorious political machine.

a prayer
For office, told how Fortune had abused him,
And modestly requested to be Mayor—
The Council very civilly refused him;
Because, however much they might desire it,
The “public good,” it seems, did not require it.

CLXXIII.

Some evenings since, he took a lonely stroll
Along Broadway, scene of past joys and evils;
He felt that withering bitterness of soul,
Quaintly denominated the “blue devils;”
And thought of Bonaparte and Belisarius,
Pompey, and Colonel Burr,

Colonel Aaron Burr, then Vice-President of the United States, the theme of one of the most interesting episodes in American history.

and Caius Marius,

CLXXIV.

And envying the loud playfulness and mirth
Of those who passed him, gay in youth and hope,
He took at Jupiter a shilling's worth
Of gazing, through the showman's telescope;

155

Sounds as of far-off bells came on his ears—
He fancied 'twas the music of the spheres.

CLXXV.

He was mistaken, it was no such thing,
'Twas Yankee Doodle played by Scudder's band:
He muttered, as he lingered listening,
Something of freedom and our happy land;
Then sketched, as to his home he hurried fast,
This sentimental song—his saddest, and his last:

SONG.

I.

Young thoughts have music in them, love
And happiness their theme;
And music wanders in the wind
That lulls a morning dream.
And there are angel-voices heard,
In childhood's frolic hours,
When life is but an April day
Of sunshine and of showers.

2.

There's music in the forest-leaves
When summer winds are there,
And in the laugh of forest girls
That braid their sunny hair.

156

The first wild-bird that drinks the dew,
From violets of the spring,
Has music in his song, and in
The fluttering of his wing.

3.

There's music in the dash of waves
When the swift bark cleaves their foam;
There's music heard upon her deck,
The mariner's song of home,
When moon and star beams smiling meet
At midnight on the sea—
And there is music—once a week—
In Scudder's balcony.

4.

But the music of young thoughts too soon
Is faint, and dies away,
And from our morning dreams we wake
To curse the coming day.
And childhood's frolic hours are brief,
And oft in after-years
Their memory comes to chill the heart,
And dim the eye with tears.

5.

To-day the forest-leaves are green,
They'll wither on the morrow,

157

And the maiden's laugh be changed ere long
To the widow's wail of sorrow.
Come with the winter snows, and ask,
Where are the forest birds?
The answer is a silent one,
More eloquent than words.

6.

The moonlight music of the waves
In storms is heard no more,
When the living lightning mocks the wreck
At midnight on the shore;
And the mariner's song of home has ceased,
His corse is on the sea—
And music ceases when it rains
In Scudder's balcony.

161

THE RECORDER.

Richard Riker.—The Recorder of the city at the date of the poem. A gentleman of great merit, who had previously filled, and continued to fill through life, offices of the highest trust. In the poem he is sportively made to appear, not in his excellent and estimable personal character, but as the “burden of a merry song”—the embodied representative of a party leader, and of party men in general, in their proverbial obnoxiousness. Like the scape-goat of antiquity, he is forced to bear the sins of others, not his own, and is “sent out into the wilderness of criticism,” with a heavy load of them upon his innocent shoulders. In the duel alluded to on page 162, which took place early in his political career, the result of a political difference of opinion between him and his antagonist, General Robert Swartwout, Mr. Riker was slightly wounded.

A PETITION. BY THOMAS CASTALY.

December 20, 1828.

“On they move
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft Recorders.”
Milton.

“Live in Settle's numbers one day more!”
Pope.

My dear Recorder, you and I
Have floated down life's stream together,
And kept unharmed our friendship's tie
Through every change of Fortune's sky,
Her pleasant and her rainy weather.
Full sixty times since first we met,
Our birthday suns have risen and set,
And time has worn the baldness now
Of Julius Cæsar on your brow;
Your brow, like his, a field of thought,
With broad deep furrows spirit-wrought,

162

Whose laurel-harvests long have shown
As green and glorious as his own;
And proudly would the Cæsar claim
Companionship with Riker's name,
His peer in forehead and in fame.

