The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes

This evening hour which grateful memory spares
From evening toil and unrequited cares;
These curling lips, these joy revealing eyes,
These mirthful tones, re-echoing as they rise,
These friendly pledges on this festal shrine,
The glistening goblet and the flowing wine,
This genial influence which the coldest heart
Warms to receive and opens to impart,
Mock the poor Art who does her subjects wrong
And steals from Pleasure all she wastes in Song.
Yet since you ask this feeble hand to strew
Wreathes on the flowers and diamonds on the snow,
Take all it bears, and if the gift offend,
Condemn the Poet—spare! oh! spare the friend!

Yes, while I speak, some magic wand appears
Shapes the long past, oh! say not happier years,
The lawless fancies, yet untaught to know
The charms of reason, or the scourge of woe;
The boyish dreams now melting into air;
The virgin forms, alas! no longer fair;
The scattered friends, with many a tear resigned,
Once all our own, now mingled with mankind;
Since, save in memory, ye appear no more
In the bright present, let the Past live o'er.
Still in the heart, some lingering spark remains—
You cannot chase it from the shrinking veins.
Grief comes too early; Pleasure ne'er too late.
Snatch the fair blossom, whatsoe'er its date;
If youth still charms thee, mirth is justly thine;
If age has chilled thee, lo!—the generous wine!

Oh! thoughtless revellers! when you set my task,
How little dreamed you of the toil you asked.
How shall I please you?—I, a grave young man,
Whose fate is drudgery on “the useful plan.”
How can I coax you, smooth you, comb you down,
And cheat your frontals of that awful frown—
Portentous scowl! which marks in every age
The blistering, clystering, tooth-extracting sage?
A verse too polished will not stick at all;
The worst back scratcher is a billiard ball.
A rhyme too rugged would not hit the point,
Its loose legs wriggling in and out of joint.
Shall I be serious, touching, lachrymose;

322

Mix tears with wine and give you all a dose?
But well-filled stomachs have not room for grief,
For sips and sighs, for porter and roast beef.
Shall I be learned, and with punch and claw,
Dig stumps of Greek from every Ancient's jaw?
But who quotes Cuvier when he feasts on snipe,
Or reads Gastritis when his wife cooks tripe?
Not all the wisdom of recorded time
Can change one titbit to concocted chyme.
Not all the schools from Berkshire to the Nile
Can melt one sausage into milky chyle.
Nor all the Galens since Deucalion's flood
Change lifeless pudding into living blood.

Then Heavenly Muse, avert thy rolling eyes,
Lest in their sight unlicked creations rise;
Or should those linger in the wanton air,
Pull off thy girdle and unbind thy hair;
Come not like Juno to such scenes as this;
Too proud to play with, and too prim to kiss;
But wild and careless as some slip-shod maid,
Oh! classic Broad street, in thy fragrant shade,
With braidless ringlets, tangled, tumbling down,
And blue-veined bosom gleaming through her gown,
And all the lovelier for a casual streak
Of smutty semblance in her damask cheek;
Nor over conscious should her flounces fly
To Love's half tide-mark, when his waves are high.

Our noble Art, what countless shoals invade,
Some as a science, many as a trade.
In every column quackery has its line;
From every corner stares the Doctor's sign;
From every shore the straining vessel tugs
Ill-scented balsams, stomach turning drugs.
The keels of commerce clear the farthest surge,
Lest some old beldam want her morning purge.
The seaman wanders on his venturous route
To turn a baby's stomach inside out.
Rich were the Queen of yon hepatic isle
With half her subjects squander on their bile;
Rich were Van Buren, could he pay his bills
With half his people waste on Brandreth's pills,
Or with their products fill his farmers' carts
With tare and tret for reproductive parts.

If one great truth defies the skeptic's scorn
That truth is this—that children must be born;
If one great maxim, man dare not deny,
That maxim is—that mortal man must die.
If long experience be not all a trick,
Who dares to say that mortals can't be sick?
These solemn truths, by thinking minds allowed,
Lift the stern reasoner above the vulgar crowd.
From every truth some vast conclusion flows—
Truth is the pump, and reason is its nose;
Its handle, logic; work it, and it brings
Transcendent streams from transcendental springs.

Heaven surely ordered on Creation's morn
This mighty law—that children must be born.
Hence came the science, thou dost show so well
With white fore finger—Madame Lachapelle;
Hence came the forceps, hence the screw to pinch
The soul's own viscus to half an inch;
Hence came the weapons, which the embryos bore

323

Left in the lurch, their brains escaped before,—
A trivial damage, since so oft we find
That babes grow up, who left their brains behind—
Hence came the fillet, whence the infant wretch
Mistakes the midwife for her friend Jack Ketch;
Hence came the lever, which the toothless fry
Take for a crowbar, when the monsters pry;
Hence the scooped pinchers, with the fangs between,
Skull-crushing Davis—thy divine machine—
Hence all the “claptraps,” potent to extract
The hero struggling in his closing act.

So the stout foetus, kicking and alive
Leaps from the fundus for his final dive;
Tired of the prison where his legs were curled,
He pants like Rasselas for a wider world.
No more to him their wonted joys afford
The fringed placenta and the knotted cord;
No longer liberal of his filial thanks,
He drums his minuets on his mother's flanks;
But nobly daring, seeks the air to find
Through paths untrodden, spite of waves or wind.
Hush decent muse and leave such things as these
To modest Maygrier and concise Dewees.
As some green school girl, who at morn forgets,
Lost in strange thoughts her wanton pantalets,
Squats, stoops and straddles, while the passers stare
Alas! unconscious that her limbs are bare,
So thou, forgetful that another spies
Things which escape thy unsuspecting eyes
Would'st freak and gambol while thy neighbors see
The white warm flesh above thy gartered knee.
Thus with the entrance of the first born man
The reign of Science o'er the earth began.
Nurse of his weakness, soother of his woes,
She waits and watches till his sorrows close;
Nor yet she leaves him when the undying mind
Flits from his clay and leaves the frame behind.

If thou should'st wonder that mankind must die,
Ask the Curator of our Museum, why?
When man's immortal, who had ever seen
The stomach, colon, kidneys, pancreas, spleen?
Each pickled viscus, every varnished bone,
Seducing scirrhus and attractive stone?
Lost to the world, had never come to grace
Our well filled phials in their padlocked case.
Unknown to fame had Morgagni sighed
And Louis floated down oblivion's tide.
On “Brunner's glands” no cheering ray had shone,
And “Peyer” claimed no “patches” but his own.
Science untaught her scalpel to employ.
Had seen no Ileum since the days of Troy;
And man the ruler of the storms and tides
Had groped in ignorance of his own insides.
Thus the same art that caught our earliest breath
Lives with our life and lasts beyond our death.
Man, ever curious, still would seek to save
Some wreck of Knowledge from the waiting grave.
Yet keen-eyed searcher into Nature's laws,
Slight not the suffering while thou reck'st the cause.
How poor the solace, when thy patients die,
To tell the mourners all the reasons why.
Love linked with Knowledge crowns thy angel art;

324

Gold buys thy science; Heaven rewards thy heart.

Between two breaths, what worlds of anguish lie;
The first short gasp, the last and long drawn sigh.
Thou who hast aided with coercive thumbs
The red-legged infant, kicking as it comes;
Thou who hast tracked each doubtful lesion home
With probe and scissors, knife and enterotome;
Short is the opening; short the closing scene;
But a long drama fills the stage between.
Nor deem it strange, since every season flings
Its sun or cloud on life's unguarded springs;
Since song or science, love of fame, or truth,
All feed like vampires on the brow of youth;
Since the red goblet shakes the hand that grasps
And hot-cheeked beauty wastes the form she clasps;
One half mankind should spend their time to make
The pills and draughts the other half must take.
Oh! fertile source of never failing wealth,
Mysterious faith! thou alchemist of health;
But for thy wand, how vainly should we strive
To cure the world and keep ourselves alive!
Not all the fruit the yellow harvest yields,
When the curved sickle sweeps the rustling fields;
Not all the stores the deep-sunk vessel brings
When India's breezes swell her perfumed wings:
Not all the gems, whose wild Auroras shine
Through the black darkness of Golconda's mine,
Can match the profits thou dost still dispense
To thy best favorites—Ease and Impudence,
Who find Golconda in a case of gout
Or rich Potosi in a baby's clout;
And gather ingots, ever fresh and hot
Smelt, but not smelted, in a chamber-pot.

Small is the learning which the patients ask
When the grave Doctor ventures on his task;
To greet the Quack admiring hundreds come,
Whose wisdom centers in his fife and drum;
Why should'st thou study, if thou canst obtain
A wig, a gig, an eye glass or a cane?
Greenest of greenhorns, know that drugs like these
Are the best weapons to subdue disease.
Should'st thou not flourish by enacting lies,
Step into print, good friend, and advertise;
And in the “Post,” the “Herald,” or the “Sun”
Thus let thine honest manifestoes run:
That great physician, learned Dr. C.
F. R. S., Staff-surgeon and M.D.—
Lately from London; now at number “four”
Left side of North Street (Don't mistake the door),
May be consulted for life's various ills;
Where's also sold the patent “Pickwick Pills.”
What grieves the Doctor, is that all mankind
To their own good should be so shocking blind.
He could not stand it, but relief imparts
The grateful feeling of a thousand hearts;
His fee is nothing; 'tis his conscious skill,
Backed by the virtues of the “Pickwick Pill,”
That prompts the Doctor to dispense his cure
To all mankind, and also to the poor.
What is dyspepsia? When the humors vile,
The cardiac sphincter closes on the bile.
What cures dyspepsia?—Why, the Doctor's skill,

325

Consult by letter, and enclose a bill.
What's fluor albus? 'Tis a term we know
From “albus”—white, and “fluor,” Greek, to flow.
'Tis the great pest of lovely woman's life—
Females treated through the Doctor's wife.
What's gonorrhoea?—A disease so called
From “gonor”—water, and from “rhea”—scald.
In some rash moment, when unguarded youth
Strays from the path of reason and of truth,
The poison enters, the disease is hatched;
See your case cured, not plastered up and patched.
N.B.—No money till the patient's cured.
P.S.—The utmost secrecy insured.
Observe! the Doctor has a private door;
Green blinds, no steps, back stairs, and second floor.
Of testimonials, which have come in heaps,
But two small cartloads now the Doctor keeps;
They were too numerous for the public eyes;
Hence the small number which he now supplies.
John Smith of Boston—aged “thirty-five”
Is much surprised to find himself alive,
Which justly owing, as he thinks must be,
Half to his Maker, half to Doctor C.
Had a stuffed feeling, used to wake in starts,
Had wind and rumbling in the inward parts,
Had swelled stomach, used to vomit some,
Was often squeamish, thought his brains were numb,
Had fell away, could not digest his food,
Had tried all physics—nothing did him good—
In short was dying with his numerous ills,
“Cured by three doses of the Pickwick Pills.”
The Doctor's skill, the sluggard clergy owns,
As in this note from Reverend Judas Jones:
“Dear Sir, The blessing of the Lord attend
You and your ointment, called ‘The loafer's friend,’
My worthy wife, the partner of my toils,
Like Job of old, has suffered from the ‘boils,’
Some on her fingers, wherewithal she knits,
Some on her person, whereupon she sits,
Which quite unfit her, when her ail returns,
To do her duties by her small concerns.
Since times are hard, and earthly comforts dear,
And Gospel harvests come but once a year,
With my good deacon, I resolved to halve
One precious box of your unrivalled salve.
With heaven's kind blessing, and one hearty rub,
We chased away this leprous Beelzebub.
Enough was left to cure our warts and styes,
And six great pimples on my handmaid's thighs.
Please send three boxes, by the earliest hand
To Judas Jones, your servant at command.
P. S. Your pills have cured my baby's fits;
I'll write particulars if the Lord permits.”

The following letter sent to Doctor C.
Comes from Barrabas Waterpot, M. D.:
“Dear Sir, The duties which I owe mankind,
Have made it proper I should speak my mind;
And while my breast an honest conscience fills,
I can but praise the patent “Pickwick Pills.”
I have no interest in the pills at stake
And never sell them and but rarely take.
Fit for the welfare of a suffering race,
Their many virtues, I now feebly trace:
When taken fasting, they the strength maintain;
When on full stomach, they deplete the brain;
One pill relieves the almost drowning thirst;

326

Two, keep one sober, though he drink to burst.
One pill a week cures Phthisis and the Gout;
One half a pill will keep the measles out.
Rubbed on the fingers they destroy the itch;
Worn next the skin, Lumbago and the stitch,
Though, like a corkscrew they the bowels search,
A curious fact—they never work in church!
Small children take them with advantage great,
As also ladies in a certain state.
In short, this medicine every want fulfils,
I give no physic but the “Pickwick Pills.”
Please print this letter, which of use may be,
(Signed) Barrabas Waterpot, M. D.”

