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11

OCCASIONAL PIECES.

“I am nae Poet, in a sense,
But just a Rhymer like, by chance,
An' hae to learning nae pretence,
But what the matter?
Whene'er my muse does on me glance,
I jungle at her,”
Burns.

13

THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

In the “far west”—once reckoned very far—
Our neighbor now, by the fleet railroad car—
Are certain hillocks, rounded in their shape,
That long have set the curious world agape,
Provoking questionings—conundrums rare—
Regarding how they could have happened there;
Who could have built them—what they did it for—
Whether of peace they grew, or if of war;
Whether they held the bones of braves in trust,
Or were some ancient Boffin's piles of dust.
“What mean they?” Science cried, with eager glow,
And Echo answered, “Really, I don't know.”
Savants have tried to fathom them in vain,
Receiving little for their care and pain:
A bone, perhaps, an antique pipe of clay,
A hatchet made of flint,—yet happy they,
For on the bracket of a single tooth
14

They'd hang immortal theories, forsooth,
Of those who might have lived beyond the flood,
And held their tenure in the primal mud,
Therein abiding in that distant while,
—Dying as soon as they had “made their pile,”—
Leaving behind them no authentic trace
If ape or polliwog began the race.
This hint suggests the sympathetic fact
That we with like constructive purpose act,
Heaping up mounds of character for those
Who, after us, our status would disclose,
And scratch beneath the surface, like a hen,
To find out what we were or might have been.
We toil and toil with pertinacious might
To bring our structures to the proper height:
Some scarce perceived above the sod to lift,
Some soaring high with industry and thrift,
Some with benevolence and virtue wrought,
Some beautiful with wisdom and with thought;
While others—sad reflection!—highest reared,
Will have the meanest showing, it is feared,
—A sordid, selfish, fraudulent offence,—
Procuring fame, like goods, by false pretence.
I've often wondered if, from some high sphere,
Angels take cognizance of doings here;
And if they do, what must their notions be
Of what they guess, at times, and what they see,
As, bending o'er the rim of some fair star,
They spend their time divining what we are,
And what we are doing on the ball below
15

In our excited, strange, and restless show,
Hither and thither rushing, round and round,
Each striving, driving, piling up his mound.
Happy our fame if from its heart exhumed
One fossil flower is found that erewhile bloomed,—
One seed of Truth that in the air may grow,
And vital energy and fruitage show;
Or from its soil one tree be found to spring,
That gratefully abroad its shade may fling,
Beneath whose shelter humble souls may rest
In sweet contentedness and pleasure blest.
We glance about, as on our spades we lean,
And mark the toil of others in the scene,
Each piling on, with busy hand and brain,
Some height of honor or of place to gain.
A welcome privilege, the nonce, is ours
—Granted in boon by overruling powers—
To leave our own small mounds of love or cares,
And look upon, and be the judge of, theirs!
Just as in neighborhoods where every one
Watches for others' faults to pounce upon,
And, in the scrutinizing zeal that's shown,
Forgets, the moment, foibles of his own.
Here Greed's contestants every effort make
All things that come within their reach to take,
Toiling, with aching head and hardening heart,
In known and unknown courses of the mart;
Selling their comfort and their spirit's peace
To swell the measure of a rich increase;
16

With not a thought save on accruing dimes,
The chink of Mammon drowning heavenly chimes;
With sacrifice of conscience, early seared,
And justice seen through eyes corrupt and bleared.
The late Tom Walker, everybody sees,
Sold not himself more patently than these,
Although the fiend may not the mortgage close,
As terms are easier in these days than those!
We pick their mounds to pieces when they die,
To see what underneath the crust may lie,
—What trace of character may there remain,—
Alas! we have the western mounds again:
Lots of the dirt, but here and there a speck
Of native worth, surviving honor's wreck,
A few worn bones of principle and worth,
The rest all selfishness and yellow earth.
The Politician with his wary eye
Watches the changes of the party sky,
And plans his tactics to preserve his place
E'en though his country tremble with disgrace.
Like the old vicar of the church of Bray
He trims his sails to winds from any way,
Ready to change as parties make or break,
True to himself whatever course they take.
He pulls all strings that bear upon the dime,
And crawls unshrinking through the dirt and slime;
Thinks he's a statesman, bound in fame to shine,
But this no more than buttermilk is wine—
A wretched shoddy for the statesman's gown
Stuffed out to win the homage of the town.
17

('Tis needless, maybe, to proclaim the fact,
But he with our pure party doesn't act.)
He rears a mound symmetrical and high,
A goodly outside to the careless eye;
One honest kick when he has fled away,
And what a mass offensive greets the day!—
Falsehood and cunning, perfidy and greed,
With not a thing that might for mercy plead.
The Quack—of whate'er name—his craft applies,
And all the cavil of the world defies;
Isms or medicine pours without a stint
Down human throats through avenues of print,
And gains his point of influence or fame,
His gilded trappings covering up his shame!
We plodders by the way must seek retreat
When his fast horses prance adown the street,
With liveried servants, and such thin veneer
As makes pretence like verity appear.
Or if the quack affects no glittering pride,
Choosing in less pretentious garb to stride,
Alike veneer conceals the fraud below,
And if 'tis false the world don't care to know,
Taking in blindly that which credence fills,
And bolting false philosophy or pills!
The quack's mound rises, shadowing the land,
Of fabric fair and architecture grand,
Covered by gilt, in ostentatious guise,
A specious bid for favor in our eyes.
What are its contents when, in after day,
The shell remorselessly is torn away?—
18

Pills, stock, and heresies, humbug and pretence,
Without a show of honesty or sense!
The one who yields himself to Fashion's art,
And to his tailor renders up his heart,
Plies his faint brains, in emulous emprise,
By stunning trim his manhood to disguise;
Succeeding in his effort, day by day,
And butterflying all his life away.
Or Pleasure's votary, whose constant care
Is in some “high old time” to take a share,
And in the crazed abandon of the strife
Forget the grand realities of life;
Steeps his weak soul in sensual delight,
And yields himself a slave to appetite.
(O, what a wretched fallacy is this,
That leads him wildered by this road to bliss;
To find, at last, at no far distant day,
That “good times,” in the aggregate, don't pay!)
The puzzled seeker might their mounds invade
And find few obstacles resist the spade—
A tailor's bill, unpaid, a fancy tie,
A willow flask—exhaling ancient rye!
The Honest Man (self-styled), within the law,
Enacts his part without a single flaw.
He notes distinctly the dividing line
Where the illegal and the legal join,
And plants his toes with microscopic care,
Fearing to trespass by a single hair;
Then mortgages forecloses with a smile,
19

And big per cents he heaps upon his pile,
Doing whate'er the law will let him do,
—Devouring widows and their houses too,—
Until he dies, his mound of shapely grace
Revealing not a blemish we may trace.
The pick betrays him, and, alone, descried,
Is what he reached and took from t'other side.
And all are balanced by some humble soul,
Whose life is spent 'neath virtue's grand control,
Who, from the love and wish of doing good,
Expands in one sublime beatitude;
Seeking no glory, but, in noiseless way,
Shedding abroad rare blessing day by day,—
As some sweet rill may make a desert bloom,
And glad its life with verdure and perfume,
The world unheeding that which so doth bless,
By the still mission of unselfishness,
Until it shrinks beneath the fervent sun,
And then is felt the service it has done.
So are the good remembered when they're past,
And all their worth is valued at the last.
Thus builders pile their mounds of mind or pelf,
And each in character transmits himself;
None moundless, though diversity we trace,
And difference in altitude or grace;
Piled high with care, cupidity or pride,
With worldly hopes and aims identified,
Or built of Truths that high their summits raise,
Their beauty gladdening the seeker's gaze.
20

That mound is highest as its base is spread,
When towers among the clouds its lofty head.
This fact recalls the antiquated myth
Of the old devotee, of zealous pith,
Who, with a power by holy frenzy given,
Resolved to build a mound from earth to heaven.
No joint-stock matter this,—though not more wild
Than many by which people are beguiled;
Man-traps, approved and chartered by the State,
That, like old Samson's foemen lie in wait,
All lovely in the specious dress of ink,
Until the bubble bursts and down they sink;
The ancient zealot was a grasping elf,
And chose to corner all the stock himself.
And first he drew a circle on the ground
To form the area of his mighty mound.
His stakes being driven he took off his coat,
To his grand work his muscle to devote,
Bending his back with vigor to the task,
Without a question of success to ask.
There's nought like pious muscle to effect
What shrewd religious thinking may project.
Up rose the heap beneath his sturdy might,
Towering and towering to exalted height,
And still he toiled, with a persistent will,
His self-appointed mission to fulfil,—
Smiling to see it rise in upper air,
The bantling of his effort and his prayer.
At length the earth refused atop to stay—
The base too narrow for his grand essay.
21

Fast as he piled, the sand in drifts did meet,
In crawling eddies, round his stinted feet,
Suggesting plainly he should “change his base”
Ere he could hope to reach the upper space.
It is not told how he the land procured
By which his future triumph was assured,
But, gaining it, he backward made a move,
His heart and eyes fixed hopefully above.
He would not let the edge of his intent
Be turned by any temporal accident,
And so he labored, moving backward still,
As loftier rose his life-embodied hill,
And, when its summit reached the upper deep,
The base comprised the whole world in its sweep!
And then a glory born of joy complete
Filled all his heart with satisfaction sweet;
He'd made his pile by strength devotion lent,
Then died contented, though not worth a cent.
He might have climbed his hill to endless day,
But chose to go the customary way.
From all of which I'd have this manifest—
That every one should do his “level best,”
And make a mound symmetrical and high,
His worth and action to exemplify.
Not bidding for a loud posthumous fame,
But emblemizing deeds much more than name.
It might be pleasant, with our love of praise,
To have admiring crowds their plaudits raise;
But better far than this, as one can deem,
Is the grand fact of being what we seem.
22

We may make money, such of us as can,
And ne'er forget a moment we are Man;
Such generous, noble souls as you and I
Would to rare uses make the money fly.
Fortune, howe'er, has ever held in trust
My portion of the soul-corrupting dust,
Fearing, 'twould seem, my lavishness might tend
Too much in acts benevolent to spend.
Grand are those souls, on whom is poured the pelf,
Who lose no portion of their better self!
E'en Impecunius such bestowal sees,
And makes no growl at Fortune's rough decrees,
Investing, with unstinted bounty, such,
With dimes his itching fingers may not touch.
Be politicians,—patriots good and true,—
Your country calls especially to you;
But not as demagogues to trade and prate,
And let yourself and yours precede the state,
Abusing privilege your station lends,
And looking out for parasites and friends.
Be devotees as pious as you may,
But pray put bigotry at once away;
Let your devotion, pure, to heaven ascend,
And love to all your earthly doings lend.
Be fashionable, if your tastes incline,
Though better not in borrowed plumage shine.
Remember foppishness shows no advance,
And good taste never means extravagance;
Money may find a more exalted use
Than hatching goslings from a tailor's goose.
I'd have true Manhood evermore pervade
23

Each art, profession, enterprise, or trade,
And true nobility of soul enthroned,
Now compromised or utterly disowned.
Whether the mound is built by hand or mind
Integrity should be in all combined.
Ye Judges, sitting there, in embryo,
Preserve your ermine in unsullied snow;
Look well to time before the robe you don,
Nor soil your shoulders ere you put it on.
The highest tribute held by fame in trust
Is that, when justly given,—he was just.
Ye Doctors, who prospective pulses feel,
Be faithful in the paths light may reveal;
Don't let your consciences for gain grow tough,
And ne'er be niggard with your doctor's stuff;
If called up nights make no ill-natured talk,
But charge it blandly with a double chalk.
Ye Lawyers,—ready every side to plead;
To back and fill, advance and then recede,—
If right or wrong a client's cause to bear,
And for its justice neither know nor care,
The merits of a case at once to see,
Commended by a smart retaining fee,—
For you I have but just one little word:
E'er be as honest—as you can afford.
Ye Teachers, now prepared the world to show
A part of what you do and think you know,
24

Don't cram your pupils with the dough of text
Till memory and patience are perplexed;
Teach them, beyond the books upon your shelves,
And lead their minds to think things out themselves.
Ye Merchants,—missionary aids to thought,—
Whose white sails light from every clime has caught,
Think of the proud position Commerce boasts,
Extending Truth to earth's far-distant coasts,—
Think of the powers that to your sphere belong
To aid the right and subjugate the wrong,—
And never let cupidity come in
To swerve its bent to compromise with sin;
May honesty e'er justify your sales,
With unshrunk yardsticks and ungrudging scales!
Ye Preachers, destined for the sacred place,
Imbibe humility and loving grace,
And strive, the while God's holy word you preach,
To learn and listen, while you talk and teach.
Present the “cloth” as worthy of respect,
And not a trade-mark, merely, for a sect.
And should a higher call, like Samuel's, come,
Don't shrink from it, and say you're not at home;
We must, you know, all our temptations face,
And circumstance be left to rule each case.
Ye Poets, dwelling in the airs sublime
That blow about our ears in gusts of rhyme,
Forever sing for Truth and Love divine
In strains as good, if possible, as mine.
25

I close my theme—a mountain in my view—
To be assumed, and added to, by you.
The mounds are waiting, ready to be shown,
As the fair image bides within the stone.
Begin to build,—your just position take,—
Here forge the tools your waiting mounds to make
Roll up your sleeves and enter on your work—
No one to lag, no one his task to shirk;
Like the old zealot widen out your base,
And, like him, look to heaven with hopeful face;
Stick to your mound persistently and true,
And dread no failure in the great review,
When angels, searching for its inner plan,
Shall say, approvingly, Here was a Man!
 