Both eloquent and learned and brave,
Born to command and skilled to rule,
One made the citizen a slave,
The other makes him more—a fool.
The Cæsar an imperial crown,
His slaves' mad gift, refused to wear;
The Riker put his fool's-cap on,
And found it fitted to a hair;
The Cæsar, though by birth and breeding,
Travel, the ladies, and light reading,
A gentleman in mien and mind,
And fond of Romans and their mothers,
Was heartless as the Arab's wind,
And slew some millions of mankind,
Including enemies and others.
The Riker, like Bob Acres, stood
Edgewise upon a field of blood,
The where and wherefore Swartwout knows,
Pulled trigger, as a brave man should,
And shot—God bless them—his own toes!
The Cæsar passed the Rubicon
With helm, and shield, and breastplate on,
Dashing his war-horse through the waters;

163

The Riker would have built a barge
Or steamboat at the city's charge,
And passed it with his wife and daughters.

But let that pass. As I have said,
There's naught, save laurels, on your head,
And time has changed my clustering hair,
And showered the snow-flakes thickly there;
And though our lives have ever been
As different as their different scene;
Mine more renowned for rhymes than riches,
Yours less for scholarship than speeches;
Mine passed in low-roofed leafy bower,
Yours in high halls of pomp and power,
Yet are we, be the moral told,
Alike in one thing—growing old,
Ripened like summer's cradled sheaf,
Faded like autumn's falling leaf—
And nearing, sail and signal spread,
The quiet anchorage of the dead.
For such is human life, wherever
The voyage of its bark may be,
On home's green-banked and gentle river,
Or the world's shoreless, sleepless sea.

Yes, you have floated down the tide
Of time, a swan in grace and pride
And majesty and beauty, till
The law, the Ariel of your will,

164

Power's best beloved, the law of libel
(A bright link in the legal chain)
Expounded, settled, and made plain,
By your own charge, the juror's Bible,
Has clipped the venomed tongue of slander,
That dared to call you “Party's gander,
The leader of the geese who make
Our city's parks and ponds their home,
And keep her liberties awake
By cackling, as their sires saved Rome.
Gander of Party's pond, wherein
Lizard, and toad, and terrapin,
Your ale-house patriots, are seen,
In Faction's feverish sunshine basking:”
And now, to rend this veil of lies,
Word-woven by your enemies,
And keep your sainted memory free
From tarnish with posterity,
I take the liberty of asking
Permission, sir, to write your life,
With all its scenes of calm and strife,
And all its turnings and its windings,
A poem, in a quarto volume—
Verse, like the subject, blank and solemn,
With elegant appropriate bindings,
Of rat and mole skin the one half,
The other a part fox, part calf.
Your portrait, graven line for line,
From that immortal bust in plaster,

165

The master-piece of Art's great master,
Mr. Praxiteles Browere,

A sculptor, rather mechanical than artistic, famous, for a time, for moulding the busts of notorious men into the immortality of plaster in lieu of marble.

Whose trowel is a thing divine,
Shall smile and bow, and promise there,
And twenty-nine fine forms and faces
(The Corporation and the Mayor),
Linked hand in hand, like Loves and Graces,
Shall hover o'er it, grouped in air,
With wild pictorial dance and song;
The song of happy bees in bowers,
The dance of Guido's graceful Hours,
All scattering Flushing's garden flowers

An allusion to those of Mr. William Prince, near Flushing, Long Island.

Round the dear head they've loved so long.

I know that you are modest, know
That when you hear your merit's praise,
Your cheeks' quick blushes come and go,
Lily and rose-leaf, sun and snow,
Like maidens' on their bridal days.
I know that you would fain decline
To aid me and the sacred Nine,
In giving to the asking earth
The story of your wit and worth;
For if there be a fault to cloud
The brightness of your clear good sense,
It is, and be the fact allowed,
Your only failing—Diffidence!

An amiable weakness—given
To justify the sad reflection,

166

That in this vale of tears not even
A Riker is complete perfection,
A most romantic detestation
Of power and place, of pay and ration;
A strange unwillingness to carry
The weight of honor on your shoulders,
For which you have been named, the very
Sensitive-plant of office-holders,
A shrinking bashfulness, whose grace
Gives beauty to your manly face.
Thus shades the green and glowing vine
The rough bark of the mountain-pine,
Thus round her freedom's waking steel
Harmodius wreathed his country's myrtle:
And thus the golden lemon's peel
Gives fragrance to a bowl of turtle.

