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III.
Edge deftly with me into “Floral Hall,”Where toil's handwriting, on each crowded wall,
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And finds the greater part not out-of-door.
The bread loaf, in an unobtrusive place,
Displays its cheerful, honest featured face,
A coin of triumph, from the mintage struck,
Of chemistry, skill, faithfulness, and luck.
What statesman, moulding laws, can understand
The far-eyed cunning of a housewife's hand?
What queen her subjects with more anxious eyes
Can watch, than she her “emptyings,” as they rise?
What conquest gives what warrior more delight
Than she has, when her baking comes out right?
(Ah me! we oft know not, till over-late,
What things are truly small, and what are great!
'Tis sometimes hard to tell, in God's vast sky,
What's actually low, and what is high!)
Here rests, not over-free from pain and ache,
Bread's proud, rich, city-nurtured cousin, Cake:
Gay-plumaged as his sisters are, the pies—
Food chiefly for the palate and the eyes.
These canned fruits, like the four-and-twenty birds
Imprisoned in the nursery ballad's words,
Will be expected, when at last released,
To sing sweet taste-songs for some Winter feast.
Proudly displayed, rich trophies there are found
Of the fierce needle's thread-strewn battle-ground:
This is a bed-quilt—its credentials show—
Stitched by a grandame, centuries ago;
That is embroidery, made this very year,
By some unteened miss, who is lurking near.
The picture family is abroad to-day,
Dressed up in every gaze-enticing way:
Here an oil-painting pleads for truthful art,
Wrought by some local genius with his heart;
He sighs to see his soul misunderstood,
And hear them call the picture “pr'tty good.”
Work on, poor boy, with courage that endures:
Stars have burst forth from blacker clouds than yours.
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And make the canvas speak the thoughts they find!
The eyes may not be very far away
That will, on some glad, unexpected day,
Bring other eyes within your strange control,
And lift your name along-side of your soul.
This is the town photographer's display;
Who shows his showiest patrons here to-day.
He places in his pillory of frames
The faces of the town's most talked-of names:
The mayor, with his eyebrows stiffly arched,
And collar unconditionally starched,
Shows, through this careful chemical design,
His last majority, in every line.
His wife hangs in an advantageous place,
With new-discovered beauties in her face,
From the sun-artist's thrifty, cunning trade:
Photography, you are a flatt'ring jade!
Some of their subjects dangling here are found—
A settlement of faces clusters round—
A kind of kingdom, as it were, in sport:
The mayor holding photographic court.
Each one in half-fictitious splendor 's dressed,
And each is doing his pictorial best.
The artist, grinning down a look of gall,
Worked for these baby-pictures most of all;
Dear, dear! how low he had to bow and scrape,
To keep his infant popinjays in shape,
And hold the sinless villain's glance in check,
To save his shadow enterprise from wreck!
To keep this little wandering Arab-eye
He made himself a miscellaneous guy;
He was this petty tyrant's vassal true,
His portrait-painter, and court-jester, too;
And, that a first-class picture might be done,
Made himself into a ridiculous one;
Said “Hooty-tooty,” and that sort of thing,
And made the rattle-box insanely sing.
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(For children's features are the facial flowers),
Come with me, where white hands have thickly strown
The horticultural house-pets they have grown.
What are but weeds beneath a southern sky,
Are here, as house-plants, rated precious-high;
As villains go to uncongenial climes,
But, being less known, have better social times.
(So our old Mullein, here of deference scant,
Struts round in England as “The Velvet Plant;”
And “Cactus”—Thistle when in south-land met—
Is here a prickly flower, to keep and pet.)
But woman's wand-like nature can, indeed,
Make beauty spring from e'en a common weed;
How much more, when, around some flower-gem rare
She throws the setting of her tender care!
Sweet window-gardeners! with dainty arts
Tracing the floral language of your hearts,
Making The Home, with these gay-liveried slaves,
A bloom-fed island 'mid the winter-waves;
In which the frost-bit caller can commune
With bright hours stolen from some day in June.
'Tis your sweet, cultured taste that bids us call
This niche of labor's temple “Floral Hall.”
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