Here's a small postscript Doctor C. left out
Of small importance to the public doubt:
“The pills sell briskly—twenty gross or more,
Send a fresh parcel to the grocer's store;
Put in more jalap; never mind expense,
Folks must be griped or grudge their fifty cents.
Put up two sizes, one three times as small,
For little brats; the big ones kill them all.
I want my pay, you poison pounding knave
Send me good bills—How like the D-1 you shave.”
All this well printed, and with bigger type
Words like Dyspepsia, Liver, Humor, Gripe,
Two solid columns in the “Times” would fill
And make thy fortune by the “Pickwick Pill.”

But thou, poor dreamer, who hast rashly thought
To live by knowledge which thy bloom has bought;
Thou who hast waited with a martyr's smile—
Hope gently whispering—“Yet a while”—
Too proud to stoop beneath thy nobler aim,
While prostrate meanness crawls to wealth and fame;
Thou, all unfriended, while a thousand fools
Vaunt their raw cousins, reeking from the schools,
Go, scorn the art that every boon denies,
'Till age sits glassy in thy sunken eyes;
Go, scorn the treasury which withholds its store
Till hope grows cold, and blessings bless no more.

Peace to our banquet; let me not prolong,
Its nearest moments with my idle song.
This measured tread of ever marching rhyme,
Like clockwork, pleases only for a time;
Too long repeated makes our heart so sick
We cut the weights to stop its tedious click.
Let sweeter strains our opening hearts inspire,
The listening echoes tremble round the lyre.
Dance Bacchus! hours of labor come again,
To lock the rivets of our loosened chain.
Shine, star of evening, with thy steadiest ray,
To guide us homeward on our devious way.

SUNG AT THE HUNT

NAUSHON ISLAND

NOVEMBER 1? 1838

Ye Colonels Councillors and Squires
That You may all remember
That hunting of the Island deer
That happened this November,

I've written out a little song
To give you decent warning
Between the first and second gongs
All of a Thursday morning—morning, morning, all of a Thursday morning.

327

At 7 Oclock on Tuesday morn
They roused each ancient dreamer
With hunting gun & powder horn
To go on board the steamer

So when they got us all on board
They made the water boil and
In half a shake they had us down
Upon the little Island Island, Island, upon the little Island

The Governor & his suite were there
To bid us welcome gaily
With broad brimmed hat & long tailed coat
Which is his habit daily.

The air was soft, the sky was blue
The Isle was all before us
And whelp and hound were baying round
All joining in the chorus chorus, chorus, all joining in the chorus

But just before We took our stand,
We all went in the closet
When each pet bank beneath our ribs
Received a small deposit

And when the lunch was stowed below
And fingers all were wipéd
We stroked that little pig you know
That is so very stripéd. stripéd, stripéd, that is so very stripéd.

Then off we sett to scour the woods
With our unhappy drivers
Uncertain if the deer or they
Would be the days survivors

But having safely met at last
And all our laurels housing
The knowing ones made bets on wine
And there was some carousing carousing, carousing, and there was some carousing

The first days victim was a Doe
Shot by Nantucket Upton
They say he dodged a little though
Or else his toes she trod on

Then Clifford thought that he must fire
Peabody fain would hit too
With William, Holmes & many more
But all their Does were dittos dittos, dittos, but all their Does were dittos

On Wednesday morn the doctors twain
Went in a new direction
For once they could not kill 'twas plain
So took to resurrection

And with them in the little boat
The Speaker too did seat him
Perhaps 'twas by a special vote
That body rose to meet him to meet him, to meet him, that body rose to meet him

The second day now blazed away
Each doubled barrelled hero
They made the number up to ten
If ten is one and Zero

The night before We drank until
The wines ran from our scuppers
Which made us on the second night
Like Deacons at their suppers suppers, suppers, like Deacons at their suppers

Tomorrow I shall add a verse
To finish out the story
In which I shall at length rehearse
The Candidates for glory

Long live the glorious Governor
For whom my song was written
I should have finished it tonight
But that I was frost bitten bitten, bitten, but that I was frost bitten

AT DARTMOUTH

PHI BETA KAPPA, JULY 24, 1839

These tranquil shades, where Nature unconfined
Flings her green drapery on the mountain wind,
These smiling hillsides, which our river queen
Wreathes in wild blossoms as she winds between,
If dear to those who never learned to stray
Far from the shadows where their cradles lay—
How sweet to him whom many a wind has blown
To shores less loved if lovelier than his own!

328

How soft to him whose weary feet have trod
The burning pavement, is the dewy sod—
How fair to him is every nameless flower
Whose painted disk recalls some infant hour;
How free to him the wide horizon seems—
How glad the music of the mountain streams—
How pure the breeze whose restless wings have fanned
The tossing fringes of his forest land—
While rose lipped Summer robes in all her charms
The living landscape locked in Nature's arms.
If scenes like these the wanderer's heart inspire
With lingering sparkles of forgotten fire,
If tired with tumult and the noisy strife
That chokes with dust the crowded paths of life
He turns with rapture from the thronging street
To rest and silence in their calm retreat
Not so with all. The maid in russet gown,
The blue frocked plough boy, pant alike for town,
The solemn umpires of our health and laws
Who ask more patients, practice or applause,
Nay, the grave preacher, who for meagre hire
Quotes Greek and Latin to astound the squire
Filled with high visions as the rattling mail
Rolls with its burden from their quiet vale
Forgetting patients, practice, parish, all
Dream of some ‘opening’—some inviting ‘call’—
Alas! Too anxious for an ampler space
To flourish, flutter, sputter or grimace—
Or in the phrase that suits a saintly ear
To be more useful in a wider sphere.

From the still hamlet to the noisy mart
The home of Nature to the throne of Art
As led by fate the wanderer's footsteps tend
What varied colors oer the landscape blend!
What changing scenes the curious eye will find
To strike the senses or enchain the mind!—
If themes like these can stay the wheels of time
Forged by rude memory into ruder rhyme
Some listless moments may be whiled away
By the dull cadence of my slipshod lay.
Tis summer's noon—and blazing fiercely down
The dazzling sunbeams gild the glittering town
Bathed in their light, from every lofty spire
Its wheeling symbol burns in starry fire
Each sombre turret lifted calm and high
Prints its cold outline on the sultry sky,—
Mingling and glimmering in the flickering glow
Palace and hovel spread their roofs below—
So gleams the surface, but surveyed more near
Its fancied glories melt and disappear;
The baffled winds that stagnate ere they meet
Scarce lift the dust that strews the arid street.
No clustering foliage checks the burning ray
But scanty awnings line the glaring way—
From gaping windows mingling sounds arise—
The nurse that threatens and the child that cries
The flute's hoarse lisp that speaks some shop boy's art
Who kills an hour by murdering poor Mozart
The clink of hammers—not on warriors' mails,
But closing rivets in disjointed pails
The clash of steel—of most unwarlike knives—
From plates—not breast-plates—taking meals, not lives;
The hiss of fountains—soda founts alas!
That pour their treasures at so much a glass
So bursts the chorus led sublimely off
By lusty infants, black with hooping cough

329

While the vexed pavement by the cart wheel ground
Growls a rough bass to swell the mighty sound,
And loud and long the jarring discord rings
Like the last crash of all created things!

—Turn to the spot where Nature's laws maintain
Their ancient empire over hill and plain
Look when the forest waving wild and high
Braids its deep fringes on the sultry sky—
In those calm depths no living sound is heard
Save the light carol of the summer bird
Or the low rustling of the leafy crest
Whose plaited shelter screens his rocking nest
Or whispering waters, which with languid flow
Steal in soft channels through the flowers below;—
Hush! for thy voice will wrong the peaceful scene
Where all is shadowy, solemn and serene.
Around thy pathway floats the trailing vine
And breathes the fragrance of the balmy pine
Beneath thy feet the perfumed turf is spread
Fresh with the dew those glossy leaves have shed,
Through the dark tracery that above thee bends
In checkered gleams the trembling ray descends—
Look—breathe—and listen! Say, if mortal power
With gold and purple clothed thy lonely bower
Smoothed the rude soil and chained the wandering stream
And bared the wild flowers to the noontide beam
Would all it lavished from its wealth repay
The tangled sweetness which it swept away?

—The dead of winter! chained in ice and snow
The wreck of autumn slumbers dark and low
The silent streamlet fills its frozen bed
As if still lingering by the flowers it fed.
The jagged hemlock splintered in the storm
Frowns oer the forest with its crested form
The strong armed oak, his garlands cast aside
Stands like an athlete in his naked pride
The slanting sunbeam glimmers faint and chill
O'er the choked valley and the whitened hill,
The leaf has faded and the bird has flown
And all is voiceless—Death is Lord alone!

—Not such the scene where man usurps the sway
To change with art the empire of decay
For him no winter bids the blushing rose
Shrink from the breeze beneath the drifting snows
Nay, the frail nurseling torn from tropic skies
Warmed by his care the arctic storm defies
His tendriled vines their purple orbs display
Ere the first violet dares the breath of May
The golden cone that loads the dark-leaved pine
Breathes with the fragrance of the burning vine
The bright plumed prisoner waves his yellow wing
Amidst the blossoms of an endless spring
So wills the pleasure of imperial Man
As if in mockery of his Maker's plan.
Nor less transformed the midnight hours that call
The gay and fair to many a gilded hall
While the hoarse wind is raving hoarsely round
From yon bright scene the merry voices sound
The blazing lustre sheds its radiance o'er
Those graceful shapes that trip the bounding floor
What though the storm is raging fierce and wild—
No wind is rude to fortune's favored child—

330

Round her white neck the circling jewels glow
Like sparkling flashes on the moonlight snow
No envious drapery oer its beauty weaves
Blanched to the whiteness of the lily's leaves
That fragile form no ruder robes enfold
Than the flowered tissue clasped with fretted gold
Those twinkling feet, in slenderest satin bound
Trace their light circles guiltless of a sound
The curtained walls the wreathes of summer wear
And faint with fragrance breathes the balmy air
And flushing maidens court the gale that swings
The close drawn curtain on its gilded wings—
—Strong is gray Winter—for his arms can rend
The living rock and bid the forest bend,
But man is mightier for he scales his throne
And breaks his sceptre to extend his own!

—Is man the same, where'er his fortune falls,
Left to himself, or caged in crowded walls?
Ask the pert cockney, who, the pink of town
Greets some rough cousin, raw, and just come down—
Ask the stout rustic when the cit descends
With gloves and cane among his country friends!
“John”—says the first “That hat of yours was made
“About the time that Noah's keel was laid—
“Who built that coat? The bill was monstrous large
“If extra puckers made a separate charge
“Don't swing that stick—how every body stares
“Pray did you think the town was full of bears
“Why, how you stamp—who ventured to abuse
“The feet of man with such a pair of shoes?
“Look there! Why bless me!—Now, upon my word—
“Those cotton stockings—aren't they too absurd,
“And that striped waistcoat and that checked cravat
“Upon my honor but you are a flat!”
“Tom” says the rustic, when, the greeting past,
He gets the cockney on his farm at last—
“You're mighty knowing—don't you think you know
“How to thresh wheat?—or would you rather mow?
“There—take that stick—that's what we call a flail
“Don't break your head—what makes you look so pale?
“Ah—there you have it—pray don't make me laugh.
“Hit where you will you'll scatter lots of chaff!
“Well then, the scythe—come—gently—don't be rash
“Take off those gloves—ah—there's an ugly gash—
“Come home with me—next time I'll show you how
“Walk straight along and never fear the cow
“Keep those French boots from off my uncut grass
“I'm sorry, Cousin, but you are an ass!

—From dress and manners if we turn to find
The graver contrasts of the inward mind
How vast the gulf our wondering eye must scan
From clashing crowds to isolated man!