True, “many a flower,” the poet sings,
“Is born to blush unseen;”
But you, although you blush, are not
The flower the poets mean.
In vain you wooed a lowlier lot;
In vain you clipped your eagle-wings—
Talents like yours are not forgot
And buried with earth's common things.
No! my dear Riker, I would give
My laurels, living and to live,
Or as much cash as you could raise on
Their value, by hypothecation,

167

To be, for one enchanted hour,
In beauty, majesty, and power,
What you for forty years have been,
The Oberon of life's fairy scene.

An anxious city sought and found you
In a blessed day of joy and pride,
Sceptred your jewelled hand, and crowned
Her chief, her guardian, and her guide.
Honors which weaker minds had wrought
In vain for years, and knelt and prayed for,
Are all your own, unpriced, unbought,
Or (which is the same thing) unpaid for.
Painfully great! against your will
Her hundred offices to hold,
Each chair with dignity to fill,
And your own pockets with her gold:
A sort of double duty, making
Your task a serious undertaking.
With what delight the eyes of all
Gaze on you, seated in your Hall,
Like Sancho in his island, reigning,
Loved leader of its motley hosts
Of lawyers and their bills of costs,
And all things thereto appertaining,
Such as crimes, constables, and juries,
Male pilferers and female furies,
The police and the polissons,
Illegal right and legal wrong,

168

Bribes, perjuries, law-craft, and cunning,
Judicial drollery and punning;
And all the et ceteras that grace
That genteel, gentlemanly place!
Or in the Council Chamber standing
With eloquence of eye and brow,
Your voice the music of commanding,
And fascination in your bow,
Arranging for the civic shows
Your “men in buckram,” as per list,
Your John Does and your Richard Roes,
Those Dummies of your games of whist.
The Council Chamber—where authority
Consists in two words—a majority.
For whose contractors' jobs we pay
Our last dear sixpences for taxes,
As freely as in Sylla's day
Rome bled beneath his lictors' axes.
Where—on each magisterial nose
In colors of the rainbow linger,
Like sunset hues on Alpine snows,
The printmarks of your thumb and finger.
Where he, the wisest of wild-fowl,
Bird of Jove's blue-eyed maid—the owl,
That feathered alderman, is heard
Nightly, by poet's ear alone,
To other eyes and ears unknown,
Cheering your every look and word,
And making, room and gallery through,

169

The loud applauding echoes peal,
Of his “où peut on être mieux
Qu'au sien de sa famille?”

A favorite French air. In English, “Where can one be more happy than in the bosom of one's family?”

Oh, for a herald's skill to rank
Your titles in their due degrees!
At Sing Sing—at the Tradesman's Bank,
In Courts, Committees, Caucuses:
At Albany, where those who knew
The last year's secrets of the great,
Call you the golden handle to
The earthen Pitcher of the State.

Nathaniel Pitcher, then Governor of the State, accused, in like manner, of being under the political control of Martin Van Buren, then on his way to the presidency of the United States.

(Poor Pitcher! that Van Buren ceases
To want its service gives me pain,
'Twill break into as many pieces
As Kitty's of Coleraine.)
At Bellevue, on her banquet-night,
Where Burgundy and business

Mr. Riker was a director in the Tradesmen's Bank, and “ex officio” a visitor to the Sing-Sing Prison, the Bellevue Hospital, etc., and was accused, by his party opponents, of making the civic and social meetings there, of himself and his colleagues, subservient to party purposes.

meet,
On others, at the heart's delight,
The Pewter Mug

The sign conspicuous over the door of a tavern in Frankfort Street, in the rear of Tammany Hall, the frequent resort of politicians in general, and of the Tammany-Hall party in particular.

in Frankfort Street;
From Harlem bridge to Whitehall dock,
From Bloomingdale to Blackwell's Isles,
Forming, including road and rock,
A city of some twelve square miles,
O'er street and alley, square and block,
Towers, temples, telegraphs, and tiles,
O'er wharves whose stone and timbers mock
The ocean's and its navies' shock,
O'er all the fleets that float before her,

170

O'er all their banners waving o'er her,
Her sky and waters, earth and air—
You are lord, for who is her lord mayor?
Where is he? Echo answers, where?
And voices, like the sound of seas,
Breathe in sad chorus, on the breeze,
The Highland mourner's melody—
Oh Hone

An allusion to Philip Hone, then the LATE Mayor of the city, recently, by the party rule of rotation, displaced from an office in which for several preceding years he had won, by his conduct as an upright magistrate, and a noble and generous man, “honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,” from the highest as well as from the humblest of his constituents.

a rie! Oh Hone a rie!
The hymn o'er happy days departed,
The Hope that such again may be,
When power was large and liberal-hearted,
And wealth was hospitality.

