New poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

'T is one thing, to set the light pen up and going;
Another, to get the bright thought-stream to flowing;
A third, and most fearful of all, is the showing
Of what thought and pen have been doing!
For motion to use may not always be tending;
And evil with good is so strong in their blending,
The newest-made things often want so much mending,
They bring less of glory than ruing.

There 's many a move, as a harmless beginning,
That opens a path at first flowery and winning,
Which leads to confusion, repentance, or sinning,
As well with the pen as its user!
The thought should our spirit restrain as a fetter,
For fear she step forward too free in the letter,
Till one prove in fault but the other's abettor,
And each by its partner the loser.

Sometimes a weak brain will its owner inveigle,
Till, thinking the sparrow may cope with the eagle,
Or hunting the lion be done with the beagle,
We aim with high matters to grapple.
It thus, like the serpent through Paradise gliding,
The part with the sting in sweet Eden-bloom hiding,
Allures, while we listen, till, charmed and confiding,
We 've tasted the fair, fatal apple!

Then, O, as the first burst of knowledge comes o'er us,
We enter the waste lying open before us,—
Whilst angels of pity and mercy deplore us,—
To wander unknown and unknowing.
And, Charity's mantle too scant for concealing
The leanness and lameness whereof we need healing,
We die—in our line—of a keen want of feeling,
To dust and oblivion going.

We sometimes, enamoured of measure and rhyming,
With fancies high-heated for moral subliming,
Run off our slim lines, that, for smoothness and chiming,
Seem bright as new darts from Apollo:
And some of us, bent upon heavily prosing,
Produce crops of leaves, good as poppies for closing
The eyes they come under; for nodding or dozing
Is sure their unfolding to follow.

Then some, who are wisely intent on eschewing
The sin of creating, apply to reviewing,
With pen ever ready for blacking or bluing,
As self—bias—whim, is the leader.
We grasp our new subject for pinching or puffing,
We seize our young game for dissecting or stuffing,
As Puss caught the mousie she 's fondling and cuffing
In play, while she means it shall feed her.

And others possess a sly manner of trimming
Between guilt and innocence, cautiously skimming
The froth on the deep stream of letters a-swimming,
For vessels just fitted to hold it:—
The waters want those of more strength, weight, and tightness;
The foam gets abroad by the merit of lightness,
While flatulent words, heaped like bubbles in brightness,
Are nothing as soon as we 've sold it.

Some edit,—compile,—and are given to breaking
The Decalogue's bar against lawlessly taking;
The things of another with brigandage making
To serve us, by dint of freebooting.
With cannibal goût we devour one another,—
We snatch from a poor scribbling sister or brother
Their offspring of mind; and its father or mother
Leave robbed, without chance for disputing!

The treasures of thought, that another, by mining
Or diving, has won, and made pure by refining,
As jewels, sans cérémonie, for combining,
We place in our own empty casket.
And then far and wide do we modestly send them,
E'en unto their owners!—and kindly commend them,
As worth the full price at which now we would vend them,
To furnish our store and our basket.

Defying both Gospel and Law to restrain us,
We clip from whatever we find, to sustain us;
Nor suffer a twinge of the conscience to pain us,
Nor blush for not asking permission.
With self the one god we implicitly follow,
Like squirrels we gnaw, till your nut-shell is hollow;
And we've chipped the kernel in morsels, to swallow,
To keep us in ease and condition.

We 've with us so much of this light-fingered gentry,
You want on your volumes, far more than your entry,
A guard to be sure as a bolt or a sentry,
To know that the fruit of your labor
Shall not, in your presence, as soon as you 're able
To view it in shadow, be snatched from your table,
And shown in its substance, that, tactile and stable,
Will nourish your vigilant neighbour!

And volumes of moral malaria, feeding
The lungs of the soul, till they bring them to bleeding,
By some are evolved, whence a poisonous reading
Of hectic must prove the beginning.
I therefore would warn you,—both sexes,—all ages,—
Beware of our tomes,—of our chapters,—our pages!
Your fever but grows with the mania that rages
For works new, delusive, and winning.

A few, holding pens charged with lightning and thunder,
Might sweeten the air, if they were not kept under
The fear of too audibly rending asunder
The masses of pestilent vapor
That roll from the presses, with steam-power to throw them
Wherever misfortune may chance to bestow them,
Among the unwary, or ill wind may blow them,
In parcels of thick-printed paper.

The truth is, for want of a better devotion,
The world has become so devoted to motion,
That minds roll about, like the billows of ocean,
And seem not to know what should stay them.
They doubt of their deeds that unerring Recorder
Who spake, and the waves sank from tumult to order;
Whilst folly's old father lays deeper and broader
His snare and its lure, to betray them.

And now, my kind friends,—if, indeed, 'mid the many
By others possessed, I may yet number any,—
I leave my old pen—for I'm not worth a penny—
To you, as my only possession.
'T is weary and worn; for it long has been quibbling
Without and with measure, in profitless dribbling
Of ink into lines not to pay for their scribbling!
I fold it in this,—my Confession.