—Few are the cares the simple rustic knows,
So calm the current of his being flows;
The changing hues that paint the living scene
With autumn's brown or spring's rekindled green
The fruits and herbage as by turns they yield
Their ripened treasures in his cultured field
The flight of birds that chase their shifting clime

331

These are his dials for the lapse of time.
Far from the world, no jarring tones intrude
To break the stillness of his solitude—
His wayward fancies few are found to share
And ceaseless toil demands his daily care—
Few are his sorrows—such as Heaven ordained
And soothed by tears unseen and unrestrained.
His pleasures tranquil, yet not loved the less
Than the brief raptures wooed by wild excess;
When from his arm its manly strength has past
Life's wasting flame burns gently to the last
Taught by long years, his trembling lips inform
The listening reapers of the rising storm—
Bent down with age, and tottering to his tomb
His eye still gladdens in the summer's bloom—
Slowly he fades, while faces fresh and fair
Crowd with sweet smiles around his ancient chair
Till by kind hands his reverend form is laid
In the still churchyard where so oft he strayed
By those he loved he finds his lowly bed,
And oer his mound the grassy turf is spread,
His life unwritten on the roles of fame,
But love still lingering oer his humble name.

—But who is he, whose shattered form appears
Bowed by long care and sapped by wasting years?
Through the dense mart that ancient shape is known
The halls of trade those feeble accents own
In these dark walls the busy years have sped
Whose winters whiten on his trembling head
The field, the forest, and the mountain stream
To him are shadows of his boyhood's dream
The narrow circle where his footsteps range
These strips of pavement centering in exchange;
That stony glance no artful words beguile—
He looks and hears, while others speak and smile;
If this be man, how changed by selfish toil
From man the monarch of the virgin soil!

—Yet scorn not him whose withered hands uphold
In thin cold grasp the dynasty of gold;—
He speaks—his accents, wafted oer the seas
Blend with the sigh of India's farthest breeze—
His quivering fingers trace a single line,
And bar and bolt obey the mighty sign
Through steel and stone the silent mandate goes
And sunless vaults their golden hoards disclose;
Yet in his garb the sneering stranger's eye
Reads the rude marks of threadbare poverty
And the gay spendthrift with contemptuous air
Crowds from the walk the humble millionaire—
The lord of wealth, which Fortune when she gave
Cramped with one shackle—‘thou shalt be a slave
A slave to toil that ceases but with life
One sleepless task one ever wearing strife
Till o'er thy grave the curse and blessing blends
Of smiling heirs and unremembered friends!
Can this be all that queenly Commerce brings
When o'er the deep she spreads her myriad wings—
To grasp the means without the will to use

332

Less pleased with gain than anxious not to lose
To wean the sense from all that Heaven bestows
And coin to gold each drop of blood that flows?
If such the gift her glittering robes conceal
Trust not thy fate to fortune's rolling wheel—
The lavished treasures of the earth and sky
Around, above thee, and beneath thee lie
For thee they blossom, and for thee they shine,
Unbought by suffering, they at least are thine!

—At every step some little trace we find
That varying habits print upon the mind;
The simpler rustic talks with sense profound
On all the marvels of the country round,
Whose horse is dead—who stole his neighbor's hen—
Whose dog kills sheep—whose pig has left his pen—
Who staid from church,and what the deacon said—
Whose child is sick—whose grandpapa is dead,
Whose farm is mortgaged for his barroom bills
Whose desperate case was cured by Brandreth's pills
Whose buxom lady rules her passive spouse—
Whose milder helpmeet milks her husband's cows—
And themes like these, whose mighty rumor rolls
Through the small world of half a thousand souls.
Not so the gossips of the striving town
Where every mail with news is breaking down
Then every hour some pleasing tale attends
Or precious scandal which the journal lends;—
For them no fire is worthy of the name
If scores of buildings do not sink in flame—
Morn brings its murder with their breakfast rolls
Noon leaves a steamboat thumping on the shoals
The evening paper tells them whereabout
Some thief broke in or chicken pox broke out
Or how some worthy of undoubted wealth
Has struck for Texas—to restore his health—
(His land of promise, but of small delight
To the blank holders of his notes at sight)
Duels and deaths, the wedding and the puff—
Tales for the tender, slanders for the tough,
A web of fact, which fancy weaves at will
Through the sly shuttle of a scribbler's quill:
That is the draught that simple truth supplies
And tart the flavor of unmingled lies;
Like soda powders wrapped in white and blue
To make them sparkle you must mix the two.
—So reeks the city with eternal tales
Of births, deaths, weddings, fires, wrecks, riots, gales.
The poet's caution would be idle there—
“Nil admirari”—you must never stare;
Tell an old townsman that you just have learned
On Monday next our planet will be burned,
To him the tidings will not bring surprise,
Nor chalky cheeks, nor saucer spreading eyes;—
“'Twill beat the fireworks,” he perhaps will say
“That made such fun on Independence day,”
Or if a tradesman will express a hope
Ashes will fall and sink the price of soap!

—As some vast lake where thousand currents tend
And chafe and glitter as their waters blend

333

Now fresh and stainless from their mountain home,
Now by rough channels scourged to eddying foam
Or darkly turbid, as with sullen toil
They sweep in shadow through the loosening soil
Flung from tall cliffs in many a bright cascade
Or creeping voiceless through the leafy shade,
So in the scene of man's tumultuous strife
Mingle and melt the murmuring waves of life.

—There he that basks in fortune's noontide blaze
Spreads his gay honors to the vulgar gaze
There the pale artist writes his lowly name
And faints for bread to feed the vulture fame
There haggard vice secures her last retreat
And shameless hearts grow harder as they meet
There the lost exile, friendless and alone
Broods o'er his grief unknowing and unknown
There passion's victim in the careless throng
In deepening guilt forgets her girlhood's wrong
And pallid shapes unnoticed as they fade
With trembling lips implore the stranger's aid
And wearied age, unconscious of repose,
And sickly childhood, born to want and woes
Joined by stern fate in one tumultuous sphere
In one dark vortex roll and disappear.

—Between two breaths what worlds of anguish lie
The first short gasp, the last and long drawn sigh;
If thou would'st hear the ceaseless groans that rise
And count the tears that fall from joyless eyes
And read the lines of misery and despair
Seek the wide city—thou wilt find them there.
Turn to yon dome whose dreary arches spread
Their sullen shelter o'er the wanderer's head—
Where the last act of life's poor drama ends
In the cold walls that sorrowing mercy lends.
That sinewy shape, whose shrunken forms reveal
The strength once centering in its nerves of steel,
In fruitless toil its stormy day has past
To ask a grave from charity at last.
—Yon whitelipped child who wastes by slow degrees
The heir of want and nurseling of disease
He whose chilled infancy hath never known
One accent kinder than the stranger's tone
Matured untimely by the frost of grief
Seared in his spring as autumn's stricken leaf—
Read the mute question in his sunken eye
That asks in terror—‘tell me—must I die?’

And there—deserted in her hour of woe—
The death shade darkening o'er her cheek of snow—
(That cheek whose freshness was her fatal dower
And lured the spoiler in its rosier hour)
The wasted form and weary heart are laid
Of one who loved—and loving was betrayed.
Fair as the roses that around her grew
And bathed her tresses in their perfumed dew
She sprung in beauty, and her native wild
Smiled as in welcome o'er the lovely child.
—And snows and summers passed oer hill and plain
And rolling years renewed the golden grain
On Anna's brow they left their ripening trace—

334

Changed mirth to calm and sprightliness to grace,
But taught too little save the dangerous creed
That conscious beauty learns too soon to read.
—And who is he whose step is ever near,
Whose low breathed accents meet the maiden's ear
Who bends and smiles, and courts with flattering lies
Melts in feigned tears and breathes in artful sighs
Why change her features when his name is heard
Why heaves her bosom at his lightest word
Alas, she deems that faithless heart her own—
She hears but love in every studied tone
And wondering eyes remark her altered air
And busy tongues their scanty hints compare—
A breath—a whisper—doubts—suspicion—shame—
And shuddering virtue wept oer Anna's name!
Dark are the paths her hurrying steps will share
From shame to guilt, from anguish to despair
Soon from her cheek shall fade its sullied bloom
And every hope look forward to the tomb—
That hour has come—its sands are falling fast
Forget her frailty for it is the last.
—Can this be slumber? Yet its murmurs seem
Like the wild visions of a troubled dream—
“Come—come”—she whispers—“I have waited long—
“Indeed I love thee though thou didst me wrong—
“Thou dost not know me—I am pale and worn,
“And those long tresses, once thy pride, are shorn—
“Nay, do not blame me, for the nights were cold
“And we were starving, and they gave me gold—
“He took the food and warmed him at the flame
“And lisped his thanks to him I dared not name
“Thou neer hast seen him—look—how sweetly fair
“O'er his white forehead waves his flaxen hair
“Come to my arms—and art thou living still
“I thought thee dead—thy little hand is chill
“Thou hast been slumbering where the night wind blew
“And on thy ringlets shines the icy dew
“Oh God how heavy on my aching breast
“Weighs thy cold cheek—I pray thee let me rest
“The shadows darken and the sun is gone
“Sleep, sleep, sweet angel till the day star's dawn
“I too must slumber”—Yes to wake no more
Thy dreams are ended and thy sorrows oer!

Not ours to trace the endless shapes that rise
As o'er the stage the living scenery flies
A fertile subject is a dangerous thing
A patent pump in sweet Castalia's spring
That sucks and pours in one eternal stream
And damns the poet with his drowning theme.

O sovereign Patience! more than mortal power
Whose smile can cheat each leaden footed hour
Not winged like Hope, but rising calm and sure
Strong to resist and faithful to endure,
Spread thy mute influence o'er these wearied walls
One little moment ere the curtain falls.
If Sleep, thy sister, lend her drowsy charms
And feebler heads nod heavy in her arms,
Let Fancy cheat them with delicious dreams
Of seraph minstrels and celestial themes,—

336

HUNTING-SONG FOR 1839

NAUSHON

Ye hunters of New England
Who bear the rusty guns
Your fathers shot the redcoats with,
And left them to their sons!
With all your firelocks blaze away
Before the bucks are gone,
As you aim at the game
In the woods of old Naushon,
Where the shot are flying right and left
In the woods of old Naushon.

Our sportsmen are proverbial
Among the ducks and loons,
And greatly feared of quadrupeds,
From mammoths down to coons.
With double barrels loaded high,
Their triggers both are drawn,
As they clang and they bang
In the woods of old Naushon,
Where the bucks are leaping through the leaves
In the woods of old Naushon.

New England's trusty sportsmen
Shall leave their wives so dear,
To hunt with our brave Governor
For many a happy year.
Then, then, ye gallant gentlemen,
When ancient corks are drawn,
Fill the toast to the host
In the hall of old Naushon,
While the wine is flowing bright and free
In the hall of old Naushon.

TO A. L. J.

MARCH 6, 1840

One word—and that so softly fell
That Love alone could catch the sound,
But all that virgin lips might tell
Was in that little whisper found.
The breath had melted on the air—
The form had passed, the smile had flown.
I sought thee—but thou wast not there—
Yet, Dearest! I was not alone—

Still side by side we seemed to stray
Beneath those bleak and leafless trees
Where balmy blossoms soon shall play
Wreathed by the gentle April breeze—
Still side by side we wandered slow
Unconscious through the busy throng
And still in accents soft and low
We murmured as we passed along.

If He who bids the spring renew
Her jewels like a blushing bride
And sprinkles with the morning dew
The moss upon the mountain's side
Stoops from his azure throne above
To paint the frail and thankless flowers
O smiles he not on hope and love
When first they bloom in hearts like ours?

Darkness and silence! all around
Dissolves the midnight's sable tide—
Yet still I tread on any ground
With thee still trembling at my side.
Come—come sweet shadow—roam no more.
Is not this lonely house thy own!
O let me dream the morning o'er—
Nay Dearest I am not alone.

TO A. L. J.

MAY 22, 1840

O Dearest, may each coming year
More calm and cloudless shine
Than this of mingling love and fear
The first that calls thee mine!

Still lightening like the morning beams
Still spreading like the flowers
May all yet locked in golden dreams
Wake in the coming hours.

In one deep tide our lives must flow
O may they ever blend
When bright with joy or dark with woe
Unruffled to the end.

TO A. L. J.

MAY 30, 1840

When skims the summer moon on high
Her starry train around her glowing

337

When waves are bright and breezes sigh
Through the dark foliage softly flowing
Then like the voice that breathes around
Shall be the gentle name thou bearest
The first my trembling accents found—
And thou shalt be Amelia, dearest.

When to thy girlhood's simpler years
With tranquil pulse thy heart is turning
And she who watched thy smiles and tears—
Her midnight lamp above thee burning
Comes to thee as in days gone by
Ere of her fondness death bereft thee—
Thou shalt be little Amelie—
The name her silent lips have left thee.

