The writings of Robert C. Sands :: :: University of Virginia Library

An Album, while an Album, is a thing
(If clean the paper, and the binding fair),
Pretty to look at; and the poets sing
Of many similes that appropriate are;
And which 'tis easy to our mind to bring
As none of them are new, or strange, or rare;
Such as—a maiden's heart—a baby's mind—
Or the first state of those two parents of mankind.

But ah! upon the simple maiden's heart,
Will Love, too soon, some guileful image trace;
And Sin and Satan soon will play their part,
And alter much the helpless infant's case.
Adam and Eve were soon seduced to start
From Paradise, awhile their resting place;
And so, an Album, in the course of time,
Is soiled by hands and feet, fingers and rhyme.

Oh! and alas! while on this volume's brink,
Still a white sea, I stand, and meditate
Upon the many coloured kinds of ink,
Whose tortuous currents here must permeate,—
When on the torture of those brains I think,
Whose oozings here must be incorporate,—
Upon the geese that must the quills supply,
And those that must commit the poetry,—

383

I sorrow, that all fair things must decay,
While time, and accident, and mischief last;
That the red rose so soon must fade away,
The white be sullied by the ruthless blast;
The pure snow turned to mud, in half a day;
Even heaven's own glorious azure be o'ercast;
Imperial ermine be with dust defiled,
And China's finest crockery cracked and spoiled.

Thou snow-white altar! which to friendship rear'd,
With freshest garlands should alone be hung,
And with no dull and smoky incense smear'd,
But such as perfume-laden Zephyr flung;
Strange hieroglyphics, soon, I am afeard,
Thy graceful sculpture will appear among;
The vulgar love their names to cut or write
On every post that's new, or tablet that is white!

Of what an Album's like, before 'tis used,
I thus have chanted in my homely phrase;
But what it's like, by fate when long abused,
To tell, perplexes me in various ways;
Fancy invoked assistance has refused
To yield resemblances; because, she says,
It were to Love and Friendship treason vile,
To comment coarsely on their honest toil.

Then, without thee, O Nymph! so often pray'd,
So rarely won, to listen to our cry!
Whose image floats in heavenly tints portray'd,
Of roseate morn, or eve's empurpled sky;—
In later poets' pictures much decay'd
And patched, and tattered in thy drapery;—
Without the Fancy! I must strive to find
Such similes as suit the common mind.

384

'Tis like a trunk, with ancient clothes replete,
Of every colour, fashion, age, and shape;
'Tis like a virtuoso's cabinet,
Thro' which with listless eye we talk and gape;
Where beauty and deformity we meet,
Birds of bright plumes and bats, the deer and ape:
'Tis like the legislature,—whereunto
Few swans, some hawks, and many goslings go.

'Tis like an ancient single lady's chest,
Where rummaging, the curious heir discovers
Old patterns, worn-out thimbles, and the rest
Of antique trumpery; fans, and flowers, and covers
Of pincushions; a petrified wasp's nest;
Letters from long defunct or married lovers;
Work-boxes, ten-pences that once were new,
And murder'd metre, if she was a blue.

'Tis like a doomsday-book, wherein is writ
Of every man's capacity the measure,—
The length, and breadth, and boundaries of his wit,
And value of his intellectual treasure:—
'Tis like a party, when you ask to it
Clowns, who derive from such soirées no pleasure,
But are compelled in company to go,
Their awkwardness and ignorance to show.

'Tis like a churchyard—where, in crooked rows,
Tomb-stones, and urns, and crosses are arrayed,
Memorials of the persons that repose
Beneath, whose virtues are thereon displayed;
Where every kind and colour, friends and foes,
Together sleep, beneath the cypress shade;
I wish I had let this simile alone—
It is a sad, though an important one.

385

For, as those pale memorials to the eye
Of unforgetful friendship, can restore
The loved and lovely in the days gone by,
The forms once dear, that we behold no more,
So can these pages bring the absent nigh,
And summon back the ghost from Lethe's shore:
Therefore, they are sacred; and I am ashamed
In any wise their uses to have blamed.

'Tis like a Talisman, by magic hands
Framed with quaint spells, and graved with figures strange,
That, by the instructed finger touched, commands
All images that float in nature's range;
Recalls each well-known form from distant lands,
And shows the shrouded dead without a change:
And long-forgotten scenes, a shadowy train,
And long-forgotten faces smile again.