Read before Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July, 1871.

26

HOME AGAIN.

A phalanx strong and true we come
To meet amid the scenes of home—
Again to mingle heart and heart,
As in life's early morning-start,
When, with stout nerve and earnest soul,
We parted for the distant goal.
And we have wandered long and far,
Led onward by Hope's guiding star;
Through ways diversely wide we've passed,
With varied fortunes on us cast;
Felt much of good and much of ill
From Fate's o'erbending skies distil;
But, though afar, we've ne'er forgot
Each olden well-belovéd spot,
And every hill and rock and stream
Has been recalled in many a dream,
And life's pursuits, of high or low,
Have paled no beam of filial glow,
That with renewing ray has burned
As oft the heart has homeward turned.
27

Fancy unchecked has roamed at will;
We've stood again on Breakfast Hill,
And felt the breezes round us blow,
As on May mornings long ago,
When, left our beds for phantom flowers
In early dawn's ungenial hours,
In aching hands and glowing noses
Has merged our hope of vernal roses!
Again we've come from Langdon's Rock,
In dreamy shoes, to Puddle Dock,
And plunged beneath the cooling waves
That ceaseless lave the Point of Graves,
Where, in eternal slumbers deep,
The “fathers of the hamlet sleep.”
We've walked once more in memory o'er
That sacred precinct Christian Shore,
And heard the hum of Walker's Mill,
And stood enrapt on Dennett's Hill,
Where the big fish perpetual glides,
On steady fin, through airy tides,
And seen that pond beneath us rest,
Upon whose placid, stormless breast
—In days full well remembered yet—
Our little sails in pride we set,
Nor deemed that, in the world's wide round,
A fairer sea could e'er be found,
Or mightier gales than those which bore
Our shallow ships from shore to shore!
Beyond its clear and glassy tide
Rock Pasture rests in pristine pride.
28

In memory only is it seen,
—In memory may it still be green,
As when, in days of ancient peace,
Old Mr. Mifflin reared his geese,
And Sherburne's Wharf, a spot revered,
In willowy garniture appeared,
And Cellar old and Great Rock gray
Saw rudimental men at play,—
For Innovation's iron hand
Has marred the features of the land,
And the Rock Pasture we are shown
Is not the one we erst have known!
Though other streams more wide may be,
Of import more and majesty,
Yet none from one can e'er bespeak
A warmer love than Walker's Creek.
And thou, remembered Sagamore!
Some fairy pencil traced thy shore,
With most artistic beauties rife
Ere sturdy nature gave it life;
The woods that skirt thy verdant side
Bow over thee in love and pride,
And lay their shadows there to rest
Upon the pillow of thy breast;
No sounds of harsh discordance press
To mar thy blesséd peacefulness;
The old pines murmur whisperingly
As if in earnest praise of thee;
And troops of brilliant loving birds
Sing their delight in joyous words,
29

Responsive to thine own sweet speech
That breaks in music on thy beach.
Among thy haunts again we've played,
Again along thy shore we've strayed,
And bowed like pilgrims at a shrine
Before thy beauties so divine!
Again our foreheads warm and glowing
Have felt thy crystal coolness flowing,
And love has strengthened in the beam
Reflected from thy shore and stream.
And oft-remembered Frenchman's Lane
Comes up before the mind again,
With brooding shadows dark and dread,
From elms enlacing overhead;
And on a broad flat stone we read
The trace of that perfidious deed,
Where on this spot, long, long ago,
The Frenchman met his mortal woe.
Dread spot! where boys scarce dared to roam
Beyond the evening's early gloam,
For fear lest they might haply meet
The Frenchman in his winding-sheet.
O, glorious myth! that urchins scares,
And saves to Ham his sugar-pears!
And sense and soul must all be dead
When we forget the Fountain Head,
That shrine to which our footsteps strayed,
For rest and solace in its shade,
When parched beneath the summer heat
30

We've coveted its treasures sweet,
And dipped our pails within the pool
Where bubbled up the waters cool,
In ceaseless, never-tiring flow,
And icy stillness from below,
The while the fife-bird poured his song
Upon the slumbering air along,
Till, taking captive Boyhood's ear,
It bowed in still delight to hear!
Full many a name on that old shrine
Was written in the days lang syne—
Few scarcely dreaming deeper fame
Than that which registered their name!
And memories, like railway trains,
Come freighted, full, of Portsmouth Plains—
That greater field, in Boyhood's view,
Than New Orleans or Waterloo!
With mighty deeds of arms 'tis rife,
And rattling drum and squeaking fife,
And Berri's bunns, and weary legs,
And apple-juice, and hard-boiled eggs!
Again hear how the music rings,
Where Myers thumbs the catgut strings,
Where, answering to the sounding fiddle,
'Tis “down outside and up the middle,”
And waves of flaming calico
In mighty surges come and go!
Again we see the grand display
Of many a famed “great training day,”
When soldiers brave, in “fixings” fair,
31

—And some by far the worse for wear—
Meet there in warlike trim to wait,
And show themselves and serve the state,—
The glory and the crowning pride
Of boys and men who stand outside!
Spring Market!—how affection clings
To thee, best of remembered things!
Delightful 'twas in days of old,
Thy mighty commerce to behold,—
Where, spread around thy circuit wide,
Was seen the fertile country's pride,
That Naiads ere the morning's gleam
Had ferried down the rapid stream.
And vivid thoughts arise of her,
The awful ancient Marriner,
Before whose stern and chilling frown
All predatory schemes went down;
With whom the fruit-invested pence
Was sole atonement for offence.
There, trickling out from 'neath the hill,
Runs merrily that ceaseless rill,
That never from its fulness shrank
Though myriads from its bounty drank,
And wastes itself in icy flow
Upon the “flagrant” beach below.
How often has that iron bowl
Been blissful to his thirsty soul,
Who, bending double for the prize,
Has crushed his beaver o'er his eyes,
But compensated for his pain
32

By tasting of its sweets again.
Gray, honored, worn Venetian pile,
Which modern Goths have dared despoil!
Though statelier fabrics rear their forms
Upon thy site, my spirit warms
As it thy glories doth restore,
The pride of swift Piscataqua's shore.
Piscataqua! that mighty tide,
With all our youthful thoughts allied,
Yet rolls its eddying waves along,
Untiring, ceaseless, free, and strong,
As when with pole and hook and string
We fished for pollock by the “Spring.”
And redolent with sulphury smell,
And resonant with gun and bell,
And luminous with fiery light
—The crown of Independence night—
The town Parade, with earnest strife,
Has lost no note of busy life:
The Court House—venerable pile—
In gentle dotage seems to smile;
The old Town Pump, with outstretched hand,
Like rigid sentinel doth stand;
Jefferson Hall sends back again
That olden patriotic strain,
That rose when high and low degree
Brought votive gifts to Liberty,
And, rallying, with earnest zeal,
Each twelvemonth saved the commonweal;
And old Paved Street, with riches dight,
Comes back upon the dreaming sight,
33

With every gorgeous hue displayed,
As when, upon the sea of trade,
To welcome all auspicious gales,
The hopeful merchant set his sales.
There, like the guardian of the scene,
The North Church stands with solemn mien,
And reverent feelings cluster round
To sanctify the precious ground.
Its spire arises white and high,
Attracting upward still the eye,
A petrified perpetual saint—
A sermon preached in wood and paint!
That bell—the music of whose tone
What Portsmouth ear can e'er disown?—
Yet swings within its ancient tower,
And calls to praise, and calls the hour,
As erst in garrulous pride it swung,
With open mouth and prating tongue,
Like many a mortal we have known
Whose virtue is in sound alone.
An endless task it is to trace
Each olden, well-remembered place,
Or give our heart emotions tone—
The heart must treasure them alone.
There are they evermore portrayed,
The pictures that in youth were made:
The church, the school, the wood, the stream,
All, all return in memory's dream,
And friends and old delights we knew
Still live in retrospection's view.
34

And olden feeling is restored—
The pleasure beaming round the board
Reveals, in colors strong and clear,
The Spirit of the Past is here!
No figment of the brain alone,
But flesh and blood and nerve and bone.
The hands we clasp are sentient things;
That smile no ghostly radiance flings;
Those eyes are lit by friendship's beam,
That fades not out as fades a dream;
These hearts with living pulses beat;
These tongues with living tones are sweet;
Those waves of blue that yonder flow
Have nought ethereal in their glow;
The bright forms glancing by our side
Are objects of terrestrial pride,
Although, adoringly, we're given
To deem them less of earth than heaven.
Then give to Love the sovereign power;
Let its blest influence rule the hour;
And, waked anew, may it impart
A warmer sunshine to the heart,
That shall, as once again we roam,
Relume the path that leads to Home!
 

Delivered on the occasion of the Return of the Sons of Portsmouth to their old Home, July 4, 1853.

35

TWENTY YEARS LATER.

Gleam, waves of swift Piscataqua,
Sing, woods on tranquil Kittery's side,
Shout, Newington upon the Bay,
Ye airs of “Greenland's icy,” play,
And Old Rye mingle with the tide;
Let “kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer;”
Ring, bells, whose tones o'er Walker's Creek,
Through distant vales, shall echoes seek,
And bring them willing captives here,—
For every heart is full to-day,
And everything, in sweet accord.
Must tributary honors pay,
To recognize the genial sway
Of Joy, the season's sovereign lord.
Our good old Mother spreads her arms
To welcome back her sons to-day,
Who come from worldly strifes and harms,
Responsive to the potent charms
That still among them all hold sway.
36

From scenes afar, with lengthened ranks,
They to her side maternal fly,
Forgot the early duteous spanks
That fell in showers upon their flanks
When driven abroad their fate to try.
No cause for murmuring at the fact;
'Twas Providence, in kind disguise,
That sent them off to think and act,
To cultivate the world's great tract,
And make men better and more wise.
This is the mission every “son”
Is obligated to perform;
And, in the long, decisive run,
Invariably it is done;
As all confess with feeling warm.
The pulpit, law, the trades, the mart,
The press, and schools, where'er you search.
Perform, it seems, a better part,
With more efficiency and heart,
When trade-marked by the Old North Church.
How wide they're scattered! every land
And every sea some one may show;
From Egypt's yellow glistening sand,
To where the icy floes expand,
And the North Pole sticks through the snow.
37

They take, of course, the foremost place,
With modesty that is not weak,
And soon as seen a Portsmouth face,
Contestants cease to urge the race,
Awed into silence by its cheek.
But right the record that they show,
In worth and manliness and “sich;”
And every one, as we well know,
Succeeds from the first signal, “Go!”
And all are virtuous and rich.
But, grandest trait of those who roam,
Their “hearts untravelled” here have rest;
E'en though the hair, like ocean foam,
'Circleth the base of thought's high dome,
They ne'er forget their primal nest.
The “lean and slippered pantaloon,”
Who “pipes and whistles,” minus teeth,
Feels his whole heart with joy attune,
And all the fires of life's young June
Glowing with ardor underneath.
'Twixt farthest Indus and the Pole,
Climb heights remote from human tread,
You'll find, cut on that lofty scroll,
Some name, familiar to your soul,
Carved on the old-time Fountain Head.
38

One I remember, years aback,
Friend and companion of my youth,
Who early was compelled to pack,
Because police were on his track,
For some small error and unruth.
I heard from him—south, west, and east,
At last as being in Feegee,
Tattooed and feathered, sheared and greased,
Presiding o'er a local feast
Among the islands of the sea.
Another, too, of grotesque mien,
Who mixed with us in boyhood's day,
Lacking the lively “pistareen,”
Put out from home, two days between,
And vanished from these scenes away.
He for a while from sight was lost,
When an exploring sailor man
Saw him, cross-legged, upon a post,
The admiration of a host—
A heathen god in Hindostan.
So when Bill Gibson disappeared,
—That ne'er-do-well, the neighbors' tease—
For whom a fatal end was feared
By that contrivance, looped and geared,
That settles grave delinquencies,—
39