When winter wears her snowy crest
And dark the angry waves are swelling
And love has made his peaceful nest
Within our little quiet dwelling
We will not heed the blustering storm
Though all without is bleak and chilly
But keep our fireside bright and warm
And change Amelia into Milly.

A SCINTILLA

AT THE DINNER AFTER THE INAUGURATION OF JARED SPARKS HARVARD COLLEGE, JUNE 6, 1849

THE TASK

Twelve well-crammed lines, firm, juicy, marrowy, sweet,
No bone or trimmings, nothing here but meat,
With rhyme run through them like a golden skewer.
Taste might approve and patience may endure.

THE EXECUTION

Long live old Harvard! Lo, her rushing train
Greets a new sign-board stretched across the plain,
While the bell rings—(and that the bell shall do
Till Charles shall drop his worn-out channel through,)—
It gently hints to every cur that barks,
Here comes the engine,—don't you see the Sparks?

How changed the scene! The forest path is clear;
That mighty engine finds no Indian here!
The world's great teachers quit their native Alps
To fill the skulls once trembling for their scalps,
When the red neighbors of our ancient school
Let their own wigwams others' wigs to cool!

A VISION OF LIFE

SEPTEMBER 27, 1849

The well-known weakness of the rhyming race
Is to be ready in and out of place;
No bashful glow, no timid begging off,
No sudden hoarseness, no discordant cough
(Those coy excuses which your singers plead,
When faintly uttering: “No, I can't, indeed”)
Impedes your rhymster in his prompt career.
Give him but hint; and won't the muse appear!

So, without blushing, when they asked, I came—
I whom the plough-share, not the quill, should claim—
The rural nymphs that on my labors smile
May mend my fence, but cannot mend my style.
The winged horse disdains my sober team,
And teeming fancy must forget to dream.
I harrow fields and not the hearts of men;
Pigs, and not poems, claim my humble pen.
And then to enter on so new a stage,
With the fair critics of this captious age,

338

Might lead a sceptic to the rude surmise
That cits, turned rustics, are not otherwise;
Or the bright verdure of the pastoral scene
Had changed my hue, and made me very green.

A few brief words that, fading as they fall,
Like the frail garlands of a banquet hall,
May lend one glow, one breath of fragrance pour,
Ere swept ungathered from the silent floor.
Such is my offering for your festal day:
These sprigs of rhyme; this metrical bouquet.

O my sweet sisters—let me steal the name
Nearest to love and most remote from blame—
How brief an hour of fellowship ensures
The heart's best homage at a shrine like yours.
As o'er your band our kindling glances fall,
It seems a life-time since I've known you all!
Yet on each face, where youthful graces blend,
Our partial memory still revives a friend;
The forms once loved, the features once adored,
In her new picture nature has restored.

Those golden ringlets, rippling as they flow,
We wreathed with blossoms many years ago.
Seasons have wasted; but remembered yet,
There gleams the lily through those braids of jet.
Cheeks that have faded, worn by slow decay,
Have caught new blushes from the morning's ray.
That simple ribbon, crossed upon the breast,
Wakes a poor heart that sobbed itself to rest;
Aye, thus she wore it; tell me not she died,
With that fair phantom floating by my side.
'T is as of old: why ask the vision's name:
All, to the white robe's folding, is the same;
On that white bosom burns the self-same rose.

Oh, dear illusion, how thy magic power
Works with two charms—a maiden and a flower!
Then blame me not if, lost in memory's dream,
I cheat your hopes of some expansive theme.
When the pale starlight fills the evening dim,
A misty mantle folds our river's brim.
In those white wreaths, how oft the wanderer sees
Half real shapes, the playthings of the breeze.
While every image in the darkening tide
Fades from its breast, unformed and undescried.
Thus, while I stand among your starry train,
My gathering fancies turn to mist again.
O'er time's dark wave aerial shadows play,
But all the living landscape melts away.

WYCLIFFE

The Avon to the Severn runs,
The Severn to the sea;
And Wycliffe's dust shall spread abroad,
Wide as the waters be.

LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR

WILLIAM W. SWAIN

Tell me, Dear Governor, what shall I do for you,
How can you ask me to write something new for you—
I, who am working myself to an atomy
Over my lectures in odious Anatomy?
Surely your breast cannot hold such a stony part

339

While I'm engaged on my Sketches of Bony part
That you refuse to accept an apology—
Guilt I confess, but I plead Osteology.
What if I came; Why the pavement would fly at me.
Bucks would start up and insist on a shy at me.
Science suspending her habeas corpusses
While I was shooting or looking at porpusses
—But there's a secret, Alas! that I'm splitting with;
Guns do not suit me there's danger of killing with.
Deer are such dears that I gladly would kiss 'em all,
Treat 'em like ladies—and thats why I Miss 'em all;
Fishing is getting too rough for my feeling heart
Though catching eels is a branch of the 'ealing art;
Then as to feasting, it doesn't agree with me
Each single goblet is equal to three with me
Wine is my foe, though I still am a friend of it—
Hock becomes hic with a cup at the end of it—
And if I sit where the bumpers are bubbling,
While I am looking each Cork seems a D(o)ublin!
—Fairest of Islands the birds ever light about
Thine are the beauties for angels to write about;
Kindest of hearts that a button e'er burst over
Thine are the virtues that saints would cry first over!
Blessings fall on you both, thick as the snow does,
Till your last doe shall be do, with the dodos!

PLEASURE REMEMBERED

NAUSHON, NOVEMBER 19, 1850

Dear are our smiling pleasures while they last,
But dearer sighs are wafted from the past.
O'er the bright present with its arching bowers
The vines, luxuriant, trail their fruit and flowers;
In memory's vaults uncounted summers shine,
Their purple clusters changed to beaming wine!
Snatched from its stem, amidst the vulgar strife
The grape may cool the fiery thirst of life,
But the rich goblet that in peace we drain
Turns to sweet visions in the dreaming brain.

TO JULIA WARD HOWE

JANUARY 1, 1854

If I were one, O Minstrel wild,
That held “the golden cup”
Not unto thee, Art's stolen child,
My hand should yield it up;

Why should I waste its gold on one
That holds a guerdon bright—
A chalice, flashing in the sun
Of perfect chrysolite.

And shaped on such a swelling sphere
As if some God has pressed
Its flowing crystal, soft and clear
On Hebe's virgin breast?

What though the bitter grapes of earth
Have mingled in its wine,
The stolen fruits of heavenly birth
Have made its hue divine.

Oh, Lady, there are charms that win
Their way to magic bowers,
And they that weave them enter in
In spite of mortal powers;

And hearts that seek the chapel's floor
Will throb the long aisle through,
Though none are waiting at the door
To sprinkle holy dew!

340

I, sitting in the portal gray
Of Art's cathedral dim,
Can see thee, passing in to pray
And sing thy first-born hymn;—

Hold out thy hand! these scanty drops
Come from a hallowed stream,
Its sands, a poet's crumbling hopes,
Its mist, his fading dream.

Pass on. Around the inmost shrine
A few faint tapers burn;
This altar, priestess, shall be thine
To light and watch in turn;

Above it smiles the Mother Maid,
It leans on Love and Art,
And in its glowing depth is laid
The first true woman's heart!

LETTER TO THE CONNECTICUT STATE MEDICAL SOCIETY

MARCH 23, 1855

If schoolboy memory does not serve me wrong,
The God of Physic was the God of Song,
Whence cunning slander on the lips of some,
Declares his best prescription was a hum,
Though modern skill disowns the pun,
Medicine and Music still are one.

Health to the great Musician! Him whose art
Steals through the senses to the coldest heart.
Not his to flourish on the pipe or lute,
The horn, the fife, the flageolet, or flute;
He blows no trumpet, draws no bow, nor sings;
He only plays—the “harp of thousand strings.”

TO J. R. L.

MAY 29, 1855

Hosea Biglow's folks is gone
Down east to see his Uncle Franklin
He's lame to home—he's spilt the bone
That keeps the sinnews of the ankle in

He'd like to come and see ye all
And says he's greatly disappīnted
But taint so serious arter all
As Hosey's sorter double jīnted

Hosea he don't drink no toast
But tadpoles and Cochituãte water
He says you're jail-birds eenamost
For swallerin what you hadnt oughter

Besides he says he kinder thinks
The pólice comes and takes the leavins
And cal'clates when theyve done their drinks
They'll go and peach on Pason Stevens.

TO J. R. L. FROM HOMER WILBUR

MAY 29, 1855

The Reverend Homer Wilbur sends
His best respects to brother Lowell
Would come to meet him with his friends
If Homer Junior was not so ill
Is loath to trouble Brother L.
Desires to send his special blessing
A note of several things as well
H. W.'s anxious for possessing.

A pocket copy—if its found
Of all the earlier Christian fathers
“ Daimõn, or Satan's Arm unbound”
A missing tract of Cotton Mather's
Item a lock of Wickliff's hair
And Calvins book on Revelation
Please ask if Reverend Jubb can spare
His Peddlingtonian dissertation

Likewise a portrait of the lad
The ninth or tenth of Smithfields martyrs
I send my own (which cant be had)
To trade with in the way of barter
The Lord be with my youthful friend
And save his lot from all disaster—
Please dont forget it when you send
To pay the postage for your pastor.

341

FROM AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH

MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY JUNE 27, 1855

As the river of New England
That is flowing at our side,
No rock can stay from running
To meet the salt sea-tide;
So roll our art's deep current
By many a grateful shore,
Till life has reached the ocean
That pain shall vex no more.

As the mountain of New England
In the far off northern sky
Looks down upon the river
That wanders murmuring by,
So from her cloud-capped turret
Let solemn art look down
On fashion's lying whisper
And folly's idle frown.

As the bright star of evening
Plays on the mountain's crest,
Glancing from every streamlet
That sparkles on its breast;
So let the heavenly splendors
Of truth's white star be found
Still shining fairest in us
While all is dark around!

CAMILLA

AUGUST 9, 1855

The gray robe trailing round her feet,
She smiled and took the slippered stirrup
(A smile as sparkling, rosy, sweet,
As soda, drawn with strawberry syrup);—
Now, gallant, now! be strong and calm,—
The graceful toilet is completed,—
Her foot is in thy hollowed palm—
One little spring, and she is seated!

No foot-print on the grass was seen,
The clover hardly bent beneath her,
I knew not if she pressed the green,
Or floated over it in ether;
Why, such an airy, fairy thing
Should carry ballast in her pocket,—
God bless me! If I help her spring
She'll shoot up heavenward like a rocket.

Ah, fatal doubt! The sleepless power
That chains the orbs of light together,
Bends on its stem the slenderest flower
That lifts its plume from turf or heather;
Clasp, lady, clasp the bridle rein!
The filly stands—holds hard upon her!
Twine fast those fingers in her mane,
Or all is lost—excepting honor!

Earth stretched his arms to snatch his prize,
The fairies shouted “Stand from under!”
The violets shut their purple eyes,
The naked daisies stared in wonder:
One moment.—Seated in her pride,
Those arms shall try in vain to win her;
“Earth claims her not,” the fairies cried,
“She has so little of it in her!”

TWO POEMS FOR THE FESTIVAL OF ST. STEPHEN'S PARISH

PITTSFIELD, AUGUST 9, 1855

I
A DOLLAR'S WORTH

MOTTO

If man, or boy, or dolt, or scholar
Will break this seal, he pays his dollar;
But if he reads a single minute,
He'll find a dollar's worth within it.

LETTER

Listen to me and I will try
To tell you what a dollar will buy.

A dollar will buy a Voter's conscience,
Or a book of “Fiftieth thousand” nonsense;

342

Or a ticket to hear a Prima Donna,
Or a fractional part of a statesman's honor;

It will buy a tree to sit in the shade of
Or half the cotton a tournure's made of.

It will buy a glass of rum or gin
At a Deacon's store or a Temperance inn,
(The Deacon will show you how to mix it
Or the Temperance Landlord stay and fix it.)

It will buy a painting at Burbank's hall
That will frighten the spiders from off the wall;

Or a dozen teaspoons of medium size,
That will do for an Agricultural prize.

It will buy four tickets to Barnum's show—
(Late firm of Pharaoh, Herod & Co.)

