University of Virginia Library

Our own, howe'er with Bryon's verse
He may enchanted be,
Finds that he likes the ocean worse,
When trying it per se.

When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And built, with a roof of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!

Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain!

So mused a poet, quite as wise as either you or I,
Coughing with dust, as Crassus' coach rolled smoothly-swinging by;
And, if I understand his thought, which may be something trite,
He was (which for a poet's much) within two-thirds of right;
Fond youth, be abstinent, pull not that Hesperidean fruit,
One bite, and you repent too late, and lame your jaw to boot:
Thank God for the Unattainable, it leaves you still a boy,
The wishing for the wishing-cap is that which makes the joy;
Privation gives their charm to things, the glory and the grace,
Beckon and flee—ah, fool, that would'st their frozen zones embrace!
In winter, summer seems most fair, and what enchantment glows
In August o'er those mountain-peaks, ermined with rounding snows!
The frozen Samoiede makes his heaven a place of endless fire,
And, when kind fortune heaps the board, to glut the soul's desire,
Apicius Bufo starves and sighs, and wonders what it means,—
Nectar? Ambrosia?—hum, so-so, but no pig's head and greens?
And thou, oh hero, who hast climbed to scarce-dreamed fame and power,
Think'st only of a little mound which dusky yews embower,
And, sighing, musest what are all these idle sands to me
Since those blue eyes are closed with dust that should be here to see?
Ah, happy eyes that shut so soon, ye only have the might
To keep undimmed the olden spell, for ever warm and bright!
Had village Alice lived, poor fool, thou would'st without remorse
Be sighing for a bride of State, and planning a divorce.

This train of thought I've fallen on, far out here on the sea,
Coiled up, half-frozen underneath the weather-bulwark's lee.
And (faith that last wave soused me through)—and writing on my knee;
The application of it is, that when you're on the land
The sea is every thing that's bright, and broad, and blue, and grand,
And that you'd change what Wordsworth calls your glorious second berth
(Now that you've tried it) for a grave, because 'twould be firm earth;
Perhaps in some October night, when the roused south o'erwhelms,
With surge on surge rolled gathering down the night, the shuddering elms,
You have lain fancying what wild joy there must be in the motion
Of a brave vessel plunging through the broken coils of ocean;
Your mind ran forth and back again, like a fly-watching spider,
Upon that line in Byron of the steed that knows its rider,
And, in your bath next morning, you splash with double glee,
Humming, dear Barry Cornwall's song—the sea! the o-pen sea!
I wish that Barry and Byron both were only here with me!
All well enough this sentiment and stuff upon the shore,
But, when the sea is smoothest, 'tis an Erymanthian bore,
And when 'tis rough, my brace of bards, you'd neither of you sing
Of hands on manes, or blue and fresh, but quite another thing,—
Flat on your backs in jerking berths you scarce could keep your place in,
You'd moan an Amboean sad—quick, steward! quick! a basin!
(Queen's counsel most delectable, I still seem hearing thee
Sing Cameriere through the rain along the Bieler sea.)

How easy 'tis to tyrannize over Taste's hapless lieges!
The poor Achivi still are plucked quidquid delirant reges;
If Hamlet says he sees a whale, Polonius must follow,
And what A swears is beautiful, all down to Z will swallow;
None dares confess he cannot see what great Flapdoddle spies,
And, like potatoes, fools are bred from one another's eyes;
Dear Nyncombe, what sharp agonies I've seen you going through with
Before a statue which your soul had naught on earth to do with,
And what could e'er be finer than your awed, assenting “Oh!”
When I suggested that deep thought in the Apollo's toe?
Don't come to Rome for nothing, man, with some likeminded crony,
Go valiantly and eat a steak down at the Gabione;
'Tis in this way that men are made to say they like the sea,
Flam says he does, and all the rest will be as good as he.
I heard a great man once declare that he had never found
A sailor, yet, who loved the fate to which his life was bound,
And when I asked our brown first-mate, a seaman good and brave,
On shore as helpless as a fish, a viking on the wave,
What life would please him most? he sighed, looked at his tattooed arm,
Studied its hieroglyphs awhile, and said—an inland farm.
And he was right; I cannot, for example, see the least
Pleasure in walking on a deck that's drunk as any beast,
A wet plank, scarcely larger than a white bear's sloppy pen,
That tips you here and slips you there, and trips you back again;
That cheats you with a moment's lull, and, when you think you feel
Quite sure of the companionway, half breaks you on the wheel,
Then slants until you need both hands to keep your hold on that,
And pins you helpless while the wind blows off your second hat.
The steed that throws his rider would be nearer to the fact:
To me it gives no pleasure to be swashed and washed and racked;
To have a three weeks' tipsiness on cold saltwater merely,
With legs that seem like some one's else, they bother you so queerly
Taking you here when you mean there,—no, no, it has no charm,
Although the loveliest cousin may be hanging on your arm.
Of course, I am not seasick, for although that epidemic
(Hic) prostrates all my friends, yet (hic) I only pity them (hic).
Indeed, in this life's pilgrimage, I found this maxim true:
There are four common weaknesses no mortal ever knew,
A headache that was caused by wine, drowsiness late at night,
Seasickness, and a corn that came from wearing boots too tight.
A seasick man I never saw; Our Own leans o'er the rail,
Muses awhile, and then comes back with features doughy pale;
But he had only wandered aft, a Parthian glance to take
At those strange coils of moony fire that mark the writhing wake.
With ghastly calm he takes a pipe; in minutes five (or less) hence,
He'll feel again that ecstasy produced by phosphorescence.