After long years had passed away,
A traveller 'neath Turkish skies
Saw, clad in elegant array,
With servants rich, in livery gay,
A form that filled him with surprise:
'Twas Bill, whom fate had hither cast,
That his astonished vision saw,
Fanned by four sudras as he passed,
With money and importance vast,
A real seven-tailed bashaw.
So Portsmouth girls in marriage hide,
—Forgotten or unknown their sphere,—
But strong and true the tender pride
Which draws them to the river side,
And here again they reappear.
Ever to Portsmouth instincts true,
We find, what time like this imparts,
That, like the old “dame of the shoe,”
They duty's line have kept in view,
And in their spheres reigned Queens of Hearts.
If lady's, or if humbler role
They're called to, you may bet your life
That, in the atmosphere of soul,
Where the domestic gods control,
No discount's asked for them as wife.
40

We fain would kiss sweet Mary Ann,
As erst we did in early youth,
But wholly modify our plan
As we behold that other man,
And fear to risk our only tooth.
Why all don't marry, we might quiz,
But if for lack of love or pelf,
That is their own especial “biz;”
We only know that what is, is,
And each knows how it is herself.
Now “home again,” but, O, how changed
Each scene, beneath the flight of years!
The old-time scenery deranged,
The good old neighborhoods estranged—
Recalled through memory and tears.
We scarce a single rood retrace,
—The schools and play-grounds disappeared—
We strive “Old Cellar” to replace,
We miss the “Great Rock's” honest face,
The “Willows” that our boyhood cheered.
“Penhallow's Field” has left no sign,
And structures rise o'er former sites,
Where eager Boyhood watched the shine
Of lightning from the cloudy line
O'er “Christian Shore” on summer nights.
41

Growth, growth, though not perceived at home,
Steals silently along each track;
Noted alone by those who roam,
—Seeds germinant in kindred loam,—
Hiding the path on looking back.
And where are they, the loving ones,
We left behind when forth we came?
Dear, unambitious, homebred “Sons!”
They've had their “innings” and their “runs,”
And long ago closed up the game.
Yet here and there a form we meet,
Time-honored relics of the past,
With dimming eyes and lagging feet,
Who our returning presence greet,
Tried, true, and faithful to the last.
The capillary ducts may dry,
The nerves by age may be unstrung,
Passion no more may fire the eye;—
But, though the faculties deny,
The heart will evermore be young.
I met Apollo here to-day,
—As full of genius as an egg,—
With music, art, and verse in play,
As actively as when away
I went, my destiny to beg.
42

'Twas Moses, not of Horeb fame,
But gentle, tasteful Thomas P.,
Whose heart is lit with art's true flame,
Self-fed,—the more to others' shame,—
A martyr to the Graces three.
And here we meet 'neath native skies,
With soberness and gladness blent;
And our old mother's kindly eyes
Have looked to all our small supplies,
On hospitality in-tent.
God bless her—bless us, every one!
Give pleasure unrestricted power,
And every daughter, every son,
When care again the field hath won,
Shall breathe a blessing on this hour.
The harp that twenty years ago
Made some pretence to lyric fire,
Now halts and slackens in its flow,
Like turgid treacle running slow,
And is at best a feeble lyre;
Yet while its chords can sound a strain,
If not so musical and grand,
'Twill true to this sweet thought remain
That brings us, children, home again,
Beside our mother's knee to stand.
 

Delivered on the Return of the Sons of Portsmouth, July 4, 1873.

43

TWENTY-ONE.

How glad the time when Boyhood hears,
From Fancy's tongue, in all its ears,
The prophecy of wealth and fun
To culminate with twenty-one!
What glories to the vision ope,
As Hope unfolds her horoscope!
What fairy fringes girt around
The sweep of earth's enchanted bound!
What myriad promises we see
Awaiting in the time To-Be!—
That golden time of freedom shown,
When, Manhood gained, we stand alone,
To sport a bran-new freedom coat,
And pay a suffrage tax, and vote;
To stand for office in the town,
And be elected or put down;
To trot with parties, and abuse
All who to vote with us refuse;
44

In legal right to sell and buy,
With not a soul to question why!
[OMITTED]
Manhood! the crown of Nature's plan,
How grand the boon to be a man!
But not in garments' form, alone,
Is that which makes men manly shown;
Not by the whiskers or the beard,
—A man's monopoly revered,—
For those who wear no beards at all,
Or clothes that one might manly call,
Move in the world with mind and heart,
And act, far best, the manly part;
And often where supreme success
Has seemed the fruit of manliness,
'Tis half suspected that the aid
Received at home success has made,
Provoking, oftentimes, the jest,
That changing garments might be best!
'Tis not the size that manly makes—
A big man may be “no great shakes,”
And one that's small we often see
May yet a monstrous failure be.
'Tis not the beauty of the face
That gives to manliness its grace,
Though manly thoughts do spread a glow
Upon the human face, we know.
The lantern can't illume a bit
Until the lamp within is lit,
And then, out shining forth, it streams,
To cheer and gladden by its beams.
45

And time, alone, don't make the man;
For eighty years were but a span
If spent in simply selfish aims,
Regardless of another's claims.
A century of sordid strife
Is but the shadow of a life
Compared with his who good essays,
And spends in generous acts his days.
Old Hunks may ply all trading art
To pile up dollars in the mart,—
May have his coffers haply lined
With greenbacks of the “tender” kind,
And coupons ready to be met
In golden eagles, “screaming” yet—
But what is he, when all is told,
More than an image made of gold,
Without the will, the manhood true,
To exercise the means to do?
We own no manhood such as this;
For no such luck is ours, I wis,
As Providence, in kindly mood,
Keeps from our doors the tempting brood
That comes with overweening wealth,
And safely shields our moral health,
Permitting us to be controlled
By better qualities than gold!
We feel the favor, but confess
It goes beyond our ken to guess
Why virtuous attributes like ours
Should be curtailed thus of their powers—
46

So much of human good to win,
So little of the needed “tin.”
The poor for others keenly feel,
And want of cash awakens zeal;
The exercise of constant care
Excites a growth of manhood rare,
Which may not dazzle like the sun,
But, like a stream, its course may run,
Gladdening the banks it flows between
With garniture of living green;
Cheering the heart of tree and flower
By quiet effluence of power;
Speeding its way on tranquilly
Until it meets the eternal sea!—
Such manhood as forever cheers
Along the great highway of years:
Not by the grandeur of its state,
But by its acts more good than great,—
By word or wish in kindness given,
Fraught with the melody of heaven;
True manhood, based on love sublime,
A miracle of good in Time.
A cloud o'er Winnisimmet hung,
And shadows dwelt its scenes among,
Which with a gloom Tartarean fell
Upon the sons of Ishmael
That in that famed locale are found,
Whose contradictions so abound
47

That it would seem some high decree
Made all agree to disagree.
[OMITTED]
The faithful 'mid the darkness groped
And prayed for light, and warmly hoped,
Till, through the blackness of the night,
The Star of Bethlehem shed its light,
And in the East, o'er Powderhorn,
A day of radiant joy was born!
As on the old Judean plain
Was heard the glad, sublime refrain,
So did attending angels then
Proclaim good will and peace to men!
As principle, incarnate, moves
Upon its course in human grooves,
The Star assumed terrestrial form,
With attributes and feelings warm,
To speed, with ready will, and aid
Where sorrow's sad appeal was made;
To reach the hand with pity warm
Where fell severe misfortune's storm;
To bid the brimming eye o'erflow
While contemplating human woe;
To pluck up sinking Manhood, tost
On life's dark sea, with hope all lost;
All human misery to ease
And lead man heavenward—by degrees!
Imperfect oft, but still it grew,
Fired with the constant wish to do.
48

And what accomplished?—ask the heart
That caught its gleam in sorrow's smart,
When, 'mid the waves of mortal woe,
Its words were heard in accents low,
Like those of the Almighty will
Which bade the vexéd seas be still;
The widow, in her stricken state,
When all the world seemed desolate,
What solace on her anguish fell
And made her murmur, “It is well;”
The brother, in his dying hour,
When earthly scenes had lost their power,
That whispered in his failing ear
Blest words of comfort and of cheer;
The orphan, in his youthful pain,
Made hopefully to smile again,
Forgetting all his boding fears,
Loving and trusting through his tears.
[OMITTED]
But just begun the man's career
When boyhood's frailties disappear,
And all the good the past has shown
Is education's germ alone.
The vanished years' important sum
Is but the type of that to come—
Initial hint of work to do,
Success the grand reward in view.
The love we sow in early youth
Will grow in majesty and truth,
And lessons learned, at whate'er cost,
49

Are never in the future lost.
And so the seeds that we have strewed
Along life's thorny, troubled road,
Grow up to trees, whose branches spread
And cast their shadows far ahead,
Or lade the breeze with odors sweet,
Or scatter blessings round our feet.
In times when 'prentices were free,
A day they gave to jollity;
A “freedom frolic,” fraught with fun,
To crown the welcome twenty-one.
The glad occasion we recall:
The egg-nog, supper, and the ball,
The roaring song, the hearty cheer,
The wicked pranks, the stories queer;
The “old man” joining with the boys
In all their mirth and all their noise,
While, looking on with pleasant mien,
The mistress and the girls are seen,
To hold in check the rampant mood
By womanly beatitude.
And we, upon our gala day,
Throw all disturbing care away,
To mingle in a festive scene
Of happiness and joy serene.
Not with the olden spirit shown,
But in a nectar of our own—
A spirit that ne'er burns the lip,
The spirit of good fellowship;
50

While on us beam those loving eyes,
Whose glances and whose smiles we prize,
—Whose influence cheers us as we go,—
That make a heaven, of course, below.
So bards have sung, since early time,
With truth not always found in rhyme.
[OMITTED]
We hear the call of duty plain;
We see the Star beam forth again,
As erst it fell on Bethlehem,
—The gem in Night's fair diadem,
That on the brow of darkness lay,
With man's salvation in its ray,—
And taking courage with our view,
We cheerfully the path pursue.
To public eyes the veil we raise,
Not courting scrutiny nor praise;
Making no meaningless pretence,
And asking nought but confidence.
Though secret are our forms and rites,
That call us out sometimes o' nights,
This thought regard should never lack:
We bring a better feeling back,
To compensate the hearts at home
For all the moments that we roam.
[OMITTED]
No angry eyes or aspect blue
Would e'er be seen—if folks but knew,
And as they don't, we let it rest
Till works make virtue manifest.
51

O, may the zeal that wakened when
The Star first gave its light to men,
Descend and stimulate each heart
To act with faithfulness its part!
That, when the labor of our love
Is squared by Overseers above,
We may the glad approval hear,
Within our spirit-quickened ear:
Good work! well done, ye good and true;
Take the reward that is your due.
 

Delivered on the Twenty-first Anniversary of the Star of Bethlehem Lodge, Chelsea, Nov. 7, 1864. The general principle inculcated in this poem will apply, like an almanac calculation, to many latitudes.

Chelsea.

52

JUBILEE RHYMES.