Or get you a paper that brings by mail
Its weekly “Original thrilling tale”—
Of which the essential striking plot
Is a daddy that's rich and a youth that's not,
Who seeking in vain for Papa's consent,
Runs off with his daughter—the poor old gent!
The Governor's savage; at last relents
And leaves them a million in cash and rents.

Or a Hair-wash, patent, and warranted too,
That will turn your whiskers from gray to blue,
And dye old three score as good as new;
So that your wife will open her eyes
And treat you with coolness, and then surprise,
And at last, as you're sidling up to her,
Cry “I'll call my husband, you saucy cur!”

Or a monochrome landscape, done in an hour,
That looks like a ceiling stained in a shower;

Or a ride to Lenox through mire and clay,
Where you may see, through the live long day,
Scores of women with couples of men
Trudging up hill—and down again.

This is what a dollar will do,
With many things as strange but true;
This very dollar I've got from you—
P. S. We shouldn't mind if you made it two.

II
FAITH

MOTTO

Faith is the conquering Angel's crown;
Who hopes for grace must ask it;
Look shrewdly ere you lay me down,
I'm Portia's leaden casket.

LETTER

Fair lady, whosoe'er thou art,
Turn this poor leaf with tenderest care,
And—hush, O hush thy beating heart—
The One thou lovest will be there!

Alas! not loved by thee alone,
Thine idol, ever prone to range;
To-day, all thine, to-morrow flown,
Frail thing that every hour may change.

Yet, when that truant course is done,
If thy lost wanderer reappear,
Press to thy heart thy only One
That nought can make more truly dear!

POSTCRIPT

Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tell
If this is not a truthful letter;
This is the one (1) thou lovest well,
And nought (0) can make thee love it better (10).
Though fickle, do not think it strange
That such a friend is worth possessing,
For one that gold can never change
Is Heaven's own dearest earthly blessing.

CRIMEA

There is a weeping by England's hundred streams,
By Severn, and Thames, and Trent;

343

And o'er the graves of her trampled braves,
The queen of the sea is bent.

One lesson shall serve the haughty isle,
Girt round with stately towers;
Thank God that the blow which lays her low,
Comes not from a hand of ours.

INTRODUCTION

FOR THE MEETING OF THE BURNS CLUB

JANUARY 25, 1856

I have come with the rest, I can hardly tell why,
With a line I will read you before it is dry.
I know I've no business among you, full well,
But I'm here, notwithstanding, and how, I will tell.

It was not a billet beginning “Dear Sir;”
No missive like that would have coaxed me to stir;
Nor a ticket, announcing the “on” and the “at,”
And “requesting the honor,”—'twas better than that.

It was done by a visit, from one that you know,
Whose smile is unchilled by life's season of snow,
Whose voice is so winning, resist as you may,
You must do what it says, for it will have its way.

It is true that at first I began to suggest
I should sit like a stranger apart from the rest;
But he said: “To no clan is our banquet confined,
For the heart of the poet belongs to mankind.”

Then I timidly asked, “Can I run, at a pinch,
If our friends from the old world have learned how to lynch?”
For I thought with dismay of the Know-Nothing Crew,
And I fancied a yell—“He's a Know-Nothing too!”

I thought of old Porteous, of Hare and of Burke;
I remembered the witches of Alloway Kirk;—
“Why bless you,” he said with a smile, “if you're cotched,
You will never be killed, you will only be Scotched!”

So I came, and I'm here, with a line as I said;
I don't mean the verses that just have been read,
But the ones in my pocket, and so, if you please,
You shall hear them at once if you'll pardon me these.

FOR THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

I told him I wouldn't—by George, and I meant it
It's six o'clock now and too late to repent it,—
Why need he come trying to wheedle and flatter me?
Confound that Professor of morbid Anatomy!

I swore that I would n't—I cant commit perjury—
—There's a rap at my door—the Professor of Surgery—
He'd like to know whether I shall not read something—
Why, haven't I sworn that I will be a dumb thing?

“I am told,” he replies, “there are strong expectations
Of one of your rhyming tintinnabulations,—”
I don't care, says I, what they told you about it—
I myself—on the highest authority,—doubt it,

344

It's a quarter past six, and its out of the question—
It will just interrupt duodenal digestion—
For writing carotids and vertebrals taxes
I want all my blood for my caliac axis.

This stoning of frogs to the boy pretty sport is
As the hill paddy said in articulo mortis,
And its pleasant no doubt while one's filling his pharynx
To call for a tune from another man's larynx.

I told him I wouldn't—I mean to stick to it
In spite of J. B. S. J.—he can't make me do it—
Go—bid your old skeletons open their throttles,
Or stir up the babes in your alcohol bottles!

No, no! you can't do it! don't think I'm half-witted
Like alcohol babies whose brains were omitted!
You don't suppose mine are beginning to soften?
They would if I did as you'd have me so often.

—“So often! How often? No need we should tell you,—
It is not the lips of the living compel you—”
Ah no! from the shadows that hover around us
I hear in the accents of friendship that bound us,—

“Come now for the voice to which fondly we listened
Some years before half these young fellows were christened
It will cost you an hour, it will soothe us a minute
Though nothing but love and good nature are in it.”

Have I broken my oath like a traitor false-hearted?
It was made to the living and the departed;
I turn to the past from the bloom of the present
That charming old lady is always so pleasant!

But this is no place for the sage that remembers,—
We want the bright flame, not the ashes and embers,—
We ask but for smiles, not for tear drops to tickle,—
Come, J. B. S. J. show a baby in pickle!

AT A DINNER TO AGASSIZ

MAY 28, 1857?

The larches are green, and the lilacs have blown,
And over the hillsides young summer has shone;
So joyous, so glowing the welcome we bring,—
As warm as our summer, as fresh as our spring!

No breath from the glacier shall waft us its chill.
Though Jung-frau remembers her vanquisher still;
Our skies have an azure as deep as his own,
And bright eyes have beamed for him, blue as the Rhone.

We clasp him once more to the heart of the West;
The rose of the Alps is for Liberty's breast.
A home for his thought like the cloud-rending peak,
His smile like the sunbeam that rests on its cheek!

A SONG FOR THE WIDOW

MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL BENEVOLENT SOCIETY JULY 30, 1857

We drink to-night to eyes once bright,
While Hope still told her story,

345

That lost their gleam in the noontide beam,
Like the blue of the morning-glory!

CHORUS

Then drink to-night to eyes once bright,
While Heaven is bending o'er us
To catch the song our lips prolong,
And angels join our chorus.

Let the sparkles pass o'er the brimming glass,
With summer's life-blood glowing,
As the fire-flies shine through the tangled vine
Where the purple grapes are growing.

CHORUS

Though faint the spark that gilds our dark
With love instead of learning,
'Tis the red that shows ere the rose-bud blows,
Now its inmost heart is burning!

CHORUS

If wine can bring, from Mercy's spring,
One drop for Sorrow's daughter,
Why then 'tis clear, we need not fear—
Our wine has changed to water.

CHORUS

Then while we drink, the saints shall wink
That stand as sentries o'er us,
And the angels' eyes shall close likewise,
Till they wake to join our chorus.

SONG AT THE HUNT

NAUSHON ISLAND SEPTEMBER 21, 1857

As o'er the goblets crystal brink
The rosy blood is rushing
Our lips must have a health to drink
To save our cheeks from blushing

We shall not pledge our young tonight
If We've our wits about us
Their blood is warm, their hearts are light
They're well enough without us

The old! what simpletons are they
That leave their youth behind them?
We drink their better sense—but stay!
We don't know where to find them.

The ladies? shall our goblets ring
For mothers wives & daughters?
Our hearts, without the “Eagles Wing”
Have flown across the waters

And as the river holds the skies
With all their starry splendor
Each cup is bright with beaming eyes
As pure, as true, as tender.

But look in silence on the wine
For if the word were spoken
The liquid mirror where they shine
Would be forever broken

So then for fear We die of thirst
Before we lift the sluices
We'll drink the health that mingles first,
With summer's golden juices

The Youth that holds his court today
And spreads his household banner
Long live the gallant, generous gay
Lord of the Ocean Manor!

Though like the Island where he reigns
His frame by fate is anchored
Love still runs laughing through the veins
That rust has never cankered.

And like the rock that breasts the sea
Life's sunlit waves shall find him
Till Heaven's soft whisper sets him free
And Angel hands unbind him.

THE HUNT

NAUSHON, 1857

Not a buck was shot nor a doe nor a faun
As from desire to dream they hurried,

346

Though the huntsmen were dragged from their beds by dawn
And the deer were terribly worried.

They crawled back slowly at fall of night
At a funeral trot returning,
As they steered their course by the dim red light
Where the Captain's cheroot was burning.

Short, not sweet, were the words they said
As they smoked in silent sorrow,
But they swore that the deer must all be dead,
And they'd try again tomorrow.

No wish for a saddle or haunch was heard;
They did not care a button,
They said with a grin how they all preferred
A leg of the island mutton.

Little they spoke, as they jogged in the road
But they kept up a mighty thinking
Of the wagon showing its empty load,
And the folks are staring and winking.

They thought, as they sadly removed the caps
From the useless shot and powder,
How they'd better have staid at home, perhaps,
And plied with their spoons at chowder.

Slowly and solemnly, one by one,
They entered and told their story,
The hearing whereof brought lots of fun
With a plentiful lack of glory—

TO JAMES JACKSON, M. D.

WITH A GIFT OF SILVER SALT-CELLARS

This shrine a precious gift enfolds;
Look, when its lids unclose,
Not on the shining cross it holds,
But on the love it shows.

What though the silvered brow may seem
Amid the youthful throng
A little farther down the stream
That bears us all along;

Those murmuring waves are mute today,
The stream forgets to run,
The brown locks mingle with the gray,
And all our hearts are one.

Ah, could we bring earth's sweetest song
And bear its brightest gold,
The gift our grateful hearts would wrong,
Our love were still untold.

OUR SECOND SELVES

Look with me through this magic glass,
And see the people as they pass!
As each in turn we bring in view,
We thought him one, but find him two;
A double shape, a twin-like pair,
But one of flesh and one of air,—
The first a vulgar mortal elf,—
The second what he thinks himself!

Our magic glass has curious tricks,—
Yon slender youth of five feet six
Struts like a peacock in the sun,—
His second self is six feet one!
And he with features all awry,
Whose sweetest smile makes children cry,
Walks not alone, but always near
That lovely youth the “Belvidere”!

My lady's cheek can boast no more
The cranberry white and pink it wore;
And where her shining locks divide
The parting line is all too wide,—
(That fatal sign which still reveals
The track of Time's remorseless wheels,—
In short, if all the truth were told,
She's—Hush! a lady's never old!

We lift our glass; what youthful bride
Walks blooming at my lady's side?
Where'er she moves is always seen
This sweet young figure, just eighteen,
Fresh as Love's Goddess from the sea,—
Who can this lovely image be?
O, that's my lady, as she seems
When waking, of herself she dreams!

347

Give some poor lecturer leave to spout,
And sit an hour to hear him out
Look through our eye-glass at the chair—
Lo! Tully seated with him there!
Nay spare the wretch that frozen sneer
Or melt it with one pitying tear,
When the lean, black-coat crow has cawed
And wonders why they dont applaud.

Shadow and substance; so we glide,
Life's double spectres, side by side,
Till o'er us peals the passing bell,—
And which is real who can tell?
God grant that in some happier sphere
These flitting shapes may reappear
Each fairer than its earthly dreams
And be as to itself it seems!

VARIATIONS ON AN ARIA

HARVARD MUSICAL ASSOCIATION JANUARY 18, 1858

One molten cluster let me claim
Of grapes that wore the purple stain,—
No maddening draught of scorching flame
But leaf and blossom-filtered rain,
Sweet with the musky earth's perfume,
Red with the burning glow of dawn,
Still flower-like in its breath and bloom,—
The soul of summers dead and gone!

Ah, not alone their sunsets lie
Dissolved in this empurpled glow,
But sounds and shapes that will not die
Run with its current's crimson flow!
The music of the silent tongue,—
The flying hands that swept the keys,—
The broken lute, the harp unstrung,—
We listen and we look for these.

Hark! while the dimpling fount is stirred,
The far off echoes move their wings,
And through the quivering past is heard
The murmur of its myriad strings.
Once more that old remembered strain!
The Prima Donna's locust-cry!
And hush for memory breathes again
Some lost “Pierian” melody!

And so we will not call him thief
Nor hold him guilty of a sin
Who plucks away one ivy-leaf
Or smoothes the panther's spotted skin;
For if we steal the brightest wine
We do the thyrsus little wrong,
Since all the jewels of the vine
Were thrown her by the God of Song!