One more request, and I am lost,
If you its earnest prayer deny;
It is, that you preserve the most
Inviolable secrecy
As to my plan. Our fourteen wards
Contain some thirty-seven bards
Who, if my glorious theme were known,
Would make it, thought and word, their own,
My hopes and happiness destroy,
And trample with a rival's joy
Upon the grave of my renown.
My younger brothers in the art,
Whose study is the human heart—
Minstrels, before whose spells have bowed
The learned, the lovely, and the proud,
Ere their life's morning hours are gone—

171

Light hearts be theirs, the Muse's boon,
And may their suns blaze bright at noon,
And set without a cloud!

Hillhouse, whose music, like his themes,
Lifts earth to heaven—whose poet-dreams
Are pure and holy as the hymn
Echoed from harps of seraphim,
By hards that drank at Zion's fountains
When glory, peace, and hope, were hers,
And beautiful upon her mountains
The feet of angel messengers.
Bryant, whose songs are thoughts that bless
The heart, its teachers, and its joy,
As mothers blend with their caress
Lessons of truth and gentleness
And virtue for the listening boy
Spring's lovelier flowers for many a day
Have blossomed on his wandering way.
Beings of beauty and decay,
They slumber in their autumn tomb;
But those that graced his own Green River,
And wreathed the lattice of his home,
Charmed by his song from mortal doom,
Bloom on, and will bloom on forever.
And Halleck—who has made thy roof,
St. Tammany! oblivion-proof—
Thy beer illustrious, and thee
A belted knight of chivalry!

172

And changed thy dome of painted bricks
And porter-casks and politics,
Into a green Arcadian vale,
With Stephen Allen

Stephen Allen, Benjamin Bailey, and John Targee, prominent members of the Tammany Society. Mr. Allen became in after-years Mayor of the city.

for its lark,
Ben Bailey's voice its watch-dog's bark,
And John Targee its nightingale.

These, and the other THIRTY-FOUR,
Will live a thousand years or more—
If the world lasts so long. For me,
I rhyme not for posterity,
Though pleasant to my heirs might be
The incense of its praise,
When I, their ancestor, have gone,
And paid the debt, the only one
A poet ever pays.
But many are my years, and few
Are left me ere night's holy dew,
And sorrow's holier tears, will keep
The grass green where in death I sleep.

And when that grass is green above me,
And those who bless me now and love me
Are sleeping by my side,
Will it avail me aught that men
Tell to the world with lip and pen
That once I lived and died?
No: if a garland for my brow
Is growing, let me have it now,

173

While I'm alive to wear it;
And if, in whispering my name,
There's music in the voice of fame
Like Garcia's,

Signorina Garcia, then attached to her father's opera company, soon after to become the world-renowned and lamented cantatrice

let me hear it!

The Christmas holidays are nigh,
Therefore till New-Year's Eve, good-by,
Then “revenons à nos moutons,”
Yourself and aldermen—meanwhile,
Look o'er this letter with a smile;
And keep the secret of its song
As faithfully, but not as long,
As you have guarded from the eyes
Of editorial Paul Prys,
And other meddling, murmuring claimants,
Those Eleusinian mysteries,
The city's cash receipts and payments.

Yours ever,
T. C.

177

YOUNG AMERICA.

I.

It is a BOY whom fourteen years have seen,
Smiling, with them, on spring's returning green,
A bonny boy, with eye-delighting eyes,
Sparkling as stars, and blue as summer's skies,
With face, like April's, bright in smiles or tears,
His laugh a song—his step the forest deer's,
With heart as pure and liberal as the air,
And voice of sweetest tone, and bright gold hair
In thick curls clustering round his even brow,
And dimpled cheek—how calm he slumbers now!