Sublime the principle that hither brings
So many happy souls in one together;
To sit beneath our Order's tree, that flings
Its branches proudly wide this April weather;—
Whose shoots extend out far o'er land and sea;
Whose shadow, calm, refreshes, cheers, and blesses,
And the grand province of whose ministry
The heart of man in gratitude confesses.
Its fruits divine of Friendship, Love, and Truth,
Hang on the bough in ripe luxuriance growing,
Whose taste shall give the heart perpetual youth—
The antepast of heavenly pleasures knowing.
[OMITTED]
Friendship!—By what immunity claim we
A patent o'er the world of friendship purer?
Men use it, as pretended, constantly,
And are we in its promises securer?
53

The friendship of the world is selfishness,
Cemented sordidly by base attraction;
That flees us in the hour of our distress,—
If prosperous, is greedy in exaction.
Who is it gets his name upon your note?
Who backbites, vilifies, defrauds, belies you?
Who steals your wife, your purse, your Sunday coat?
Your friend, of course, and after that defies you.
Our friendship here is based upon a rock—
The ezel stone of solemn obligation;
That stands a citadel against the shock
Of mercenary or profane temptation.
The word once given, the hand in hand once placed,
The compact lives, and no contingent swindle
E'er mars the strength of obligations traced,
Or tends the faith of Brotherhood to dwindle.
This is the rule—exceptions rare occur
Of friendship lost in unredeeming treason;
As rare as porcine tendency to fur,
Or hyacinths in huckleberry season.
Love!—world-abused—here has a special home;
A love that's just, and pure, and wise, and human,
No spasm of an hour to rave and foam,
Crazing the heads of spoony man and woman.
54

To vent in sighs, and pine away and mope,
And in the gloom of hope despondent languish;
To see upon a beam a pendent rope,
To end the throes of love's tempestuous anguish;
That raves in jealous pangs, and storms, and tears,
And weeps and shoots, as fitful as the weather—
As if pure Love, that suffers and forbears,
Could live with Hate in harmony together!
But, in the guise of Charity divine,
Love sweetly stands, beneficence bestowing;
Around her brow celestial glories shine,
As radiant as the day her features glowing.
She seeks the scene where Poverty prevails,
She pours the balm of heavenly consolation;
She cheers the heart that Misery assails,
She elevates by holy impartation.
The greatest, best of all the exalted train,
Of gifts to man for his improvement given;
Hers is the star whose glory shall remain
When fade away the orbs of stellar heaven.
The claim of Truth was ne'er more plainly shown
By the Jew leader unto King Darius,
Than it appears in tenets that we own,
Which are, or ought to be, kept sacred by us.
55

The truth, in dealing betwixt man and man,
Is made incumbent by our rule's exaction;
And he who lies, at once lies under ban,
Amenable, so held, for law's infraction.
Some may have slips—the truth comes hard to some—
And lying is so easy and so ready!
They're just like topers giving up their rum,
And must relapse before they get quite steady.
The Truth should be the Truth, wherever found,
But 'tis so rare, outside, we seldom find it;
And what seems true within the worldly round,
Nine times in ten a lie lies hid behind it.
Our creed is broad, and acts upon the life,
Too high at points polemical to cavil;
We shun the courts of fierce sectarian strife,
As roads to Jordan—far too hard to travel.
As citizens, we point them to our acts;
Ask the collector what return we make him;
We feel the burden, but accept the facts,
And meet the issue like a Mohawk sachem.
Beyond the links that bind us all as one,
We have no “rings” for cheating or deceiving;
Whiskey through our enclosure does not run—
No actions rest 'gainst us for genteel thieving.
56

In this we're very Odd, as we behold,
On every hand, such swindling operation;
'Twould seem the land to fraud and wrong were sold,
Involving it in one grand condemnation.
It may, as in the days of Sodom, be,
When judgment threatens with its doom impending.
Odd Fellowship, in its integrity,
Will interpose to turn the blade descending.
[OMITTED]
By deeds, not years, we count an active life,
And fifty years of such supreme devotion,
With principle and love of duty rife,
Are more than centuries by common notion.
And good to come takes promise from to-day—
Based on the Past, so full of truth and vigor;
Though but our spring-time, yet the vernal ray
Dispels all fear of any chilling rigor.
The sun and rain shall give the glad increase,
And crowded wains of benefits accruing,
Shall crown the harvest-home with sheaves of peace,
To bless the workers for their faithful doing.
That Future!—to its destiny we turn,
And see it rayed with grandest coruscation;
Its altar-fires on every hilt-top burn,
And tenfold light impart throughout the nation.
57

Its ministry subserves the cause of Peace,
Remembered war in loving kindness merging;
Bidding the bitterness of hate to cease,
And holding back all hostile billows surging;
Adding the charm of dignity and grace
To sanctify and consecrate all labor;
Giving to virtue higher rank and place,
And demonstrating who is the true “neighbor.”
[OMITTED]
We're not perfection,—far from it, indeed,—
And long may be the time ere we attain it;
A tree grows not instanter from the seed,
And strength accrues from effort made to gain it.
And we, united in a purpose true,
Will prove, beyond all sceptical denying,
What Brotherhood, in compact firm, can do,
Upon the anvil of incessant trying.
 

Extracts from a Poem read in Boston, April 26, 1869, on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Establishment of Odd Fellowship in America.

58

MODERN CHIVALRY.

The days of chivalry have not departed—
The glory of the olden time remains:
Speaking through Manhood, strong and noble-hearted,
Endowed with muscle, energy, and brains.
No whit decrying ancient knightly glory,
We urge a claim commanding for our own,
That writes on current fields more grand a story
Than aught achieved in ages that have flown.
What sense was it to hack, and cut, and harry,
And live in constant peril of the life,
Through tribulation dire to court and marry,
And in an iron suit espouse a wife?
What merit was it to carve up a Paynim,
And hang his head upon the saddle-bow?
Or catch a Jew, and of his ducats drain him,
Then slit his nose and let the Hebrew go?
59

What merit was it to go galivanting,
—With lance in rest, and armed all cap-a-pie,—
The fearful folk with fierce assumption daunting,
And stealing everything that they could see?
What was the sense of their continual straying,
By paths with constant violence bestrewed,
Running the risk, while seeking heathen-slaying,
Of getting, maybe, full as often slewed?
'Twas chivalric to deprecate all labor,
—The land divided into feudal farms,—
With each man's hand upraised against his neighbor,
And even infants always up in arms.
The social qualities were ne'er paraded:
My lady sat, shut in a cage-like tower,
Within a deep seclusion, uninvaded,
No friend with scandal to beguile the hour.
Unless some troubadour, his strains outpouring,
Came to her bower with euphonistic rhyme,
Or some young knight, his queen of love imploring,
The lady passed a very sorry time.
Arrayed in richest silks, with many a jewel,
With maidens plenty to do her behest,
Her fate was like her working worsteds, crewel,
Her days, the semblance of a past unblest.
60

No concerts, theatres, operas, or dances,
To female life gave buoyancy and zest;
The girls made banners for their heroes' lances,
Or handkerchiefs to wear upon their crest.
The tournament was then the great occasion,
Where Queens of Beauty gave the meed of fame;
When cracking heads and murderous abrasion
Were but incentives to love's tender flame.
And bright eyes flashed at the exploits of valor,
As horse and rider floundered on the ground,
Nor bore their part with aught of fear or pallor,
Where blows, for fun, promiscuous blew around.
Were it in earnest, they, perhaps, might shrink it,
But simply cutting off a head or two,
Or carving folks with swords, they didn't think it
A thing about which to make much ado.
Then every knight, who held a sphere respected,
Kept in his train a jester, full of jokes,
Whose gibes, to criticism ne'er subjected,
Made lots of laughter 'mong the gentlefolks.
Then was a time when oxen whole were roasted,
And saltless, pepperless, in junks devoured;
And when the knightly gentlemen were toasted,
In quarts of wine the deep libation poured.
61

Then knightly heads did all the needed thinking;
The people in benightedness were hid:
Fighting and robbing, sleeping, eating, drinking,
Comprised the active business that they did.
The people were not much in scale of being;
Once born, the whole in life they had in view
Was but to see just as their lords were seeing,
And do just what their lords would have them do.
They had no souls then reckoned worth the saving,
No souls their own at any point of time;
No higher fortune e'er thought they of craving,
Nor for the future cared a single dime.
But noble men were there the age redeeming,
Who gave to Chivalry its grandest fame,
Whose names, from out that past in lustre beaming,
Our warmest meed of admiration claim.
These rise before us for our emulation—
In principle and duty ever bright;
And may our course, in honest imitation,
Secure their epitaph at last—GOOD KNIGHT.
We need no armor for our head's protection
Beyond the good sword hanging at our side,
One “jab” of which, if given in right direction,
Settles the hash for him on whom 'tis tried.
62

A Paynim vile, who dares provoke our anger,
Never again the outrage will renew;
For, with the offence, out comes the trenchant hanger,
And in a moment we have run him through!
If any heathen round are disappearing,
Their friends need make no worrying or fuss;
They've doubtless gone the way the bad are steering.
And let the mourners send the bill to us.
But there be Paynims whom the sword can't settle,
Met with in streets and lanes, than heathens worse,
Who more than try the heart's determined metal,
And draw upon the sympathies and purse.
Here gaunt-eyed Want, its famished form uprearing,
Makes, in sad moans, its eloquent appeals;
Here Sin and Wrong, in varied guise appearing,
The way contest, with Misery at their heels.
Here Virtue shrieks for aid against Oppression;
Here Honor constant vindication claims;
Here Shoddy flaunts o'er Worth, in strong possession;
Here brazen Impudence scarce hides its aims.
Here Lust and Pride, a constant warfare waging,
Summon to guard each intervening gate;
While Fraud and Theft, in subtle fight engaging,
Like Israel Samson's foemen, lie in wait.
63

All call for vigilance and knightly duty,
To keep true Manhood's 'scutheon ever bright;
And here our lists, and here our Queens of Beauty
Award our meed in smiles this festal night.
We make no raids on neighbors who offend us,
Or wrathful vials on their sconces empt;
We take the weapons prudent counsels lend us,
And kill them off by kindness or—contempt.
We sport no steeds like those which bore to battle
The fierce Paladins in chivalric days;
We patronize a different sort of cattle,
That draw our horse-cars through our public ways.
But though we own no chargers, that inherit
The fire that coursed through ancient equine veins,
We think we've chargers that show equal merit,
Where groceries and things affect our gains.
We quaff no flagons like our predecessors—
As such big measures are not often round;
We roast no oxen whole, as their possessors
Claim for a sirloin forty cents per pound.
It doesn't take so much to make us merry
As it did those in that rum age sublime;
We sip our glass of lager, or of sherry,
Or neither do, and have as good a time.
64

Our Dames of Chivalry have no restriction;
A sad temerity were his who'd dare
To strive to hold the reins of jurisdiction,
And not of government give them a share.
No shutting them in cloister and seclusion,
No moping they for want of due employ;
The world pours at their feet its vast profusion,
With us their knights, all days, to seek their joy.
And in their praise our troubadours are hymning,
Pouring like pullets their enraptured lays;
And, quite forgetting bills for extra trimming,
We hail them pride and glory of our days.
How grand they are in all that's grand, comparing
With those insipid dames who banners wove,
Worthy of all true knighthood equal sharing,
The Queens of Beauty and the Queens of Love.
Thus, Then and Now, in candidness contrasting,
Shows better light and deeds this day of ours,
With guarantees, like buttons, that are lasting,
And scope for all our elevated powers.
The Cross the ancients reared we still do cherish,
And keep as ours its venerated sign,
That ne'er through disrespect shall fall or perish,
Sustained by Cœur de Lion and Palestine.
65

Its motto ever—“In hoc signo vinces”—
Draws from its scabbard every glistening steel,
And the same glow inspiring Christian princes
Does the most humble of our brethren feel.
Then to the Present give your best endeavor,
To help the Truth and benefit your race;
Fight the good fight with zeal and might forever,
And follow virtue with an earnest Chase.
 

Delivered in Charlestown before Cœur de Lion Commandery and a Delegation from Palestine Commandery, Chelsea.

66

THE PRESS.

A plain and unimaginative rhyme
Is all I bring to grace your festal time;
Shrinking to prelude one whose brilliant thought
Must place my drowsy platitudes at nought,
And, with the glow that eloquence inspires,
Put out or “pale my ineffectual fires.”
Bards no more dream, but for a purpose act,
And tune their harps to soberness of fact.
So pardon me if I decline to try
My Pegasus in Fancy's burning sky,
And stick to earth with earthly prudence meet,
Unlike those mad aeronauts of Crete,
Who borrowed wings of wax and dared the sun,
And came from the empyrean “by the run.”
I sing the Press—the mightiest of tools—
The scourge of tyrants and the plague of fools;
The Press, with myriad complications fraught,
The grand embodiment of current thought,
—With all the springs and cogs and wheels and cams,
Comprising the realities and shams,—
67

With misery or benefaction rife,
That form the passing history of life.
Like old Briareus, with his hundred hands;
—A pen in each,—it scopes all scenes and lands;
Tells us of sweeping floods and earthquakes dire;
Of wrecks by sea, and loss by raging fire;
Tells us of ruling rates in fancy stocks,
And accident that every feeling shocks;
Tells us just how the world of fashion speeds,
And the last change in politics or creeds;
Sings us sweet songs and tells us wondrous tales,
And scandals dark that fill the gossipy gales.
The Paper, like that sheet let down from heaven,
Which Peter edited,—see Acts, cap. eleven,—
Containing everything of living kind,
Holds up life's transcript to the seeking mind,
Wherein each notes the thing that best agrees
With his or her own whims and sympathies.
Thus Mr. Slow upon his stocks may feed,
And Angelina o'er the romance bleed,
And Georgie glory in the race or fight,
And Aunt Keziah in the deaths delight—
A well-spiced feast on which all love to look,
And with a grateful homage thank the cook.
See the dense columns under General Trade,
Upon the public pocket bent to raid!
Through Fancy's eyes delightedly we pore
O'er trophies brought from many a distant shore,
Commended earnestly to eye and lip,
Without occasion for vexed ownership;
68