Conceive of an existence in which the great events
Are breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, in which, when Fate relents,
She sends a string of porpoises, perhaps a grampus, too,
Who blunders up beneath the stern, and gives a poo-oo-ooh!
While we immortal souls crowd aft and crush each other's toes
To see this stupid creature blow what he esteems a nose;
Why, I blew thrice my moral and accountable proboscis,
But found no fish so blasé that it ever came across his
Waterlogged brain that it was worth his while to turn and come anon,
Lest he should miss the witnessing of that sublime phenomenon;
Nor would it, though your nose were like fray John's, or even had you a
Verissimo fazzoletto of Saint Antony of Padua,
The Apostle who in Finland had a cure of souls, and sent
Conviction to his hearers that 'twas good to fry in Lent.
There are some goodish things at sea; for instance, one can feel
A grandeur in the silent man for ever at the wheel,
That bit of two-legged intellect, that particle of drill,
Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with reason, brain and will,
And makes the ship, though skies are black and headwinds whistle loud,
Obey her conscience there which feels the loadstar through the cloud;
And when by lusty western gales the full-sailed barque is hurled
Toward the great moon which, sitting on the silent underworld,
Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and shoots a broadening line,
Of palpitant light from crest to crest across the ridgy brine,
Then from the bows look back and feel a thrill that never stales
In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of onward-yearning sails;
Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that you can't make a poem,
Take him aboard a clipper-ship, young Jonathan, and show him
A work of art that in its grace and grandeur may compare
With any thing that any race has fashioned any where;
'Tis not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if you come to that,
We think of Hyde Park corner, and concede you beat us flat
With your equestrian statue to a Nose and a Cocked-hat;
But 'tis not a cathedral; well, e'en that we will allow,
Both statues and cathedrals are anachronistic now;
Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men who conquered you,
You'd sell a bargain, if we'd take the deans and chapters too;
No; mortal men build now-a-days, as always heretofore,
Good temples to the gods which they in very truth adore;
The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all their willing flocks,
Although they bow to stones no more, do bend the knee to stocks,
And churches can't be beautiful though crowded, floor and gallery,
If people worship preacher, and if preacher worship salary;
'Tis well to look things in the face, the god o' the modern universe,
Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and libraries of puny verse,
If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon his ledger—say, per
Contra to loss of so much stone, best Russia duck and paper;
And, after all, about this Art men talk a deal of fudge,
Each nation has its path marked out, from which it must not budge;
The Romans had as little art as Noah in his ark,
Yet somehow on this globe contrived to make an epic mark;
Religion, painting, sculpture, song—for these they ran up jolly ticks
With Greece and Egypt, but they were great artists in their politics,
And if we make no minsters, John, nor epics, yet the Fates
Are not entirely deaf to men who can build ships and states;
(I waive the literary point, contented with observing
That I like Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Bryant, Irving,)
The arts are never pioneers, but men have strength and health
Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a commonwealth,
Nay, can more easily go on and frame them by the dozen,
Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear sympathizing cousin:
And, though our restless Jonathan have not your graver bent, sure he
Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, rapid, nineteenth century;
This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did
When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid,
Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire-tamed lightning now
Replaces Delphos—mend don't leave the steamer for the scow;
What hero, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read
The Iliad, the Shanàmeh, or the Nibelungenlied?
Their public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah, the hairy Graf—
Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; we weary o'er a paragraph;
The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles;
From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles,
As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused jars
Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars;
Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking,
The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking,
The newspapers take in the Age, and Stocks do all the thinking.