The sentry stars in heaven's blue above,
Sleep their sweet daybreak sleep, their watch withdrawn,
And lovely as a bride from dream of love,
Blushing and blooming, wakes the summer dawn;
Winds—woods—and waters of the brook and bay
Wake at the fanning of the wings of day,

178

And birds and bells, in garden, tree, and tower,
Bow to the bidding of the wakening hour,
And breathe, the Hamlet's happy homes among
Morn's fragrant music from their lips of Song.

Within the loveliest of wayside bowers,
The summer home of loveliest leaves and flowers,
Cradled on rose-leaves, curtained round with vines,
And canopied by branches of a tree
Whose buds and blossoms charm the wandering bee,
In deep and dreaming sleep the youth reclines.
Sunbeams, wind-cooled, their fond caressing glow,
Twine, with leaf-shadows, the green roof below,
In wedded love-clasp of sweet shade and light,
The unwoven harmony of the dark and bright,
And blend within, around it, and above,
Their balm, their bloom, their beauty, and their joy,
Their watching—sleepless as the brooding dove,
Their bounty—boundless as the fairy love
Of Queen Titania for her Henchman Boy.

II.

The doors are open in the house of prayer,
The morning worshippers are kneeling there
In supplicating harmony, beneath
The intoning organ's incense-bearing breath,

179

That aids their hymning voices, and around
Moves in the might and majesty of sound.
The pages of the Holy Book are read,
The solemn blessing of the Priest is said,
Departing footsteps gently press the floor,
And silence seals and guards the consecrated door.
Along his homeward pathway, lingering slow,
His dark weeds tokening a mourner's woe,
The Gospel-Teacher comes. The path inclines
His steps beside the cradle-bower of vines
Where sleeps the boy. A moment's mute surprise,
And the mazed mourner greets, with grateful eyes,
The enlivening presence of that cherub face,
Delighted in its loveliness to trace
The memorial beauty of his own lost boy,
A blossomed bud, death-doomed, in its spring-time of joy;
And says, in whispers, “Would that I might wake,
And woo, and win him, for his soul's sweet sake,
To make my home his cloister, and entwine
All his life's hopes and happiness with mine.
And with him win, dear daughter of the sky!
Handmaid of Heaven! immortal Piety!
Thy visitings, and joy to see thee bring
In sisterly embrace, wing folding wing,
Meek Faith, sweet Hope, and Charity divine,
With thee to consecrate that home a shrine
Among the holiest where the adorer kneels,
Listening the coming of thy chariot-wheels.

180

Then the gay sportive dreams, enwreathing now
Their frolic fancies round the slumberer's brow,
Should yield to dreams of angels entering in
His young heart's Eden, unprofaned by sin;
Then should his pleasant couch of leaves and flowers
Yield willing homage to the bliss of bowers
More beautiful than hers, and only given
In visions of the scenery of heaven;
Then should the music now around him heard,
The wind-harp's song, the song of bee and bird,
Yield to thy chorused carollings sublime,
And sky-endomed cathedral's chant and chime.

And then the longing of his life should be
To praise, to love, to worship thine and thee,
And when, my pastoral task of duty done,
I rest beneath the cold sepulchral stone,
Be his the delegated power to grace,
In surpliced sanctity, thy Altar-place;
To feed thy chosen flock with heavenly food,
Be their kind Shepherd, gentle, generous, good,
And, in the language of the Minstrel's lay,
“Lure them to brighter worlds, and lead the way.”

Hark! a bugle's echo comes,
Hark! a fife is singing,
Hark! the roll of far-off drums
Through the air is ringing!

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The mourner turns—looks—listens, and is gone,
In quiet heedlessness the Boy sleeps on.

III.

Nearer the bugle's echo comes,
Nearer the fife is singing,
Near and more near the roll of drums
Through the air is ringing.

War! it is thy music proud,
Wakening the brave-hearted,
Memories—hopes—a glorious crowd,
At its call have started.

Memories of our sires of old,
Who, oppression-driven,
High their rainbow flag unrolled
To the sun and sky of heaven.

Memories of the true and brave,
Who, at Honor's bidding,
Stepped, their Country's life to save,
To war as to their wedding.

Memories of many a battle-plain,
Where, their life-blood flowing,
Made green the grass, and gold the grain,
Above their grave-mounds growing.