And wines thus quaffed are better far than those
Which through the palate jeopardize the toes!
Ah, great is Trade!—we have our every wish,
From thousand dollar shawls to pickled fish.
The Press is Education's dexter hand,
And wields the sceptre of a wide command.
In every hamlet 'mid our native hills,
It pours rich knowledge through a thousand rills,
—Rills, like the gentle brooks which ceaseless run
O'er pebbly beds and glisten in the sun,
Cheering the roots of herbage and of flower,
And giving freshness to the arid hour—
Sweet mental rills, whose sparkling waters wind
Along the beauteous summer meads of mind,
Quickening the precious germs of living truth
Within the warm receptive soil of youth,
Until in efflorescent splendor bright,
A Vassar gladdens the awakened sight.
Science, once hid in dark mysterious cells,
No longer under ban or shadow dwells;
Backed by the power the power-press affords,
—More potent far than ugly-tempered swords,—
Upspringing to our view on every side,
The fruits of teeming science are descried;
The fact matured and the incipient hint
Rushing, together, on the waves of print.
When people party politics perplex,
And all their hearts with earnest seeking vex,
69

Deeming that they are called by special fate
To rush in timely and redeem the state
—And Heaven knows, and we whose pockets bleed,
How much redemption the poor state doth need!—
When party greed, whate'er its cast or name,
Sinks all pretence to honesty and shame,
The Press its interposing mission fills,
And virtuous counsel lavishly instils;
Proving white black, and honest truth a fib,
Or the reverse of this, with tactics glib,
And daily making, for our wondrous ken,
Big out of what are dreadful little men.
Soft Sentiment!—its votaries through the Press
May glut their tastes with exquisite distress,
And sweet-drawn misery, like molasses, tart,
And thrills, and throbs, and throes that rend the heart,
And pangs, and darts, and agonies that shine,
In many a fond impassioned tender line!
Not beef, by any means; that after comes,
When hunger has a place in loving homes,
And Emeline and Roy—once more awake—
Find twice the nourishment of love—in steak.
Here smiles enkindle where the mad joke gleams,
Through verbal channels, bright as lightning beams,
Or the fierce tumult of a hearty laugh
Crowns the quaint climax of some paragraph,
Rousing the dull, who wonder “what's to pay,”
To make folks chuckle in that noisy way?
70

The Press, amid a world of care and dole,
Brushes the cobwebs from the dusty soul,
Which, brightening in the sunshine that it flings,
Sees with new eyes a thousand pleasant things;
Finding life easier by its teachings gay,
With Hope rekindled lighting up the way.
And, bright amid surrounding verbiage,
Records of loving homes illume the page,
Where fair domestic scenes their charms impart,
And with their pleasant teachings win the heart.
We see some noble duty nobly done,
We see a glorious field and victory won,
We see true Manliness to action rise,
We see Unselfishness in angel guise,
We see meek Patience waiting by the way,
We see sweet Childhood 'mid the flowers at play,
We see calm Resignation's placid brow,
We see the blessings that from Virtue flow;
The gentle spirit the recital cheers,
And smiles upon it through delighted tears.
And when men die—as die they some time must—
The Press their glories piles above their dust,
And the freed spirits—as some say they do—
Peering with ghostly eyes the papers through,
May read, unheeding, merits of their own,
That all their life long they have never known,
And deeming some one else is praised, may pause
To say, “God bless us, what a man he was!”
71

The Pulpit, Physic, Law, lean on the Press
For merit that the world might never guess;
Their sermons, cases, pleadings scarcely known,
But for their reproduction broadcast thrown,
Puzzled themselves, sometimes, when they have read
Bright things imputed that were never said.
What were a sermon in a vestry's sphere
To that which all the world is glad to hear?
The Poetasters thank the Press for bays,
When they achieve their euphuistic lays,
And Lecturers look eagerly to see
The meed accorded their brain progeny,
When some industrious press-man makes a raid,
And steals and prints their entire stock in trade.
Though some fare bad where the fierce critic's art
Discerns Achilles' vulnerable part,
And, with a cruelty of venomed wits,
Gives the poor wretch unmitigated “fits.”
Thus doth the Press control with magic sway
All matters where Humanity has play.
Its power affects all earthly things and scenes;
Fixes the price of Liberty and—Beans;
Soars where the scintillating planets dwell,
And tells us who has groceries to sell;
Strives for the acme of immortal hope,
And advertises patent shaving soap!
A Prospero upon the mental plain,
It works its magic by the wand of brain;
—Some, ill-disposed, who fail its power to see,
72

Spell wand, in malice, with a final t---
It strikes the rock where thought's bright crystals sleep,
And bids them, like old Horeb's waters, leap,
Again to fall upon the thirsty earth
In drops of wisdom or refreshing mirth.
Its nod unchains the fierce impetuous steam
To do its bidding with exultant scream;
Compels the tide to work its sovereign will,
Compels the winds its flowing sheet to fill,
Compels the untamed lightning yield its aid,
And binds it an auxiliary to trade.
The snowy canvas specks for it the main,
For it the fleetest steeds their sinews strain,
Its wakeful Ariels scale the beaming sky
And look the fiery comets in the eye,
Dig deep in venous caverns of the earth,
And hidden wonders bring to living birth,
Ride on the ice-rim round the Boreal sea,
Or lunch on missionary in Feejee.
Those Ariels of the Press, Reporters hight,
How limitless the compass of their flight!
Nor height nor depth their daring course can stay,
When some fresh item dawns upon their way.
Give Agassiz a bone, and at your wish,
He'll reproduce for you a perfect fish;
Give a reporter but a timid hint,
And, straight, a column is beheld in print.
Talk of the burning “pencils” of the sun!
What are they all to his official one,
Who, chasing Truth thro' earth, and sea, and sky,
73

Impales it on its point as 'twere a fly?
“Look comets in the eye,” forsooth! 'tis weak
To emblemize his quality of “cheek,”
Who, if Old Nick were near, would straight pursue,
And show him up in some shrewd “interview.”
“The pen in hands of men entirely great
Is mightier than the sword,” the poets state;
A fact beyond the shadow of a doubt,
That people are continually finding out.
The Editor sits proudly at his post,
In wisdom grand, in potency a host,
The world regards with glance half awe, half dread,
'Twixt doubt to deify or break his head.
Hid by the shadow of the pronoun WE,
Old Tonans thunders in epitome;
The lightning glares, in sheets inspiring fear,—
Paid in advance—so many dimes per year;
His eagles scream athwart the stormy sky,
And echo answers, “How is that for high?”
Echo, a little slangy, but repeats
That which the eye upon occasion meets,
When, bending for a moment from his state,
The editor forgets that he is great,
And, with a playfulness of tongue or pen,
Speaks, writes, or acts the same as common men.
The one by guilty qualmishness possessed,
Feels in his peril anything but blest;
Fraud with its gains indifference affects,
But winces inward, and with dread expects;
“Truth crushed to earth” and virtue in distress
74

Have vindication in the honest press;
And all grand effort made the world to advance,
Finds in its editor a trenchant lance.
Such is the fact which ideally we see,
But still imperfect is the verity.
Exceptions mar the grandeur of the rule,
For men are weak, and Virtue's fires may cool;
Pretentious mediocrity have sway,
And principle be measured as 'twill pay;
Humbug and wealth, allied, successful plead,
And impecunious virtue yield to need.
Alas! 'tis true—and pity 'tis 'tis true—
That want besets the path that men pursue;
And being merely men, the truth is plain,
They cannot bear a superhuman strain.
Rare principle alone, is not enough
To meet the claim of life with fortune rough,
Of fashion and its myriad demands,
Which more it craves, the more its scope expands,
And, therefore, yielding to the pressure stout,
They put up shutters and bar conscience out.
Of all vocations 'neath the rolling sun,
Than this of ours there is no nobler one,
And more than King or Kaiser can impart
Is the proud title springing from our art.
To be a Printer wins a grander fame
Than is permitted more presumptuous claim,
And those who leave the name for other spheres,
Resume it proudly in their after years;
75

A fame wherein a Franklin's glory lies,
And tenderly a Greeley sanctifies.
Then, Brethren, Friends, stand proudly by the Press,
Fraught with such power to benefit and bless!
The people's guard and guide, fail not to see
The full importance of your ministry.
Though virtue be at times its own reward,
Work on in hope, nor rail at fortune hard.
Some seeds grow slowly, and the harvest, late,
May toil and trial poorly compensate,
But, with a conscience clear and motive just,
Press on and ever with unfaltering trust,
—Not the vexed trust the printer frowns upon,
That he would banish from the lexicon,—
Trust that kind Heaven, beneficent and good,
May crown your efforts with beatitude,
And bring to fruitage all the seed you've strewed.
 

Read at Poughkeepsie, June 18, 1873, preceding an Address by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.

76

THE PREUX CHEVALIER.

'Twas in a vision of the night,
That centuries of years passed o'er me,
And, in a blaze of sudden light,
Old Jacques De Molay stood before me.
I knew him by his presence grand—
Armed cap à pie, all iron plated,
A sort of monitor on land,
On whom a thousand forces waited.
I nodded in familiar style;
He smiled, his courtesy to show me;
Then took a vacant chair, the while,
And said, “My boy, I see you know me.”
“Know you! who don't? We look with pride
On what you did for our profession:
You fought and suffered, bled and died,
And roasted—for its truths' possession.”
77

“Nuff sed!” cried he; “'twas long ago;
I'd quite forgot the smart of frying;
'Tis lucky you don't have to show
Such tests, through such an ordeal trying.
“The stake, I fear, would make you quail”—
“Not it,” said I, “if Nannie broils it,
Done to a turn”—Molay turned pale;
“Done!” murmured he; “your punning spoils it.
“Now pray be quiet while I state
The object of my coming hither;
However good a single pate,
I wish to put our heads together.
“Sir Launfal sought the holy grail,
And found it in poetic vision;
In such direction I should fail—
I seek a practical decision.
“I wish your aid the way to clear,
All intervening clouds to scatter;
I seek the one ‘Preux Chevalier,’
And that, you see, is ‘what's the matter;’
“For 'mong the knights of these late days,
Are glorious boys, there's no denying,
And who shall wear the crowning bays
Becomes a question nice and trying.”
78

“'Tis hard to choose from such a crowd,”
I said, “of knights brave to the letter,
But 'tis a proverb long allowed,—
For every best there is a better.
“And should you trust the knights to say
Who was the best, I wage a button,
That every one would vote straightway
To give the palm to W****** S*****.”
“By Jove!” said De Molay, “you're right;
I've marked his course with satisfaction;
No truer gentleman or knight
Coins principle to use or action.
“His cheerful face his heart betrays;
His generous hand is ever sowing
Those seeds that in the sun's warm rays
Are into loving fullness growing.
“His praise is spoke by every lip,
No voice was ever raised to doubt him,
And, for all grand, good fellowship,
There's not a streak that's mean about him.
“I've seen him on the tented field,
Where Winter Island dints the ocean,
Where veterans in their marches wheeled
In all the poetry of motion.
79

“I've marked his eye in frenzy roll,
As War's fierce pageant moved before him,
And seen the ardor of his soul
Blaze in the manner that he bore him.
“Upon the hill his marquee stood,
And there, when ceased the stern contention,
His social spirits, like a flood,
Beamed forth, too numerous to mention.
“There flashing wit to popping corks
Gave quick response 'mid glasses' rattle,
And charging lines of knives and forks
Bore note of epicurean battle;
“Yet still, as round him raged the strife
Of gastronomic wild invasion,
Reliant on his carving-knife
He met, in full, the ‘great occasion.’
“Full well the golden gift he showed
That you at times enjoy, his brothers,—
The art, most lavishly bestowed,
Of giving happiness to others.
“And I've partaken of his cheer,
In ghostly presence never noted,
And know that none in either sphere
Was more to generous deeds devoted.
80

“In later days, when fearful strife
The nation's very being threated,
And parricidal hands the knife
With murderous intention whetted,—
“He gave his means, with ready hand,
The flag to save, its stars unriven;
He cheered the saviors of the land,
He honored those who'd bravely striven.
“He is, in truth, ‘Preux Chevalier,’
—I needn't make a further trial,—
And I've a radiant jewel here
That you must bear him—no denial.
“I can't do it myself, you know,
For I should be a ghostly donor;
You must the gift of love bestow,
And Palestine be guard of honor.”
I saw the gift—a sparkling sun,
With brilliants dight of purest water,
As big as pullet eggs each one,
And weighing at the least a quarter.
My hand I held to take the prize,
When some confounded thing or other
Brought consciousness unto my eyes,
And out stepped our illustrious brother.
81

Yet still enough remained behind
On which to hinge a little story,
And I'm, with all my heart, inclined
In the dreamed Templar's choice to glory,—
Adopt his praise, though wide awake,
—A dream more true was never broken,—
And for my beau ideal take
Him who deserves the Templar's token.
But, 'stead of jewelled gift, we bring
One of still more refined selection,
—A rare and radiant offering,—
Our hearts' warm, unreserved affection.
This is no dream—it conscious dwells,
Of self a part, to alter never:
And he shall be, while feeling wells,
Our own “Preux Chevalier” forever.
 