ADIEUX Á LA VIE

FROM THE FRENCH OF NICOLAS GILBERT

At life's gay banquet placed, a poor unhappy guest,
One day I pass then disappear;
I die, and on the tomb where I at length shall rest
No friend shall come to shed a tear.

LES BOHÉMIENS

FROM THE FRENCH OF BÉRANGER

Wizards, jugglers, thieving crew,—
Refuse drawn
From the nations gone,—
Wizards, jugglers, thieving crew,
Merry Gipsies, whence come you?

Whence we come? There's none may know.
Swallows come,
But where their home?
Whence we come? There's none may know
Who shall tell us where we go?

From country, law and monarch free,
Such a lot
Who envies not?
From country, law and monarch free
Man is blest one day in three.

Free-born babes we greet the day,—
Church's rite
Denied us quite,—

348

Free-born babes we greet the day,
To sound of fife and roundelay.

Our young feet are unconfined
Here below
Where follies grow,—
Our young feet are unconfined
By swaddling bands of errors blind.

Good people at whose cost we thieve
In juggling book
Will always look;
Good people at whose cost we thieve
In sorcerers and in saints believe.

If Plutus meets our tramping band,
Charity!
We gaily cry;
If Plutus meets our tramping band,
We sing and hold him out our hand.

Hapless birds whom God has blest
Hunted down
Through every town,—
Hapless birds whom God has blest
Deep in forests hangs our nest.

Love, without his torch, at night
Bids us meet
In union sweet;
Love, without his torch, at night,
Binds us to his chariot's flight.

Thine eye can never stir again,
Learned sage
Of slenderest gauge,—
Thine eye can never stir again
From thy old steeple's rusty vane.

Seeing is having. Here we go!
Life that's free
Is ecstasy.
Seeing is having. Here we go!
Who sees all, conquers all below.

But still in every place they cry,
Join the strife
Or lag through life;
But still in every place they cry,
‘Thou'rt born, good-day; thou diest, good-bye.’

When we die, both young and old,
Great and small,
God save us all!
When we die, both young and old,
To the doctors all are sold.

We are neither rich nor proud;
Laws we scorn
For freedom born;
We are neither rich nor proud,—
Have no cradle, roof or shroud.

But, trust us, we are merry still;
Lord or priest
Greatest or least:
But, trust us, we are merry still;
'Tis happiness to have our will.

Yes, trust us, we are merry still
Lord or priest
Greatest or least
Yes, trust us, we are merry still:
'Tis happiness to have our will.

ANSWER TO A TEETOTALER

Who was it, I pray,
On the wedding day
Of the Galilean's daughter
With a touch divine
Turned into wine
Six buckets of filtered water?

THE EXAMINATION

I

Come you Professors, young and old
Disperse yourselves around
And straight prepare to answer square
The questions we propound!
Speak out aloud before the crowd
And so we all shall see
If you have wit that makes you fit
To ask for our degree!
O Professors!
Professors, don't be shy
We'll put you through, so don't look blue,
Unless we turn you by!

II

Call Number one.—Professor Bones.
Take down his age and name.
Now ask your questions, brother Jones.
Professor, hear the same.

349

Here, take your place, look in my face,
Stand up upon your legs
And tell me why it's all a lie
That men are hatched from eggs?
O Professor
Professor, can't you tell?
I rather guess that you'll confess
The ovum is a sell.

III

What do you say? You all vote Nay.
Professor Bones may go.
Professor Bougie, you'll proceed
To tell us what you know.
Explain this fact. When you extract
A polyp or a wen,
Why are you drest in all your best,
Among these plain young men?
O Professor!
Professor, can't you tell?
Why when you take a tumour out
You needs must cut a swell!

IV

Professor Bougie, stand aside,
We cannot let you in.
Professor Squills, Professor Pills,
With you we will begin.
Pray tell us why, when people lie
In fevers, sick abed,
In your prescriptions you employ
A language that is dead?
O Professors!
Professors, don't you know?
Because its what the dead folks talk
Where all your patients go!

V

Vote, brothers! So, you all say No!
Rejected both the two!
Professor Gasbag take the stand
And try what you can do.
If SH, KO, HO, N,
And—AN, OS, E
Are brought in contact, please explain
What will the product be?
O Professor!
Professor, can't you tell?
There is, no doubt you'll soon find out
There'll be a mighty smell!

VI

Now don't be vexed, but call the next,—
Curator! won't you come?
He's always found a stirring round
In that old museum!
When Typhoid fever's getting well
Pray tell us why you find
That Peyers glands are like a boot
A cobbler mends behind?
O Professor?
How badly you must feel!
The healing of a patch is like
The patching of a heel!

VII

You all say No! it is no go!
We can no longer dwell
And so we mean to call the Dean.
Professor Fontanel!
You know full well as people tell
The branch that you profess:
Why is the gravid matrix like
To Adams his Express?
O Professor
The reason I will state:
Because they both contract to make
Delivery of freight!

VIII

He can't get in! they're all turned by!
Now boys, what shall we do?
Remember this, how you may miss
When they get hold of you!
So don't condemn, but pity them
And give them their degree.
For if we're kind to folks we find
That folks are kind to we!
O Professors!
Remember if you please
How kind we've been to let you in
And make us all M.D.'s!

PENITENTIA

FEBRUARY 27, 1860

Sweet cousin, if too hard I hit,
To any fine I will submit.
Drench me with teacups of Souchong
Redder than garnets, upas-strong,—
Drug me with coffee, make me drain
Huge bowls of Hyson, Slumber's bane,
Too happy for my pardon's sake
To lie till morning, wide awake.

By all the firefly sparks that fill
The twilight groves of Shady hill,—

350

(Faint emblems of the gleams that flit
And sparkle through a woman's wit,)
By every smile on woman's face,—
By all that makes my Cousin Grace,—
By every Nymph of cakes and tea
If I said wasp—I meant a bee.

Alas! we have been friends so long
But tongues are sharp, and tea is strong
And words are sudden, and minds are weak,
And to be thoughtless when we speak
Is to be human.—
Chase away
This silly stinging “wasp”, I pray,
And on the next Triennial see
If you are not declared A. B.

TO E. AND L. A. WITH A PEAR

The Prophet for his thirsting flock
Bade streams of water flow;
The new enchanter smites the rock
And fruits of Eden glow.

Like goes to like; this beauty seeks
The great and good and fair,
And finds at length, with blushing cheeks,
A second matchless pair.

A LETTER TO ELIZA

If any other son of Adam
Owns my whole name, respected Madam,
Except one boy, who's now in college,
It's quite beyond my sphere of knowledge.
A thousand pounds against a guinea
I never looked on Old Virginny
The whole Dominion to an acre
I never knew your “Dr Baker,”—
Whoso describes my hair as sable
Has told a—horizontal fable;
—Who is this saucy youth that tries a
Base trick upon my friend Eliza?

STAR-SPANGLED BANNER

EXTRA STANZA

When our Land is illumined with Liberty's smile,
If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory,
Down, down with the traitor that dares to defile
The flag of her stars and the page of her story!
By the millions unchained, when our birthright was gained,
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
While the land of the free is the home of the brave.

TRUMPET SONG

The battle-drum's loud rattle is rending the air,
The troopers all are mounted, their sabres are bare:
The guns are unlimbered, the bayonets shine,
Hark! hark! 'tis the trumpet-call! wheel into line!
Ta ra! ta ta ta!
Trum trum, tra ra ra ra!
Beat drums, and blow trumpets!
Hurrah, boys, hurrah!

March onward, soldiers, onward, the strife is begun,
Loud bellowing rolls the boom of the black-throated gun;
The rifles are cracking, the torn banners toss,
The sabres are clashing, the bayonets cross!
Ta ra! ta ta ta!, etc.

Down with the leaguing liars, the traitors to their trust,
Who trampled the fair charter of Freedom in dust!
They falter, they waver, they scatter, they run,
The field is our own, and the battle is won!
Ta ra! ta ta ta!, etc.

God save our mighty people, and prosper our cause!

351

We're fighting for our nation, our land, and our laws!
Though tyrants may hate us, their threats we defy,
And drum-beat and trumpet shall peal our reply!
Ta ra! ta ta ta!, etc.

WITH TWELVE AUTOGRAPHS

JANUARY 26, 1864

This is Autograph number one,
The first of a dozen I've just begun.

This is Autograph number two,
Written, my lady, express for you.

This is Autograph number three,
Warranted genuine. Signed by me

This is Autograph number four.
Shouldn't you think it would be a bore?

This is Autograph number five,—
Fifth of a dozen—if I survive.

This is Autograph number six.
(You pays your money and takes your picks.)

This is Autograph number seven.
(More than half of 'em done, thank heaven!)

This is Autograph number eight.
“Fond of writing 'em?” Pas si bête!

This is Autograph number nine.
It is, and it isn't, both yours and mine.

This is Autograph number ten.
Six volumes written with this same pen.

This is Autograph number eleven.
Warranted his by whom 'tis given.

This is Autograph twelfth and last.
What is so pleasant as trouble past?

WEARY

FEBRUARY 17, 1864

Peace! Shall we ever hear that blissful sound
And see the raging steeds of War unbound?
Our streams run blood, our fields are crimson mire,
Smoke hides the sun, the night is red with fire,—
How long, O Lord, how long?

As one that sleeping moans but knows not why
Till at the last he wakes with sudden cry—
I, slumbering, woke to hear a Nation's prayer
Piercing the death-chilled, sorrow-laden air
How long, O Lord, how long?

Patience! the fire must burn the root of shame;
The tears of anguished souls must quench the flame.
God led his people to the promised shore
Through the long desert—we will ask no more
How long, O Lord, how long?

SONG OF WELCOME TO THE RUSSIAN FLEET

JUNE 8, 1864

Sea-birds of Muscovy, rest in our waters,
Fold your white wings by our rock-girded shore;
While with glad voices its sons and its daughters
Welcome the friends ye have wafted us o'er.

Sea-kings of Neva, our hearts throb your greeting!
Deep as the anchors your frigates let fall;
Down to the fount where our life-pulse is beating,

352

Sink the kind accents you bear to us all.

Fires of the North, in eternal communion,
Blend your broad flashes with evening's bright star!
God bless the Empire that loves the great Union!
Strength to her people! Long life to the Czar!

AN OLD GRADUATE'S VERSES

PHI BETA KAPPA DINNER, HARVARD JULY 21, 1864

A peaceful haven while the deep is seething,
An alcove's cobwebs while the flags are flaunting,
A spot of tranquil shade for quiet breathing
While all the haggard, hurried world is panting;

Hard by, a church-yard full of soundest sleepers,
Old square-browed Presidents with wisdom brimming,
Long “deaded” tutors and clean swept up sweepers,
And the slim youths of promise, drowned in swimming;

Old trees, the saplings of the Revolution,
That heard the banging of the “Lively's” cannon,—
The first salute that hailed the “Constitution,”—
The broadsides of the “Chesapeake” and “Shannon”;

Old halls, each building youth's eternal palace,
Stirring and sparkling still with fresh newcomers,
As the last vintage fills the same old chalice
That held the life-blood of a hundred summers;

Old teachers, abstracts of the mouldy centuries,
Sines, xs, accents, etched on all their features,
Old beldames slopping through the windy entries
With pail and besom,—obsoletest creatures!

Old legends of our fathers' fathers' follies,
Born of hot youth and blood-inflaming revel,—
The midnight leap from Harvard's roof to Hollis,—
The sinful words that summoned up the Devil;

Prayer bells—brief toilets—limited lavation—
Sharp run of tardy saints to Pater noster,
Where worship mingles with the contemplation
Of doubtful record on the morning's roster;

The long, long grind of daily recitation
Chalk, blackboard, “pony,” prompter, all in action
The prisoned hour of stifling condensation,
The final gush, rush, flush of rarefaction.

These are the old, old tangled recollections
That Time in strange confusion blends and mingles
Till with the wakened thrill of young affections
The marrow in the bones of Memory tingles!

These weave the dream, the beatific vision
That haunts our busy day, our toil-bought slumbers,
Here are the blissful shades, the bowers Elysian,
And these the brightest hours our evening numbers!

353

PRELUDE

NAUSHON ISLAND, NOVEMBER 1864

O thou who lovest best the song
Of bird that never sang in cage,
Such as the wood-notes that belong
To this, our Island Song-book's page!