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Hopes—that the children of their prayers,
With them in valor vieing,
May do as noble deeds as theirs,
In living and in dying.

And make, for children yet to come,
The land of their bequeathing
The imperial and the peerless home
Of happiest beings breathing.

For this the warrior-path we tread,
The battle-path of duty,
And change, for field and forest-bed,
Our bowers of love and beauty.

Music! bid thy minstrels play
No tunes of grief or sorrow,
Let them cheer the living brave to-day,
They may wail the dead to-morrow.

Such were the words, unvoiced by lip or tongue,
The thought-enwoven themes, the mental song
Of One, high placed, beside the slumberer's bower,
In the stern, silent chieftainship of power.
A War-king, seated on his saddle throne,
A listener to no counsels but his own,
The soldier leader of a soldier band,
Whose prescient skill, quick eye, and brief command,

183

Have won for him, on many a field of fame,
The immortality of a victor's name.
His troops, in thousands, now are marching by,
Heart-homage seen in each saluting eye,
And sword, and lance, and banner, bowing down
In tributary grace, before his bright renown.
And on, and on, as rank on rank appears,
Come, fast and loud, the thrice-repeated cheers
From voices of brave men whose life-long cry
Has been with him to live, for him to die.
Their plumes and pennons dancing in the breeze,
With leaves and flowers of overarching trees,
Timing their steps to tunes of flute and fife,
And trump and drum, the joy of soldier life,
While o'er them wave, proud banner of the free!
Thy sky-born stars and glorious colors three,
All beauteous in each interwoven hue
Of summer's rainbow, spanning earth and sea,
The rose's red and white, the violet's heavenly blue,
Emblems of valor, purity, and truth,
Long may they charm the air in ever-smiling youth!
And now the rearmost files are hurrying by,
Closing the gorgeous scene of pomp and pageantry;
And far, far off, on wings of distance borne,
Speed the faint echoes of the trump and horn,
Plaintively breathing partings and farewells,
Solemn and sad as tones of tocsin-bells,
But triumphed o'er by voices that prolong
The wild war-music of the manlier song,

184

That bids the soldier's heart beat quick and gay,
The song of “O'er the hills and far away.”

And now, beside the slumberer's couch of leaves,
His parting web of thought the warrior chieftain weaves.

How sweetly the Boy in the beauty is sleeping
Of Life's sunny morning of hope and of youth!
May his guardian angels, their watch o'er him keeping,
Keep his evening and noon in the pathways of truth!
Ah me! what delight it would give me to wake him,
And lead him wherever my life-banners wave,
O'er the pathways of glory and honor to take him,
And teach him the lore of the bold and the brave;

And when the war-clouds and their fierce storm of water,
O'er the land that we love their outpourings shall cease,
Bid him bear to her Ark, from her last field of slaughter,
Upon Victory's wings, the green olive of Peace;

And when the death-note of my bugle has sounded,
And memorial tears are embalming my name,
By young hearts like his may the grave be surrounded
Where I sleep my last sleep in the sunbeams of fame.

185

Summoned to duty by his charger's neighs,
The only summons that his pride obeys,
He bows his farewell blessing, and is gone—
In quiet heedlessness the Boy sleeps on.

IV.

Merrily bounds the morning bark
Along the summer sea,
Merrily mounts the morning lark
The topmost twig on tree,
Merrily smiles the morning rose
The morning sun to see,
And merrily, merrily greets the rose
The honey-seeking bee.
But merrier, merrier far are these,
Who bring, on the wings of the morning breeze,
A music sweeter than her own,
A happy group of loves and graces,
Graceful forms and lovely faces,
All in gay delight outflown;
Outflown from their school-room cages,
School-room rules, and school-room pages,
Lovely in their teens and tresses,
Summer smiles, and summer dresses,
Joyous in their dance and song,

186

With sweet sisterly caresses,
Arm in arm they speed along
(“Now pursuing, now retreating,
Now in circling troops they meet,
To brisk notes in cadence beating,
Glance their many twinkling feet.
Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare.
Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay,
With arms sublime, that float upon the air);”
She comes—the gentle Lady of my Lay,
Well pleased that, for her welcome to prepare,
I borrow music from the Muse of Gray.