Read before Winslow Lewis Commandery, Salem, Mass., General William Sutton, E. C.

82

ROBERT BURNS.

My Musie, at your invitation,
Pricked up her ears with animation,
At thought of joining the oblation
For genius fled,
And shed a new illumination
Round Burns's head.
Ah! rich the thoughts upon me stealing,
At this reflective hour's unsealing!
His name has wakened trains of feeling
That fire my soul,
The necromancy true, revealing,
Of his control.
So sweet, so sacred, and so glowing,
The tide of his warm genius flowing!
The flowers beside its brink upgrowing
In beauteous art,
And the exhaustless compass showing
Of every heart.
83

The gamut of our common being
His hand has struck, its music freeing,
And, joy or sorrow's cadence keying,
The world has blest,
And shadows from the spirit fleeing,
His power confest.
Where heart to heart beats true and tender,
Where Nature smiles in richest splendor,
Where men to justice tribute render,
Where mirth is stirred,
Where virtue calls for a defender,
His tones are heard.
But sharp their note when fraud or lying
Against humanity are trying!
With more than scorpion venom vying,
His satire thrust
Pricks dark Hypocrisy to dying
In vilest dust.
His heart alive to calls of pity,
His vivid mind of temper witty,
His pluck in fortune's struggles gritty,
His course he ran;
A stalwart type, in town or city,
Of regal Man.
Not perfect; ah! the lad was failing;
Temptation every side assailing,
84

Poor Virtue ofttimes unavailing
Made weak acclaim;
But let each tongue desist from railing—
We're much the same.
They may reproach whose dull blood never
Has rushed tumultuous as a river,
Who ne'er have felt the burning fever
Of Passion glow,
But kept 'twixt tranquil banks forever,
As cold as snow.
But when the heart is warm and human,
With latent fires that threat consumin',
That glows with love for man or woman,
And limit spurns,
Sweet sympathetic beams illumine
The name of Burns.
O! rather his proud scoriac nature,
That lit with life each noble feature,
And warmed to every fellow-creature,
Than those dull souls
Which coldly dwarf themselves in stature,
Where self controls.
But time gives us assurance cheering
That ill in shadow disappearing,
85

Leaves all the good that was inhering
In grandest light,
For our approval and revering
This natal night.
And here in votive love combining,
We meet, our myrtle wreaths entwining,
To deck his brow with lustre shining
For aye undimmed!
Whose worth in measure undeclining
Will e'er be hymned.
 

Read at Lawrence, Mass., 1874.

86

PRESS AND PRESS-PEOPLE.

We prize our venerable Art,
Our fondly cherished Alma Mater;
With discipline she tried our heart,
And taught us thus to venerate her.
She strove to rouse ambition up,
To grasp at affluence of knowledge;
She proffered draughts from Wisdom's cup,
That was not filled at school or college.
She pointed, through a thousand doors,
To fields of intellectual clover;
She led where mighty Learning's stores
Awaited for the hungry rover.
[OMITTED]
Howe'er the butt of fortune's spite,
—Whatever be his lot or station,—
The printer takes the highest flight
Of sublunary aspiration.
87

And more in these, our modern days,
His mind aspires—we cannot doubt it;
His office draws his upward gaze,
There is so much up stairs about it.
An alchemist of loftiest ken,
By day and night his head he bothers,
And, patient as a setting hen,
He sets in lead the thoughts of others.
Though some maliciously might hint
That that was hardly transmutation—
Scarce different the thoughts in print
From the original formation.
How multifarious the range
Of his seven-staired exalted mission!
Weaving that web so grand and strange,
The world's news for the next edition:
Here grasping philosophic lore,
Here by Parnassian airs surrounded,
Here where Commercial gems outpour,
Here where by legal fogs confounded;
Here where mercurial Stocks obtain,
Where Science towards the light is groping;
Here where Romance gives blissful pain,
Where Truth and Falsity are coping;
88

Where Politics make specious claim,
Where Honor takes the votive myrtle,—
He picks away with steady aim,
His scope betwixt the “stick” and “turtle.”
And though he plunge not to the mine
Where Thought's bright jewels lie imbedded,
Some grains upon his garments shine,
The plainer seen if thought is leaded.
And proud are we of those who've sprung
Above the dull and common level;
Who, giants, walk our ways among,
And boast of lineage from the devil.
I mean the printer's imp, of course—
And those who rose from small beginning,
Who mark the time by merit's force,
Continued approbation winning.
There are who with us kindred claim,
Who knew not advent typographic,
But who win affluence and fame
By its control in lore or traffic.
The preacher may essay in vain,
By study o'er the midnight taper,
His immortality to gain,
Without assistance from the paper.
89

The savant, jurist, poet, were
But delvers in a sphere neglected,
Without the typo's timely care
To make their betterness respected.
And lecturers most grateful feel
—The rostrum's pleasant boards adorning—
Where all their thoughts reporters steal,
And spread them broadcast in the morning.
[OMITTED]
Out from our Mater's sturdy breast,
In proper season's culmination,
A thought in generous kindness dressed,
Became our loved Association.
Benevolence its aim and scope,
With mutual benefit its basis,
It took a place of trust and hope,
And cheered the gloom of darkened places.
'Twas but a little seed at first,
By loving faith unceasing tended;
But by the dews of heaven 'twas nursed,
And into magnitude ascended.
Until, at fifty honored years,
It calls us to its festal cheering,
With all of memory that endears,
With all the worth that is endearing.
 

From the Fiftieth Anniversary Poem before the Boston Franklin Typographical Society, January 19, 1874.

90

AN OLD TEA-PARTY.

In seventeen hundred seventy-three,
A hundred years ago to-day,
A mighty party met at tea
In good old Boston, o'er the way.
'Twas no hilarious, jocund crowd,
Lit up by faces of the fair,
But each one seemed beneath a cloud,
And wore a most determined air.
Within the Old South Church was held
This solemn party quaint and stern,
And all the members seemed impelled
By feelings hostile to the urn!
No choiring melodists outpoured
Upon the wintry air their tunes,
As solemnly the patriots stirred,—
Though very far from being “spoons.”
What was the matter with the tea?
Could it not be the genuine hong?
91

Was it not steeped sufficiently?
Or was it cooked a bit too strong?
Out then bespoke the patriots tried,
—Not tried by fagot or by law,—
“Though we have all his tea denied,
King George will pour it down our maw;
“For here a cargo bides to-day,
That we must suffer to remain;
The duty isn't much to pay,
But paying were a deadly stain.
“Now say, what is it we must do
To clear the irritation out?”
Just then a painted Indian crew
Passed by the church with fearful shout.
Undoubted Mohawks, every soul;
But, strange that Indians thus should choose!
Small-clothes beneath their blankets stole,
And some wore buckles in their shoes.
And then the party straightway broke,
And followed on behind the “braves”
To where the ship of which they'd spoke
Sat silently upon the waves.
No word was said, and ere the crew
Or owners had a chance to think,
The hatches from their fastening broke,
And all the tea was in the “drink.”
92

Over the side the chests outpoured
Their Souchong, Hyson, and Bohea,
And not a pound remained on board
For after hospitality.
Then such a shout as rent the skies!
Which, had King Georgius only heard,
It might have made him act more wise,
Than in the after-time occurred.
Later, when gallant Peter Gore,
His lady-love's bright smile did seek,
The kiss he gave her at the door
Transferred some war-paint to her cheek;
Which, by next morning's light descried,
Made her heart beat a glad refrain;
And then she almost vowed, with pride,
She'd never wash her face again!
More than a jewel's sheen, she thought,
That spot in other time would bear;
To have it with her blushes wrought
Would make her beauty doubly fair.
Now, this is why we're here to-night,
With all that heart of man can crave,
With tea in plenty, faces bright,
And everything that's fair and brave:
93

The frigid gathering of old,
Which ended in that serious fuss,
Was fraught with blessings manifold,
That should be duly felt by us.
Though acrid was the cup they brewed,
In Boston Bay's extensive dish,
A cup of tea from it ensued
Just suited to all patriot wish.
It fired the hearts of Freedom's sons,
It strengthened hope's relaxing powers,
It gave more potency to guns,
It promise lent to darkened hours.
This cup of tea its force still shows:
It late inspired each Northern breast,
And told in triumph o'er the foes
Who strove the Union to molest;
And as we drink it, and are wise,
Shall we the priceless guerdon gain
That e'er a nation glorifies
Whose honor is without a stain.
This cup, that each partaker cheers,
—A grander man may never see,—
Exalts, inspires, delights, endears:
It is the cup of—Liberty!
 

Read at Chelsea, December 17, 1873.

94

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Vain is thy hope, presumptuous Muse, to make the mad essay
To add unto the joyousness that clusters round today!
I have no words of eloquence like his who spoke before,
But just a reel of rambling rhymes to read you,—nothing more,—
In which I'll try to tell for you, if you'll indulge me so,
Much that they did and didn't do a hundred years ago.
I've had a spirit message come, rapped out in sturdy raps,
From those who long have vanished, but who still are on their taps,
And it gives a pleasant history of things long passed away,
Brought by my grave communicants once more to light of day,
95

Who've anxious seemed, although removed, to let the people know
Just how they managed things down here a hundred years ago.
Then these were warlike scenes and times—militiamen were drawn
To march with Pepperell, the knight, and Colonel William Vaughan;
And tales of their brave deeds did long by firesides have renown,
Where bold Sir William, he and Vaughan, to Chapeaurouge went down,
And let the French and Indians learn that Yankees were not slow
In fighting for the cross and crown a hundred years ago.
Then there were Colonel Atkinson and Colonel Nat. Meserve,
Two fire-eating sons of guns of most undoubted nerve,
Who led the brave New Hampshire men by forest and by sea,
To drive forth from their fastnesses the savage enemy,
—For the “heathen round about” were strong, and meant the people woe,—
But Christian prayers, and swords, prevailed a hundred years ago.
96

But in the midst of war's alarms a peaceful note befell;
It was the note from yonder clock that first struck yonder bell!
Squire Daniel Pierce, the donor, determined by its chime
To hint to folk, on Life's dull march, the need of marking time;
The town received the timely gift, which struck its primal blow
The twenty-fifth of March, about one hundred years ago.
Then Mr. Peter Livius, by granting of the town,
Dammed up the creek called Islington, and laid the draw-bridge down,
Connecting worldly Strawberry Bank with peaceful Christian Shore,
And building mills that we recall in dusty days of yore;
Also the broad tide gates that swung to check the water's flow;
A marvel of philosophy a hundred years ago.
Then elemental warfare dire in heaven and earth awaked,
The fires descended from above, the ground with terror quaked;
The people all were much appalled, their hearts with fear did fail,
97

And then they bought a fire-engine—then they built a jail!—
The relevancy do not ask—it matters not to know—
But things were mixed up terribly a hundred years ago.
Then lotteries were recognized, and none rebuked the scheme
To buy a library of books by what we wicked deem;
The town a hundred tickets took, the proceeds to inure
To help erect a tenement in which to keep the poor;
But if they blanks or prizes drew, the record does not show—
Perhaps the fathers were in luck a hundred years ago.
Then the gallows was resorted to in settling mortal ill,
And Dow, of Hampton Falls, was hanged, who Peter Clough did kill.
Ah, sadly did he expiate that grievous public wound—
For every grain of that he did they hanged him by the Pound!
Of course I mean the cattle-pound—up here a mile or so,
Where the stray “critters” all were put, a hundred years ago.
98

Our sires were loyal to the king, and caps were wildly swung
When, British arms triumphant, 'twas told glad crowds among,
And when Quebec was captured, the guns and bells proclaimed
The joy, and fires on Windmill Hill in cheerful brightness flamed;
Processions moved about the streets, and punch in streams did flow!—
Ah! those were rum old times indeed a hundred years ago.
Then Portsmouth girls were just as fair as those that greet us now—
A Strawberry Bank pre-eminence, that all did e'er allow;
Coquetry then was rarely known and found but seldom dupes,
And dress was rather limited in magnitude of hoops,
But graces unadorned combined to win them many a beau
(As now desired by them all) a hundred years ago.
And then the earnest thinking men began to feel their night,
They had no sunshine of their own, but moved by borrowed light;
99