O'er its fair field the fancy flits
That never bounden book confined,
And on its perch the warbler sits
Whom leaden chains could never bind.

As when the birds in copse and glen,
From oaken bough and beechen spray,—
Thrush, robin, sparrow, bobolink, wren,
Blackbird and bluebird, finch and jay,—

With joyous clamor wake the morn
And startle all the leafy woods,
So thrill those poet-voices, born
In Nature's sea-girt solitudes!

Ah, happy seasons, lapsing sweet
Amid those bowers of peace and rest,
Where all the songsters loved to meet
And carol round the king-bird's nest,

Your flowers are dust, your suns have set,
Yet here they still shall bloom and shine,
Till Love and Friendship both forget
They knelt before the Island shrine!

THE JUBILEE

Nauticus loquitur

I've heerd some talk of a Jubilee
To celebrate “our” “victory”;—
Now I'm a chap as follers the sea,
‘n’ f'r 'z I know, nob'dy'll listen t'me,
B't I'll tell y' jest what's my idee.

When you ‘n’ a felalh 'z got your grip,
Before y've settled it which can whip,
I won't say nothin'. You let her rip!
Knock him to splinters, chip by chip!

I tell y', shipmates ‘n’ lan'sm'n too,
There's chaps aboard th't's 'z good 'z you,—
'Twas God A'mighty that made her crew!
FOLKS is FOLKS! ‘n’ that's 'z true
'z that land is black ‘n’ water blue!

Come tell us, shipmates, ef y' can,
Was there ever a crew sence th' worl' began
That sech a wallopin' had to stan'
'z them poor fellahs th't tried t' man
The great Chicago catamaran?

Wahl, this is what y've had t' do,—
T' lick 'em,—but not t' drown 'em too!
There's some good fellahs, ‘n’ not a few
That's a swimmin' about, all chilled ‘n’ blue,
‘n’ wants t' be h'isted aboard o' you!

Come, drowning foes! your friends we'll be,—
We've licked! Haw! haw! You're licked! Hee! hee!
Hooraw for you! Horraw for we!
We'll wait till the whole wide land is free,
And then we'll have our JUBILEE!

TO JOHN PIERPONT

APRIL 6, 1865

Love, honour, reverence are the meed we owe
To him who in the press of younger men,
Toiling with head, heart, hand, with tongue and pen,
Treads his firm pathway through the blinding snow,
Singing in cheery tones that long ago
Our fathers heard: Not less melodious, when
Ten winters lie on three score years and ten,
And still life's unchilled fountains overflow!
Though paler seems the faithful watch tower's light
In the rich dawn that kindles all the day,
Still in our grateful memory lives the ray

354

Of the lone flambeau, blazing through the night
Now while the heavens, in new-born splendours bright
Shine o'er a ransomed people's opening way.

TO THE HARVARD ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK CITY

FEBRUARY 20, 1866

She to whose faithful breast each child is dear
Hears the far murmur of your voices meeting,—
Ah sweetest music to her loving ear!
And sends a mother's greeting.

When first enrobed her radiant form she dressed
TRUTH was the pearl that on her forehead glistened,—
FREEDOM her message to the virgin West,
And the whole world has listened.

Whate'er she gave you,—learning, science, art,—
Shed from the mystic tree whose leaves are letters,
One gift excelled them all—a manly heart
Freed from all earthly fetters.

Guard well the pearl of Harvard, all too white
For the coarse hands to clutch that buy and barter,—
Conquer with Freedom in her life-long fight
Or fall her noble martyr!

FOR A MONUMENT

I

Insensibility to pain
During a surgical operation
First produced at the Mass.
General Hospital
In Boston
By the use of Sulphuric Ether in October 1846
To commemorate this event
A citizen of Boston
Has caused this monument to be erected
A.D. 1866

II

These dews of mercy Heaven in pity shed
To lap in peaceful dreams the sufferer's head,
To calm the lingering throb of mortal strife,
And smooth the path that leads from life to life.

III

God wrought the marvel of our Mother's birth
While Adam slumbered, painless, on the earth;
Her living daughters bless the gracious power
That soothes the pang of woman's sorrowing hour.

IV

Too cold the stone, the shaping hand too rude
Though only mortals asked our gratitude,
Thy glories, Father, in Thy servants shine,—
For all our blessings all the praise be Thine!

FOR LONGFELLOW'S BIRTHDAY

FEBRUARY 27, 1867

In gentle bosoms tried and true
How oft the thought will be,
“Dear friend, shall I remember you,
Or you remember me?”

But thou, sweet singer of the West,
Whose song in every zone
Has soothed some aching grief to rest
And made some heart thine own,

Whene'er thy tranquil sun descends,—
Far, far that evening be,—

355

What mortal tongue may count the friends
That shall remember thee?

ON RECEIVING A STOLEN APPLE

We owe, alas! to woman's sin
The woes with which we grapple;—
To think that all our plagues came in
For one poor stolen apple!
And still we love the darling thief
Whose rosy fingers stole it;—
Her weakness brought the world to grief,
Her smiles alone console it!
—I take the “stolen” fruit you leave,—
(Forgive me, Maid and Madam,)
It makes me dream that you are Eve,
And wish that I were Adam!

A WREATH OF FLOWERS

This wreath of flowers that bids thee wait
A moment at the trellised gate
Shall lure thee to enchanted ground
Where all the singing birds are found,
Where flows the fount that never fails,—
The Garden of the Nightingales!

—Behold the slender star that lifts
The fringe of Winter's narrowing drifts;
The violet that with open wings
Lights where the first-born verdure springs;
The bell-wort, swinging in the breeze
As if to call the wandering bees
To taste the honeyed lymph that shines
Globed in the clustering columbines.

—These heaven-kissed darlings never know
How sweet their breath, how bright their glow
They win the charm they never seek,
The perfume and the painted cheek,
Feel in their veins the morning's flame
Nor ask the sunbeam whence it came.

—Traced in the blossom's silken fold
Is not the Poet's story told?
Then grudge not to his flowering lays
The humble violet's meed of praise
For beauty, Nature's sweet surprise
Must read itself in other's eyes,
And till the welcome echoes ring
The song-birds hardly know they sing.

CATULLUS: DE ARRIO, LXXXII

Arrius says chommoda for commoda;
Hinsidias for insidias he must say.
Counting his language wonderful polite
He says hinsidias with all his might.
Just so, I think, his mother used to do,
His uncle, grandsire and his grandam too.
At length, to Syria sent, our Arrius goes
And so our ears obtain a brief repose;
Soft, smooth once more becomes each self-same word,
When all at once the horrid tale is heard
Ionia's wave, since Arrius came must be,
No more the Ionian, but the Hionian Sea!

THE RELUCTANT MINSTREL

My Lord the King,—the minstrel swore
I sing at banquet board no more
Not for the stranger from afar—
No! were it Emperor, King or Czar
Or my Lord the Bishop of Zanzibar!
Will I straighten leg on feasting floor!

For who would waste laborious days
And toilsome nights on idle lays
That win some little word of praise
Pleasing or clever, neat, or nice,
Brief as the candelabrum's blaze
And shrivel with the dead bouquets?
Tonight too cheap at any price,
Tomorrow like the fair device
The artist shaped in sugared ice,
The frozen Cupid's melting kiss—
—An immortality like this
I hold it rather gain to miss.

And so the Singer would not sing
But stood before My Lord the King
Mute as a lyre without a string!
Great Captains came from over sea
Ladies and Lords of high degree
But never a song for them had he!

356

A mighty gathering there was seen
Came many a king and many a queen
With little princes packed between—
All Europe's monarchs to a man
The Great Mikado from Japan
Likewise the Shah from Teheran.

Well known the Singer was to these
To hear him they had crossed the seas;
They knelt upon their royal knees;—
“O sing now, Minstrel, sing now, please!
And you shall claim what boon you wish”
The bard stood silent as a fish.

The King of England then laid down
A diamond plucked from off his crown
—Would pay the ransom of a town,—
“Take this, he said, and fill your purse,
But Oh! for Heaven's sweet sake, rehearse
Some stanzas of your charming verse.”

The Sultan would not be outdone
The Emperor, Brother of the Sun
Khedives and Caliphs, every one
The Shah, the Czar and all the rest
From North and South and East and West
Threw down the gems they loved the best.

For who would waste laborious days
And toilsome nights on idle lays
That win some little word of praise
As “pleasing,” “clever” “neat” or “nice”
Then shrivel with the dead bouquets?
Tonight too cheap at any price
Tomorrow like the fair device
The artist shaped in sugared ice—
To vanish while the candles blaze!
The doves that cooed in frosty bliss—
Cupid with frozen bow and quiver
(A little boy whose melting kiss
Would make a Lapland lover shiver—)
I hold it rather gain to miss
An immortality like this!

And so the Singer would not sing,
But stood before my Lord the King
Mute as a lyre without a string
Great Captains came from over sea
Ladies and Lords of high degree—
But never a song for them had he.

WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS

ADDITIONAL LINES

—They had their choice, you say, their will was free,
And nothing hindered each and every one
From thinking always as he should have thought
From doing always as he should have done.
So had he found the right and saved his soul
Look you, this choosing seems a simple thing
But could we always choose as we would choose,
When nothing seems to bind us in our choice
What painters, sculptors, poets, we might be!
—Lay me those flakes of color thus and so—
Here are the brush and palette,—you are free—
Make me a picture such as Raphael drew!
Here are the block and chisel, you may work
Just as you will with them,—choose well your strokes,
You'll find the Queen of beauty in the stone!
Spread open on your desk the ample page
That holds the treasures of our English tongue;
You have your choice of each and every word;
And you are free to place them as you will;
Write me a play like Hamlet, or a song
Like his who sang of Eden and its woe!
Lend me your patience O ye solemn stars

THE TOOTHACHE

How well I remember through years that have gone
The hour when the first of my molars was drawn!

357

I often have sung of the day-dreams of youth,
But oh! its dread nightmare,—that pulling a tooth!

It had ached all the day, it had ached all the night
As morning came on it redoubled its spite
It jumped like a bull-frog—it beat like a drum
Till I shrieked “I can stand it no longer—I vum!”

So I sprang from my bed with a series of howls
One eye sticking out of my head like an owl's
The other poor optic was closed as in sleep,—
In fact my poor peeper was tight as a peep

Then rushed the whole household to answer my call
Aunts sisters and mammy and granny and all
With plasters and lotions and potions and drops
And camphor and cajeput, laudanum and hops.

So they drugged and they doctored and bandaged my cheek
(Still out of one corner I managed to speak;)
“Have the camphor and cajeput made it all well?”
No! It aches like—a word I prefer not to tell

Alas there was nothing could solace my pain.
Hops camphor and cajeput all were in vain,
But they kept at it stoutly with more of the same—
And so things went on till the Governor came.

“Let me see it!” he said: then all quaking with fear
I just opened my mouth—it was under my ear—
He gave but one look—Ah ha! there's no doubt
We must go to the doctor's it's got to come out!

So we started at once—as we got to the door
“Papa! I exclaimed, it is aching no more
Let us not waste our money, but go to the shop
That's next to the doctors and purchase a top.

Done aching! the Governor says with a grin—
A rogue in the halter repents of his sin
That grinder's a humbug—it can't tell the truth
When its scared there is nothing will lie like a tooth.

Then he rapped—And we hadn't a second to wait
For a doctor's a fish and a patient's the bait,
And before I knew what I was doing and where,
I was seated—my head on the back of the chair.

How I wished he was dead or I'd never been born
As he poked in my mouth with his finger of horn!
And he fumbled and the next thing I saw
Was a damnable tool with a horrible claw!

The next I remember was “Stop! Let me go!”
And a yell as of murder committing,—Oh! Oh!
For I thought he was pulling my head by the roots
And its fangs were clenched under the soles of my boots.

That wrench of the key! I remember it yet
'Tis a moment it takes a whole life to forget;
The swelling soon went, but a terrible while
Elapsed ere my cheek was relaxed in a smile.

The moral sticks out like a pawnbroker's sign,

358

It projects from my verse like an upper canine;
There is something to say for the pleasures of youth
But its terrible drawback is drawing a tooth!

And thus I conclude—for my story is told—
It is good to be young, but it's best to be old
For we're curst with twelve molars that all must be drawn
And we never have peace till the-last of them's gone.

CHARADE

My name declares my date to be
The morning of a Christian year,
Though motherless, as all agree,
I am a mother, it is clear,
A father too, without dispute,
And when my son comes,—he's a fruit.
And not to puzzle you too much,
'T was I gave Holland to the Dutch.