His heroine was the lovely Paphian Queen,
Mine seems the Huntress of the Sylvan scene,
The chaste Diana, with her Nymphs, in gay
And graceful beauty keeping holiday.
Sudden she pauses in the race of joy,
Around the Cradle Bower where sleeps the Boy,
And, with a sunny smile of gladness, sees
His golden ringlets, on the dancing breeze,
Shading his eyelids—and, with quick delight,
Bids her wild Nymphs to wing their merry flight
Home to their morning nests, and leave her care
To watch the slumberer in his rose-leafed chair.
He, in his beauty, to her fancy seems
To be the young Endymion of her dreams
Of yester-evening, when, alone and still,
Waiting the coming of the whip-poor-will,

187

Our climate's nightingale, her garden bird,
From lips unseen, unknown, this whispered song she heard:

“The summer winds are wandering here
In mountain freshness, pure and free,
And all that to the eye are dear
In rock and torrent, flower and tree,
Upon the gazing stranger come,
Till, in his starlight dreams at even,
It seems another Eden-home,
Reared by the word—the breath of Heaven.

“To-morrow—and the stranger's gone,
And other scenes, as bright as this,
May win it from his bosom soon,
And dim its wild-wood loveliness.
But ever round this spot his thought
Will be—while Memory's leaves are green;
The fairy scene may be forgot,
But not the Fairy of the scene.

“The song she sang, the lip that breathed it,
The cheek of rose, the speaking eye,
The brow of snow, the hair that wreathed it,
In their young life and purity,
Will dwell within his heart among
His holiest, longest cherished things,

188

Themes worthy of a worthier song,
Dear Lady of the mountain springs.”

And who is she—the Fairy of the scene?
A bright-eyed, beautiful maiden of eighteen,
Lovely and learnèd, and well “skilled to rule,”
The Lady-Mentor of a village school,
“Teaching young Girls' ideas how to shoot;
A tree of knowledge, rich in flowers and fruit,
A model heroine in mien and mind,
An “Admirable Crichton” crinolined,
And author of a charming Book that sings
Delightfully concerning wedding-rings,
Tracing the progress of the lightning-dart
Between the bridal finger and the heart,
And proving the arithmetic untrue
Which teaches us that one and one make two,
Whereas the marriage-ring is worn to prove
That two are one—the Algebra of Love.

Such is the Lady of my song, and now
She gazes on her young Endymion's brow,
And, fancying—by a sudden thought beguiled,
Herself a mother bending o'er her child,
Unconsciously imprints upon his eyes
A kiss—brimful of all the charities,
Sacredly secret, eloquently mute,
Yet “Musical as is Apollo's lute,”

189

Of power to lure a swan from off the lake,
Or wooing bluebird from an April tree,
Upsprings the Boy, exclaiming, “I'm awake!”
And shakes his golden locks in frolic glee.

One look—and, like an arrow from the string,
Away the maiden went, on laughing wing,
Graciously leaving, ere she homeward flew,
On the green turf impearled with drops of dew,
Farewell impressions of the prettiest foot
That ever graced and charmed a Gaiter Boot.

V.

The awakened Boy, not fond of early rising,
Resumed his pillow, thus soliloquizing:

“That Lady's pleasant smile and ruby lip
Might hope to win my heart's companionship,
But for the memory of that morn which proved
That he is happiest who has never loved.
That morn, when I, within a Lady's bower,
Offered my heart, hand, and a handsome dower
To ONE who, to my great and sad surprise,
Told me, with mischief in her laughing eyes,
That she was not at all inclined to marry,
And added, in a most provoking tone,

190

That Young America had better ‘tarry
At Jericho until his beard was grown,’
And like his eagle wear upon his wings
Feathers, before he proffered wedding-rings;
That purpling grapes looked lovely on their vines,
But she preferred them perfected in wines;
That on my cheek the down was fair to see,
But she admired the full-blown favoris,
And rather liked in men a modest pride
Of mustache—if artistically dyed.”

She then, dismissing me in queenly state,
Locked of her Eden the unfeeling gate,
And I—a victim to Love's cruel dart,
Went—to the Opera—with a broken heart!