They wished intelligence to spread, New Hampshire wilds to bless,
And Heaven, to cheer their darkness, lent their need a printing press;
The old Gazette, time-honored name, then broke the shell, we know,
A sturdy chicken, hatched by Fowle, a hundred years ago.
And how the people wondered when first the sheet appeared!
It was the greatest miracle that e'er their vision cheered;
They thought its words of wisdom than Solomon's more wise,
And Daniel Fowle no vulgar fowl, but Bird of Paradise;
And deemed the ancient pressman, Prime (a negro black as sloe),
More than a common colored man a hundred years ago.
'Twas no broad acre that of news, for mails were scarcely known;
They subject were to obstacles, as well as to the crown;
The post came through but once a week, and scarcely brought a word
That might the pulse of man or mouse in our late day have stirred;
100

Though this perhaps was fast enough when everything was slow,
As we may well suppose it was a hundred years ago.
And when in Boston there prevailed a fatal pestilence,
And careful Portsmouth selectmen conceived a safety fence
Across Great Swamp, to head the plague and keep it from the town,
And smoked the mails (and females too) before they'd let them down,—
We've wondered how the editor contrived to make a show,
For local news was very scarce a hundred years ago.
But patrons were more patient then, and did not make to-do;
Excuses they admitted and regarded them as true;
They read the little they obtained, each word upon the page,
Till bold John Stavers, four-in-hand, appeared upon the stage,
And then the mails more steady grew, as he drove to and fro
The first stage in America a hundred years ago.
There came no quick electric spark along a path of wire,
To give the people notes from far, of good news or of dire;
101

Elections then were never known, except that Calvin taught,
And, save the South and old North Church, the South and North were nought;
Kansas was not created yet, so far as they could know
Who printed off the old Gazette a hundred years ago.
Then poetry ne'er blazed in verse, and sentiment was rare,
The editor, in language terse, spoke at his subject square;
No drops e'er fell upon the page from eyes with sorrow wet;
No laughter sprang from printed fun in rich harmonious jet;
The people were averse to verse,—cared more for use than show,—
They had no music in their souls a hundred years ago.
No fashion plates bewitched the maids, in homespun glories clad,
No flaming advertisements told where luxuries could be had,
No selling out at less than cost, no bankrupt stocks of goods,
No damaged articles late wet in some fictitious floods,
102

No lure held out to hide the trap that lay concealed below,
For humbug wasn't understood a hundred years ago.
Then careful ships three times a year brought tidings from beyond
The dark and stormy waters of the mighty “herring pond,”
Giving the news of the other climes, their markets and their fights,
Telling of continental scenes, their wrongs and eke their rights,
Telling of London, and the King, and Parliament also—
Our sires rejoiced in things like these a hundred years ago.
People contented were, and still, and plodded on their way,
Scarce ever looking from the town until their dying day;
And when they shuffled off the coil, they didn't leave their ground,
But even now, as we have shown, they yet are knocking round;
As was their light they faithful walked, and did their work below,
And “Slow and sure” their motto was a hundred years ago.
103

The raps here ceased; I asked for more, but only this could hear:
“Compare your present with the past and see how you appear;
See if your light has been bestowed the public mind to guide,
Or if a Jack-o'lantern, mere, to dump men in the tide;
And if you would be profited by what we hereby show,
Try to be honest as they were a hundred years ago.”
 

A Poem, following an Address by Rev. Andrew P. Peabody, D. D., at the Centennial Anniversary of the establishment of the Press in New Hampshire. Portsmouth, October 6, 1856.

104

AQUEOUS INSPIRATION.

Here met at meat, as meet it surely is,
To crown the day with festive gratulation,
There's gladness beaming from each open phiz,
And every voice gives note of exultation.
Those smile who win, and we a prize have won—
Fortune has favored us who rightly sought her;
Her blessing comes upon us by the run,
Like emigrants from Ireland, by water.
It comes to us as did the crystal stream,
When Moses struck the rock to squelch the doubters,
Dispelling every dubitative dream,
And proving the most eloquent of spouters.
And as that stream poured o'er the land of Sin,
A health-imparting, Jew-reviving river,
So, sinners, we the comer welcome in,
And bless the gift, and praise the bounteous Giver.
105

Our Horeb, though remote, yet at the nod
Of public will, the water here discloses,
And each committee-man has plied his rod,
And every one has proved himself a Moses.
A modern miracle is theirs, I ween
—Howe'er regarded, it is nothing shorter—
For they have with a necromancy keen
Tapped us “Old Medford” and produced pure water.
[OMITTED]
A paradox in this event I claim,
Worthy of philosophical inquiring:
How water, used to subjugate a flame,
Should thus and here each Chelsea heart be firing!
And every one has water on the brain—
A hydrocephalus of subtlest action;
But here comes in a paradox again:
'Tis hard to bear,—but, water satisfaction!
We give our tribute to this marriage day
—May not a thought offensive come to dim it!—
When the fair Mystic gives herself away,
In nuptial bonds to gallant Winnisimmet.
And here about the festal board we meet
To taste the customary fixings bridal,
To wash them down with crystal water sweet,
And pledge the knot just tied in fluid tidal.
106

No airs convivial are these we breathe—
Fraught with the odor of inebriation;
No toddy blossoms round our glasses wreathe,
And not a nose gives vinous indication.
Up to the brim we fill our “flowing bowls,”
But heeding wise old Solomon's injunction,
We'll not in lengthy draughts eclipse our souls,
Nor mar our pedal's locomotive functions.
This is a drink that ne'er intoxicates—
At least, those say so, who have always tried it;
A little of it somehow satiates,
When folks have nothing else to drink beside it.
'Tis said by some one who has doubtless tried,
And drank the fluid with the greatest profit,
That though one quaff with thirst intensified,
There's not a headache in a hogshead of it.
[OMITTED]
Ah, what a living joy this day awakes!
And woman stands enfranchised and elated;
No more forever called to man the brakes,
To which, by destiny, she has been fated.
The “Norman conquest” makes her free indeed—
She sees the crown of all her earthly wishes;
To bathe in tumblers there's no longer need,
Nor need of scant baptism of the dishes.
107

Forth to her hand out pours the grateful stream—
Flows forth to make her former toil diversion;
Changing the current of her weary dream,
A convert now from sprinkling to immersion!
But Mr. Increase Slow puts down his cane—
A stout opponent of these innovations;
“Let washerwomen catch the falling rain;
Our wells are well enough for all occasions.
“And then our streets are all dug up and down,
And 'neath our feet an anaconda bedded,
Demoralizing all our ways in town,
And springing up a monster hydrant-headed.
“Talk of your water's sanitary wealth!
That men should do this is a thing surprising:
A pump's the best auxiliary of health,
And keeps us ruddy with its exercising!”
I asked a big Milesian, t'other day,
What grave he digged beneath our city pavement.”
He leaned a bit upon his spade to say,
“Of Fogyism, sir, and shmall beravement.”
There is a queer old fellow in our land—
Vox Populi, by name, and he's a grand 'un;
He sets the Slows aside on every hand,
Nor leaves 'em scarce a single peg to stand on.
108

They growl and fret, and fume, and prophesy,
And make essay to stop the ball in motion;
When down upon 'em comes Vox Populi,
And off they go like straws upon the ocean;
Or, like some thistle that has stoutly tost,
In fierce resistance to the passing wind,
Beneath the power of the early Frost,
It fades, nor leaves a single trace behind.
[OMITTED]
O Water! sung and praised in many a line,
We hail thy pleasant advent here among us;
We see thy presence in the daylight shine,
As beauteous as the thought that hope has sung us.
We hear the music of the Naiad's laugh
In gushing fount and Mystic (water) metre,
We feel an exaltation as we quaff,
And than rare wine we own its taste is sweeter.
We give our lays, like water-fowls, and sing,
In inspiration jubilant or witty,
And all our pipes in one accord will ring
In water's praise, and praise of the committee.
 

Read at the Celebration of the Introduction of Water into Chelsea, November 23, 1867.

Mr. Geo. H. Norman was the constructor.

109

A RHYME OF FIVE-AND-TWENTY YEARS.

“By cool Siloam's shady rill,”
As cool as wintry airs can make,
We come, our empty cups to fill,
And drink, our thirstiness to slake—
Recalling, as we gather round,
A pilgrimage of smiles and tears,
To-day's prosperity has crowned,
The end of five-and-twenty years.
Our hearts with love renewed beat high,
And yield responsive to the hour;
All undisturbed our evening sky,
Beneath the influence of its power;
Though cold the air, and hurtling snow,
Without, the shivering flesh assail,
Here, in the light of long ago,
We bid defiance to the gale.
O, Friendship, Love, and Truth, how sweet!
The pleasant song that first ye sung—
110

Of life with mirth and joy replete,
And flowers to cheer our path along;
But, better far than halcyon hours,
The many trials that we knew,
Developing our better powers
In airs beneficent and true.
We are not angels—this we've found—
The merely human can we claim;
But there is music in the sound
That syllables a brother's name!
We love him for his faults—our own—
His virtue more than ours appears;
We've tried him by the testing-stone
Of five-and-twenty searching years.
'Tis good for us to pause a while,
And glance along the course we've sped:
At joys that we recall to smile,—
To yield a tribute to our dead.
O, many are the mounds revealed,
Between the present and the past,
Of those whose fate was early sealed,
And those who later felt the blast!
In tender trust they're treasured still;
And memory, with its verdant wreath,
Imparts to us to-night a thrill
For those, the loved, who rest beneath.
In sweetest peacefulness they rest,
Their task achieved, their labor o'er;
111

O, may the wish inspire each breast
To meet them on the shining shore!
It is no sad refrain I sing—
I'll have no faces long to-night;
Let the glad hours with pleasure wing,
And mirth and music give delight.
No troubled thought should enter here,
To mar the present's festive glow,
Though things unlike to those appear
Of five-and-twenty years ago.
Is that my friend of early youth,
Who with me in the race set out—
His mouth without a single tooth,
His body adipose and stout?
And he, as bald as any plate,
Can that be my young friend of eld?
Time's lightning sure has struck his pate,
And scorched off all the wealth it held!
And there is one of manly mould,
Without a hair inclined to gray,
Who must be—let me see—how old?
Full sixty years, if he's a day.
How is it he, with all his years,
The ravages of Time defies?—
The while I gaze the truth appears:
Like Kirby, in the play, HE DYES!
I knew a tender youngster then—
A boy of unpretending years,
112

Scarce venturing 'mid the ranks of men,
So full of bashfulness and fears.
I see him here, I think, to-night,
A citizen of good estate,
With wife and daughters fresh and bright,
Himself a very heavy weight.
And there was one of feeble mould,
Quite far from strong, and slim and pale;
He was so thin he wouldn't hold—
I've seen him try—a glass of ale!
I see him days about the town,
A portly man with ruddy face;
'Tis said to Windship's he'll go down,
And lift his ton without grimace.
And some in homeliness remain,
As on the day we first set out;
Old time has tackled them in vain,
And little change has brought about;
But though thus forced to let them go,
On better looking folks to wait,
Around their eyes the crows' feet show—
I see a stooping in their gait.
Though barred our doors to stranger feet,
Hymen our guardian has passed,
And spread his meshes strong and sweet,
Binding us victims hard and fast.
Yet glad the bond that we have known;
It is the girdle of our joys,
113

Circling our hearth-stones like a zone,
Gemmed with a wealth of girls and boys.
Yet there are some, I'm grieved to say,
Who would not yield to love the power,
But drifted in their single way,
From then, down to the present hour.
Alone! ah, sad the word—alone!
To them the future dark appears;
But yet the fault is all their own—
A sin of five-and-twenty years.
Ah, gallant youth! ah, gentle maids!
A quarter century goes by:
Care pays no great respect to braids;
It dims the brightness of the eye:
We see the changing of the tress,
We see the changing of the form,
But still unchanging, ne'ertheless,
The loving heart is true and warm—
Surviving all the grace of earth,
And glowing with a warmth as true
As when, in youth's bright hour of mirth,
It gave itself to me and you!
And here, renewing and renewed,
In radiant eyes, and teeth like pearls,
We see restored in plenitude,
The mothers in their beauteous girls.
Ho! brethren of the frosty pow!
Gone are the raven locks of old,
114

And wrinkles on each manly brow
May now in multitudes be told.
But what of that? The heart is gay,
Although the head is changed to snow;
We cannot keep it always May—
The Autumn must succeed, you know.
May ours a garner prove of peace,
And Nature's slow descending sun
Show that, as earthly hours decrease,
A higher life may have begun—
Trending towards that province bright,
The soul in its foreknowing sees,
Where, in the rare supernal light
Are gained the heavenly degrees.
O friends, take heart—we're ripening fast,
And Heaven alone our fates doth hold:
We know not how our lot is cast,
Till Time—how long?—the fact has told.
But long or short, no matter now;
We have no room for doubts nor fears,
To the same power our hearts we bow,
That's kept us five-and-twenty years.
 

Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Siloam Lodge of Independent Order of Odd Fellows, February 21, 1867.

115

CONTRASTS AND SIMILITUDES.

Three Pilgrims of the old Bay State
Have wandered from their friends away,
And rest a bit within your gate,
Their Pilgrim offerings to pay.
Not like the Pilgrims known of yore,
With grizzly beards and scallop shell,
And dusty clothes and pedals sore,
And hardships that were sad to tell.
We do not brag of weary tramps,
Of hungry fasts, and shrines afar;
Instead of stumps we favor stamps,
And plod it in a railroad car.
We read the story of the two
Who penance did to walk on peas,
The one of whom went glibly through,
The other sore and ill at ease.
116

And when the first was asked how he
Could walk so easily about,
Replied, with grinning phiz, “You see,
I boiled my peas ere I set out.”
So easily we come to-night,
With friendly sympathy aglow;
We heard your word of kind invite,
And like Rebekah said—“I'll go!”
“I'll go!” and this recalls a tale
We in the good old Bible read,
Where different customs did prevail
From those that in these days we heed.
Now, when a young man seeks to wed,
He wants no fussy parent's aid,
But puts his best hat on his head,
And goes right off and asks the maid.
If she says “Yes,” why, well and good,
The old folks all ignored, you see;
But things were not so understood
Down in the land of old Judee.
The patriarch Abraham, well in years,
Deemed that, before he closed his life,
'Twere best to seek among his peers
And find young Israel a wife.
117

Isaac was only forty-three
When his papa conceived this thought;
The merest infant, you'll agree,
Whose tender judgment passed for nought.
To years discreet he hadn't come,
And so a servant Abraham sent
To choose a wife, and bring her home,
To share the youthful Israel's tent.
First Abraham prayed and asked a sign,
To show the servant where to go;
And the far land of sheep and kine
The answering voice of Heaven did show.
But Abraham said that, any how,
His boy no heathen maid should wed;
And so the servant made a vow,
And straightway to Judea sped.
He'd seen a damsel by a spring,
Revealed on his celestial chart;
And camels took and many a thing
Likely to win a maiden's heart.
He came unto a Jewish town,
Where, by a wayside sparkling rill,
Maidens at eventide came down
Their jugs and demijohns to fill.
118

The servant prayed: “Was she with these
Whom he in his long journey sought?
If so, Lord, let her serve him, please,
And give his kneeling beasts a thought.”
He asked the boon, when one straightway
Drew from the well the water cold,
And said, “Now drink yourself, sir, pray,
Then let your beasts drink all they'll hold.”
He thanked her for her courtesy,
In good old-fashioned Bible way,—
Speaking in manner somewhat free,
Without the nonsense of to-day.
He asked her, “Who are you, my dear?”
Said she, “Rebekah, Bethuel's daughter,
Grandchild of Nahor, Abraham's frère,
Come out to draw our folks some water.”
And then the servant truly knew
That she was just the one he sought;
She was right beautiful to view,
And innocent in deed and thought.
He on her a rare gift bestowed,—
Earrings and bracelets pure and bright,
And asked her if at her abode
She thought they'd keep him over night.
119

She pledged him welcome and ran home
Her brother Laban there to tell,
Who with an eager haste did come
Where stood the stranger at the well,—
And took him home, and there he told
The errand which his care so tasked;
They saw the Lord in all unfold,
But thought Rebekah should be asked.
'Twas very kind in them, no doubt,
To give the maid a chance to choose,
Whom Heaven had formed the match without—
And what if she should dare refuse!
So she was called, and straightway given
All of her mission high to know,
And, seeing 'twas the will of Heaven,
She firmly said at once—I'll go!
Never was courtship quicker done,
Never an answer quicker made;
Were she a more romantic one
The answer might have been delayed.
But 'twas the will of Heaven, you know,
Not reckoned like our common chances;
Things then were nothing near as slow
As they appear in our romances.
120

Ah, day of simple blessedness!
In this thou art appreciated,
When twenty yards compose a dress,
The wardrobe twenty duplicated.
No Saratoga trunks were hers,
Her bridal trip to mar and trammel;
She made no draft on milliners,
But took her bundle on a camel.
She had no dread of fortune rough,
—This simple-hearted Jewish daughter;—
Perhaps she thought she'd drudged enough,
And Laban left to draw the water.
So off she went—and none more true,
As wife and mother, e'er existed,
Except that fact of Jacob's stew,
Which I confess seems somewhat twisted.
The meaning of my humble rhyme
Is in the two words herein quoted:
I'll go!—an energy sublime
Invests the words with zeal devoted.
And the Rebekahs of our day,
Who the same generous rule pursue,
Enact in as sublime a way
The conduct of the gentle Jew.
121

Where duty's call by them is heard,
Where speaks the heart oppressed by woe,
Where men grow sick with hope deferred,
Their voice responds as then—I'll go!
There's hope and blessing in the cup
They pour, dark sorrow to beguile;
The dying eye with joy lights up
To catch the beaming of their smile.
We have no rings or bracelets fine
To deck the ones we honor so;
But let us prove the call divine,
And straight they answer it—I'll go!
Rebekah prompts our energy,
She strengthens every thought of good,
She leads us hopefully to see
The truth in all vicissitude.
She gives a charm to friendship's claim,
And Love assumes a purer sway
When she divinely feeds the flame
To light us o'er life's troubled way.
We bring no camels in our train,
Nor thirsting men to claim her care;
But she upon the Judean plain,
Had not, than these, more virtues rare.
122

And all the hospitable grace
That in the Jewess fair we see,
In Rhoda wears as bright a face
As e'er did hers in old Judee.
And we with imitative mind,
As such traits our Rebekahs show,
Feel to hold back no whit inclined,
But say, like her of old, “I'll go!”
 

Read on the occasion of a visit to Naomi Lodge of Rebekah, at Providence, R. I.

123

AFTER-DINNER EFFORT.

I rise responsive to your knead, as the loaf said to the baker,
Albeit I'm shaking in my shoes, although I'm not a Shaker;
And though my rhymes may be devoid of qualifying reason,
As dry as vernal blossoms are in huckleberry season,
Still, may be, it is better thus, as I may then be able
To partly meet your wish, and give you something dry at table.
Of all the elements of Man, the social and the jolly
Are pungent condiments that hide his weakness and his folly,
And though the laugh be banned by some, and thrown o'er 'mong the vices,
It gives the piquancy to life that pudding gets from spices.
124

No germ of good is lost the world, but has more healthy growing
In atmospheres where wit's bright sun beams round with fervor glowing—
Where humor permeates the soul, and, all its cells unsealing,
Up spring the seeds of happiness to bloom in flowers of feeling!
E'en “sweet religion,” oft obscured by sacerdotal glamour,
By far more potently proclaims if cheer dictate its grammar;
No “rhapsody of words,” alone, whose trade-mark is a steeple,
But truth, in smiles, exampling best the “good news to all people.”
Vice gains no help from cheerfulness, and our own genial poet
Says he “ne'er heard a hearty laugh from out a villain's throet”—
Pardon the rhyme—'tis somewhat crude—but do not snap your bard up,
For he, like bigger bards, sometimes, may for a rhyme be hard up.
Where'er the festive board is spread, there mirth is most resplendent,
With “chunks of wisdom” interblent, and reason in ascendant;
And of one thing we're pretty sure, that mirth is not dyspeptic,
125

As, half from indigestion, come the bigot and the sceptic.
We turn a new leaf in Life's book, with plates illuminated,
And through rare gustatory arts our tastes and minds are sated;
A while through clear contented eyes in happy mood we see things,
And catch new inspiration from the tinkle of the tea things.
So, there's no time of all the year more grand than this, or pleasant,
That brings, in universal cheer, so many kinfolk present,
From worldly strife, and worldly care, and secular exaction,
To find in social union meet congenial satisfaction.
The old-time Jews were yearly wont Jerusalem to haste to,
And carry up their offerings, and do as they'd a taste to,
Obeying the Mosaic law, and seeing their relations,
And mingling secular, perhaps, with pious operations:
Pot-luck partaking with their friends, or at the hotels stopping,
And giving Moses half the time, and half the time to shopping.
And so our anniversary week—it an undoubted fact is—
126

Was based on this beneficent and very human practice,
And, gathering all our interests that yearly have collected,
Boston becomes Jerusalem by centuries perfected;
And like the shoe of the Wandering Jew, by Eugene Sue created,
Whose seven hob-nails impressed the snow o'er which he peregrinated,
These seven days on Time's broad plain make evident impression,
And this, most lasting of them all, by social joy's possession.
We leave our burdens at the door, and enter, warm and glowing,
As Bunyan's “Pilgrim” cast his pack, and find it, “better going:”—
Burdens of every weight and form that plague the genus human,
As discipline or ballast, borne by every man and woman.
And what a pile they make! There's home, with cares of mighty meaning—
The cares of summer dress-making, of cooking or of cleaning;
The care of politics, that claims each patriot's attention,
And leads him through mysterious ways, too numerous to mention;
The care of ardent temperance souls, who feel in purpose hearty,
127

But fear to act lest they, mayhap, should compromise their party;
The care of hiring pastors of immaculate pretension,
And building churches for their use of such sublime dimension,
That how to pay for them, becomes the hardest to determine,
And far more dues upon them rest than ever fell on Hermon;
The care of fashion, that controls with power the most provoking,
And influences everything, from preaching down to smoking—
That such controlling bias hath, over all men and women,
The human structure, grand, is made subordinate to trimmin',
And though admitting woman's wrongs—so many, Heaven bless her!—
Chivalric man don't clearly see how he can e'er redress her;
The care of trade's perplexities, and thinking where to borrow
The money that's to pay the note becoming due tomorrow!
I'll not look farther to disclose more than is here depicted,
Lest, haply, I should stumble over something interdicted.
There let cares lie until we leave, no festal feature marring,
128

For they are some like earthquakes, prone to cause unpleasant jarring;
We are better for the brief release, and then, when we are through it,
We'll dare the fight we are called to wage with better pluck to do it.
We take not fellowship with those who are always sighing, whining,
Who have no word for thankfulness and twenty for repining,
Who cannot see in Nature's smiles for smiles of theirs excuses,
And turn the good seen everywhere to melancholy uses;
Could such come here and view with me this scene of happy faces,
'Twould warm their hearts, I know, to feel their cheer-imparting graces,
Beaming upon them like the sun, prompting a warm devotion,
And giving what the monarch craved so much—a new emotion.
Ours is, thank God! the cheerful heart, that holds not earth a prison,
Nor gropes within the tomb of joy for that which has arisen;
Heaven strews our path with cheerfulness, and gratefully we prize it,
As at this passover of soul we yearly realize it.
129

We have deep sympathy for such as cling to dogmas dismal,
Who smell, in all life's pleasant things, an atmosphere abysmal,
Who, with unhealthy fancies fraught, sigh o'er their neighbor's errors,
And see in all God's attributes no features but his terrors,—
Consigning those not of their fold to Satan's dark dominion,
While theirs shall pass the ordeal, and never scorch a pinion:
With tastes all warped to match their souls, by bigotry incrusted.
Well was it that to any such the earth was not intrusted—
To mould it and to decorate—there'd be no cheerful feature,
And mirth would be a tabooed thing in every living creature.
The trees and flowers would be of drab, the birds in sables winging,
And nought but dirges be allowed in all their native singing.
That robin there upon the tree, which wakes me from my slumbers,
Would tune his throat to other note and trill in dismal numbers.
The colts that frisk beside their dams would then repress their ambling,
130

And lambs would never be allowed to carry on their gamboling;
The joyous sea its sportive waves would hold in strict subjection,
And the glad sun would spend its rays in serious reflection.
Thank Heaven, the number is but few; the light of Truth, downpouring,
Has waked the sleepers in their caves, and set their spirits soaring;
The garb of stern theology is seedy grown and tattered,
And the solid shot of living Truth its citadel has shattered.
No more does difference of sect the status fix for sinners,
And those who do the right are right, and in the race are winners.
Bless God for Joy!—it warms the breast and sets its tide to flowing,
As Spring unseals the vernal brooks, and wakes the grass to growing;
Each smile a message from the soul, with joy's effulgence shining,
Is prayer and worship unexpressed, that need no word-defining;
And upward, onward, moving e'er, accretive force receiving,
The cheerful soul exemplifies the true “joy of believing.”
 

Read at the Universalist Festival, in Faneuil Hall, June 28, 1872.

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