There's something in a clean fresh page (and I have here begun one)
That sets one thinking of the goods and ills that have been done one,
For all the good books and the bad were first but so much paper
As would have curled Belinda's lock, or lit a bedward taper;
The bit of paper smooth and white is gifted with a spell
Of Mahomet's carpet, and can take the prisoner from his cell,
Can bear him to La Mancha's hills to dream beneath the trees,
Hearing far bells of muleteers, or fitful hum of bees;
'Tis quite a simple recipe—a jail, ink, paper, pen,—
Yet, mixed, they make Don Quixote,—do you think they would agen?
Go steal a trifle, Reader, to put you in the
And see if you can get a lift upon the prophet's rug.
The sheet that's in your desk, dear Sir, potentially contains
More wisdom than has ever yet got out of human brains,
You, young Lorenzo yet may write your billy dukises sweet
On that poor Paddy's tattered shirt, that's digging in the street;
You, Doctor Dodd, may write thereon a very simple note
That singularly shall affect your Reverence's throat;
Yea, on that triangle that shows where he can't see, poor fellow
A greater Shakspeare may begin, a perfecter Othello;
There's magnetism in paper fair that rapidly draws down
The particles of thought that lie stuck fast beneath our crown;
The brain is scrawled with characters in sympathetic ink,
Which with the heat show clearly forth when we begin to think,—
Thoughts, fancies, feelings, memories, just now in darkness shrinking,—
For the imperative paper there compels us into thinking;
Begin; and then Necessity will, like a corkscrew stout,
From the brain's narrow gateway draw the wooden jailor out,
And all that you have bottled there, swipes be it, or Tokay,
Gulluck—gulluck comes gurgling out to wet the reader's clay;
And then, oh Reader, haste to taste; much swipes for Tokay passes
Served up upon a silver tray and poured in Tokay glasses,
And thou may'st drink that golden wine with palate dull and neuter
Deeming it poorish swipes because it masquerades in pewter.
Think, pen in hand, wise Göthe said, still hoarding mental pelf
And wise in the economies that save the waste of self.
The paper's virtue being proved, 'tis rather awkward hinting
That all which takes its goodness out's the writing and the printing,
That, while 'tis yet unstained, it keeps it wisdom and its wit in
Until—in short that books are good as long as they're unwritten;
No doubt pure mathematics lie, the undiscovered base
Of all that governs, pleases, or concerns the human race;
Our grandchildren, at common school, may on the blackboard see
The mystery of love resolved by simple a plus b,
And downright Hamlets may produce for exercise at college
By some fourth power of minus x, which now eludes our knowledge,
Till that time comes I've often thought 'twould be a pretty plan
If some not overdeep or grave, but pleasant-thoughted man
Would publish us a small white book, and leave the pages fair,
[Put?] a suggestive index and title here and there,
For Thought to hitch its web upon—Jove! what a book were there!
Its name should be Blank's Essays and to it we'd surrender
Our musing after dinner minds with feet upon the fender,
Meerschaum in mouth, and make the smoke that wavered toward the ceiling
Transmute itself to every shape of fancy thought and feeling.
Twould be in Tartar Doctors' style, who write the medicine's name
Make their poor patients swallow it, and the effect's the same;
Faith, we will try it on the spot, it will not take a minute
I'll leave a short space blank, and write

auf wiedersehen
a rivederci

in it
Let any reader muse on that, and it will plainly show him
That he contains within him all he weeps o'er in a poem;
O Edelmann, O Signor Giù, O Storg, does it recall
The pleasant nights, the smokes, the jokes, the songs, the girls, the all?
Or let me leave another space and simply scrawl therein

Sweetbrier Lane—

Now Memory opes forthwith her choicest bin!
Ye twenty maids in muslin gowns who made all else seem chaff,
In whom successively I found my nature's other half,
Who played pianos all day long and had no other care,
Who gave me all those single locks of brown, black, golden hair,
Ye who have been these twenty years the Mrs. Smith and Brown,
Reading those words, how young Romance his long hushed lute takes down,
Wipes off the cobwebs and the dust, gives every key a screw,
And with one stroke across the chords lo, skies forever blue,
Moonlight, slow partings at the gate, pressed roseleaves, and Du! Du!
The last thing that a poet learns is how to throw away
And how to make you thrill and creep with what he doesn't say,
For instance now, to write a song after the style of Poe,
Take the old musty, fusty stock of Everybody and Co;
A moon—we all do know the moon, a sea—we all have seen it,
A dreadful Hint—we all have had—a Fool we all have been it;
Then thus—the black sea moaned beneath and broke in fairy snow,
The moon loomed bloodred in the East, when we met long ago;
That first lush kiss that fierce embrace that parting long and loath—
Avaunt thou pale and patient face! who says I broke my troth?
The music bursts, the dance reels on—ah it is well for thee
Thou hearst no more the muffled beat of that funereal sea;
The dreadful Thing is at my side, its lips are on my lips,
And the sea moans on forevermore, and the frozen seaweed drips!
Tom (nearly eighteen years of age) the dark and silent Man,
Puts on as deep and wild a frown as two white eyebrows can,
Reads it to trembling Sarah Jane, and drops a hint sublime
That he, too, bears the weary weight of some unfathomed crime
And Dick and Harry, who have each an anaconda's appetite,
Feel bound to cheat it of its due and in concealment clap it tight,
Envying dark Tom's mysterious gloom (dyspepsia of both kinds)
And blushing for the stomachs strong that give them healthy minds;
Ah, my Lord Byron, it would make a nice statistic question
How many follies had their rise in your diseased digestion;—
But this Digression, banyan-like, plants colonies so fast
And those again new colonies that, on my soul, at last
'Tis only with nice measuring and comparing I can see
Which my discourse's offshoot is and which the mother-tree;
Let but my Muse be once caught up by something to discuss
She's like the one Old Lady that is always in the 'bus,
Who asks the seedy foreigner soon as she takes her seat
Whether they haven't got beyond the End of Something Street,
And, helpless as a bandbox lone, whence the address is torn,
Is set down everywhere except at her appropriate bourne.