Along thy peopled solitude—Broadway!
I walked, a desolate man, day after day,
With downcast eyes and melancholy brow,
Until a lady's letter asked me why
I passed her ladyship without a bow;
To which I sent the following reply,
My earliest-born attempt at poetry:

“The heart hath sorrows of its own,
And griefs it veils from all,
And tears, close-hidden from the world,
In solitude will fall;

191

And when its thoughts of agony
Upon the bosom lie,
Even Beauty in her loveliness
May pass unheeded by.

“'Tis only on the happy
That she never looks in vain,
To them her smiles are rainbow hopes,
New-born of summer rain,
And their glad hearts will worship her,
As one whose home is heaven;
A being of a brighter world,
To earth a season given.

“That time with me has been and gone,
And life's best music now
Is but the winter's wind that bends
The leafless forest-bough.
And I would shun, if that could be,
The light of young blue eyes—
They bring back hours I would forget,
And painful memories.

“Yet, lady, though too few and brief,
There are bright moments still;
When I can free my prisoned thoughts,
And wing them where I will,
And then thy smiles come o'er my heart
Like sunbeams o'er the sea,

192

And I can bow as once I bowed
When all was well with me.”

And now farewell to Rhyme! and welcome Reason!
'Tis past—my early manhood's pleasant season;
If morning dreams, that visit our closed eyes,
Changed, when we wake to Life's realities,
I might become a Soldier of renown,
Or wear a Preacher's or a Teacher's gown;
For all three in my dreams since rose the sun,
Have sought to make me their adopted one,
Destined to run the race that each has run;
But my Ambition's leaves no more are green,
In one brief month my age will be Fifteen.
I've seen the world, and by the world been seen,
And now am speeding fast upon the way
To the calm, quiet evening of my day;
There but remains one promise to fulfil,
I bow myself obedient to its will,
And am prepared to settle down in life
By wooing—winning—wedding A Rich Wife.

University of Virginia Library

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

MARCO BOZZARIS. Marco Bozzaris, one of the best and bravest of the modern Greek chieftains. He fell in a night attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient Platæa, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory.

ALNWICK CASTLE. Alnwick Castle, Northumberlandshire, a seat of the Duke of Northumberland. Written in October, 1822, after visiting the “Home of the Percy's high-born race.”

BURNS.

WYOMING. The allusion in the following stanzas can be understood by those only who have read Campbell's beautiful poem, “Gertrude of Wyoming:” but who has not read it?

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE,

OF NEW YORK, SEPT., 1820.

TWILIGHT.

PSALM CXXXVII.

TO ---.

THE FIELD OF THE GROUNDED ARMS.

SARATOGA.

RED JACKET. “Red Jacket” appeared originally in 1828, soon after the publication of Mr. Cooper's “Notions of the Americans.”

A Chief of the Indian Tribes, the Tuscaroras. ON LOOKING AT HIS PORTRAIT BY WEIR.

LOVE.

A SKETCH.

DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

MAGDALEN. Written in 1823, for a love-stricken young officer on his way to Greece. The reader will have the kindness to presume that he died there.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

FROM THE ITALIAN.

TRANSLATION.

FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE.

WOMAN.

WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF AN UNKNOWN LADY.

A POET'S DAUGHTER.

FOR THE ALBUM OF MISS ---, AT THE REQUEST OF HER FATHER.

CONNECTICUT.

FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

XXXII.

MARCO BOZZARIS.

Marco Bozzaris, one of the best and bravest of the modern Greek chieftains. He fell in a night attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient Platæa, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory.

ALNWICK CASTLE.

Alnwick Castle, Northumberlandshire, a seat of the Duke of Northumberland. Written in October, 1822, after visiting the “Home of the Percy's high-born race.”

WYOMING.

The allusion in the following stanzas can be understood by those only who have read Campbell's beautiful poem, “Gertrude of Wyoming:” but who has not read it?

RED JACKET.

“Red Jacket” appeared originally in 1828, soon after the publication of Mr. Cooper's “Notions of the Americans.”

MAGDALEN.

Written in 1823, for a love-stricken young officer on his way to Greece. The reader will have the kindness to presume that he died there.

TO WALTER BOWNE, ESQ.,

Walter Bowne, then, and for two years previous, a Senator at Albany, and member of the Council of Appointment. He was afterward Mayor of New York, where he died in August, 1846.