IN T. G. A.'S ALBUM

FEBRUARY 22, 1874

Who that can pluck the flower will choose the weed,
Leave the sweet rose and gather blooms less fair?
And who my homely verse will stay to read
Straying enchanted through this bright parterre
When morning's herald lifts his purple bell
And spring's young violet woos the wanderer's eye?
Nay! let me seek the fallen leaves that tell
Of beggared winter's footstep drawing nigh
There shall my shred of song enshrouded lie,
A leaf that dropped in memory's flowery dell;
The breath of friendship stirred it and it fell
Tinged with the loving hue of autumn's fond farewell!

TELEGRAM TO THE BOHEMIAN CLUB: SAN FRANCISCO

MIDNIGHT, FEBRUARY 28, 1874

Message from San Francisco! Whisper low,
Asleep in bed an hour or so ago,
While on his peaceful pillow he declines,
Say to his friend who sent these loving lines:
“Silent, unanswering, still to friendship true,
He smiles in slumber, for he dreams of you.”

CHARADE

1876

Parted! Alas, it brings my first to mind;
My second doubles every tear that's shed;
My whole why task your laboring brain to find
Since being what it is 'twere best unsaid.

Parted the rip brings needles to my mind;
S makes tear tears, so doubles each that's shed;
Needless, my whole, why task your brain to find
Since, being needless, it were best unsaid?

A RHYMED RIDDLE

FEBRUARY 14, 1876

“I'm going to blank,” with failing breath,
The fallen gladiator said;

359

Unconquered, he “consents to death;”
One gasp—the hero soul has fled.
“I'm going to blank,” the school-boy cried;
Two sugared sweets his hands display,—
Like snow-flakes in the ocean-tide
They vanish, melted both away.
Tell with one verb, or I'll tell you,
What each was just about to do.

“OVER THE RIVER”

A NEW VERSION, WITH INSTRUMENTAL ACCOMPANIMENT

The ungloved fingers of dainty Spring
Are peeping from tree and shrub;
I see the flash of the blue-bird's wing,
Their welcome carol the robin's sing.
I hear their—rub a dub rub dub rub
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

Ha! What is the sound that smites mine ear?
Rub a dub rub dub dub!
The dull concussions approach more near—
Yes! over the river the drums I hear—
Rub a dub rub a dub rub dub rub,
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

All through the winter the shores were dumb,—
Rub a dub rub dub dub!
Now the sweet breath of spring has come,—
Horror of horrors! once more that drum!
Rub a dub rub a dub rub dub rub
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

Talk of the rhyme of the “conduct-air.”—
Rub a dub rub dub dub!
This would have made meek Moses swear,
And Job by hand fulls pull out his hair,—
Rub a dub rub a dub rub dub rub
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

Always the same old thumping chime!
Rub a dub rub dub dub!
Rub a dub rub a dub goes my rhyme,
Rub a dub beat both legs in time,
Rub a dub rub a dub rub dub rub
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

Mother is holding her splitting head,—
Rub a dub rub dub dub!
Baby sits bolt upright in bed,
Screeching as if to wake the dead,—
Rub a dub rub a dub rub dub rub!
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

What if a shotted gun they tried,—
Rub a dub rub dub dub!
And swore that they wouldn't be denied.
Because they fired from the other side?
Rub a dub rub a dub rub dub rub
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

Mayor of Cantabridge, what shall we do?
Rub a dub rub dub dub!
Drummers are many and poets few;
Can't you make use of a halter or two?
Rub a dub rub a dub rub dub rub,
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

Or is there a—rub a dub—one could mix,—
Rub a dub rub dub dub!
Their goose to cook and their flint to fix
And send these drummers across the Styx—
Rub a dub rub a dub rub dub rub
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

Do it, your Honor, we humbly pray,—
Rub a dub rub dub dub!
They've murdered our ears in the shockingest way;
Where murderers go I needn't say—
Rub a dub rub a dub rub dub rub,
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

But stave their drum-heads before they go—
Rub a dub rub dub dub!
Or they'll teach Old—rub a dub—down below
A trick of torture he mustn't know,—
Rub a dub rub a dub rub dub rub
Rub a dub dub dub DUB!

360

MY EXCUSE FOR NOT WRITING

JUNE 9, 1876

You ask me to write you some verses! Not I
While the Crab and the Lion are lords of the sky—
Nay, wait till the Virgin gives place to the Scales
And the first leaves of autumn are swept by the gales.

If you'll give me a spade in the earth I will delve
If you'll lend me a hatchet I'll clutch at its helve
If you'll find me a knife there are branches to prune
But a pen makes me shudder—a goose-quill in June!

I have laid all my papers and books on the shelf
Why scribble while nature is writing herself
Each grass-blade a letter that sparkles with dew
And flowers for her capitals, gold red and blue?

I can read all day long from those pages of green
Whose characters lay through the winter unseen
Till out at the summons of sunshine they came
Like the words of a love-letter held to the flame

But to write in dead phrases! the roses have blown
Shall I sprinkle their damask with Eau de Cologne?
Shall I mock the sweet season of blossoming bowers
With a milliner's nosegay of calico flowers?

While the spice of the sassafras clings to my lips
While the axe I have chopped with smells sweet of the chips
While the turtles lie basking on fence rails and logs
While the meadows resound with the chorus of frogs

While the lily-pad greenbacks their promise display
Of the silver and gold that the lilies will pay,
While heavy the nest of the oriole swings
While Nature's gay buffo, the bobolink sings

Excuse me, dear friend; in your quest after verse
You may have gone farther—you can't have fared worse.
I send you my blessing, 'tis all that I can—
In the lazy, limp month of the flowers and the fan.

TO J. R. N.

SEPTEMBER 22, 1876

See what the artist's hand could do
To clothe these winged words!
So Nature lends each loveliest hue
To deck her darling birds.

Why turn the leaves for aught beside
Your pleasure to prolong?
'Tis not the brightest plumes that hide
The throats of sweetest song.

TO J. R. L.

JULY 14, 1877

Good bye! Good bye! We cannot mend
The homely Saxon phrase.
May God be with you, parting friend
We love too well to praise.

We lose you as we lose the light
On yonder steep that burns;
For us on shore awhile tis bright
Then to the wave it turns.

What though we miss the lofty blaze
Our eyes have learned to hail,—

361

More welcome still its widening rays
To many a wandering sail.

So, though we miss your light awhile,
We will not vainly sigh,
But falter with a sorrowing smile
Dear friend Good bye! Good bye!

THE GOLDEN CALENDAR

TO J. G. W.

Count not the years that hoarding Time has told,
Save by the starry memories in their train;
Not by the vacant moons that wax and wane,
Nor all the season's changing robes enfold:
Look on the life whose record is unrolled!
Bid thought, word, action, breathe, burn, strive again,
Bid the freed captive clank his broken chain!
Old altars flame whose ashes scarce are cold,
So will we count thy years and months and days,
Poet whose heart-strings thrill upon thy lyre,
Whose kindling spirit lent like Hecla's fire
Its heat to Freedom's faint auroral blaze,
But waste no words the loving soul to tire
That finds its life in duty, not in praise!

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONORS' WORSHIPS

FOR THE SUFFOLK BAR ASSOCIATION

JANUARY 8, 1879

May it please your Honors' Worships, since I'm on the witness stand,
I will speak the truth—So help me! See, I'm holding up my hand!
I'm a Doctor, not a Lawyer,—I'm aware it's very queer,
And the Court has asked the question How a Doctor came in here.

Now I hope you will believe him; he will try to be exact—
How he came here is the question, for he can't deny the fact;
Every minute he's been listening for a general scream and shout
Here's a wolf among the lambkins—throw him over! turn him out!

Don't be scared! He can't do mischief, even were he so inclined,
For he comes without his weapons—he has left them all behind—
His decoctions, his infusions, all his plasters, all his pills,
All his lotions, all his potions, all his vaccinating quills.

It's himself that shakes and shivers, as full well indeed he may,
When he sees the Law all round him in its terrible array,
With its warrants, its indictments, its presentments and its writs,
And its sheriffs and its constables that scare folks into fits.

How he came here is the question; he had said so once before,
But the Law loves repetition up to twenty times or more;
'Tis the question How he came here, or to make it still more plain,
Here he came and How's the question; thus he states the case again.

He was brought in on a capias, he would have you understand,
And the mandate is no exeat until he shows his hand
So he opens it before you; keep your places! pray be calm!
'Tis a strange sight for you lawyers; there is nothing in its palm!

There may have been some blunder, such as magistrates will make,

362

It may need a writ of error, if we find there's a mistake,
But the jurists and the medicine-men their phrases so have fixed
That there is some little reason why their callings should get mixed.

Take an action of ejectment—'tis the commonest of things—
In a case of over-feeding just that same your doctor brings,
And the lawyer, vice versa, in the courts of ancient time
Wrote prescriptions for his clients how to purge themselves—of crime.

How many learned counsellors, with Digests on their shelves,
Go complaining to their doctors that they can't digest, themselves!
When you talk of Magna Charta, I should like to ask of you
What without their Habeas corpus poor anatomists would do?

But my scroll is growing, lengthening, and you're asking for relief
From a paper that resembled what a lawyer calls his brief,
And of all the calm assumptions the coolest one by far
Were to say “I do the talking for the deaf-mutes of the Bar.”

What's a Doctor's or Professor's to a jury-lawyer's tongue?
'Tis a pitch-pipe to a fog-horn; tis a spigot to a bung;
Says a Doctor to a patient “Run your tongue out to the roots;”
To a jury-lawyer never, for it reaches to his boots!

I am honest, though I say so; I am modest, that is clear;
Do you ask to know the reason; Well, I studied Law a year.
So I've said my say, Your Honor, and you gentry of the Laws,
And await my jury's verdict.—Please to call another cause.

THE ALBUM FIEND

APRIL 6, 1880

“One verse,” she says,—“four glittering lines—
A solitaire,—just one.”—
'Tis finished; every facet shines
A star that mocks the sun.

“One earring! that were frightful, sure,—
What Muse would wear but one,
Were that the blazing Koh-i-noor?
One more, since you've begun!”

So, once again, with weary sigh—
'Twere vain my fate to shun—
I rack my brain and roll my eye;
My album task is done!

Done! when those daughters fill their sieve,
When rivers cease to run,
When imps turn angels, then believe
Your album task is done!

ALMA MATER

HARVARD CLUB, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 21, 1882

Yes, home is sweet! and yet we needs must sigh,
Restless until our longing souls have found
Some realm beyond the fireside's narrow bound
Where slippered ease and sleepy comfort lie,—
Some fair ideal form that cannot die
By age dismantled and by change uncrowned,
Else life creeps circling in the self-same round,
And the low ceiling hides the lofty sky.
Ah, then to thee our truant hearts return,
Dear Mother, Alma, Casta—spotless, kind!
Thy sacred walls a larger home we find,

363

And still for thee thy wandering children yearn,
While with undying fires thine altars burn
Where all our holiest memories rest enshrined.

AT THE UNITARIAN FESTIVAL

JUNE 1, 1882

The waves unbuild the wasting shore;
Where mountains towered the billows sweep,
Yet still their borrowed spoils restore
And raise new empires from the deep.
So, while the floods of thought lay waste
The old domain of chartered creeds,
Its heaven-appointed tides will haste
To shape new homes for human needs.

Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled
The change an outworn age deplores;
The legend sinks, but Faith shall build
A fairer throne on new-found shores.
The star shall glow in Western skies
That shone o'er Bethlehem's hallowed shrine,
And once again the temple rise
That crowned the rock of Palestine.

Not when the wondering shepherds bowed
Did angels sing their latest song,
Nor yet to Israel's kneeling crowd
Did heaven's sacred dome belong,—
Let priest and prophet have their dues,
The Levite counts but half a man,
Whose proud “salvation of the Jews”
Shuts out the good Samaritan!

Though scattered far the flock may stray,
His own the shepherd still shall claim,—
The saints who never learned to pray,—
The friends who never spoke his name.
Dear Master, while we hear thy voice
That says, “The truth shall make you free,”
Thy servants still by loving choice,
Oh, keep us faithful unto thee!

RESPONSE TO A TOAST

BOSTON BAR ASSOCIATION

JANUARY 30, 1883

His Honor's father yet remains
His proud paternal posture firm in;
But, while his right he still maintains
To wield the household rod and reins,
He bows before the filial ermine.

What curious tales has life in store,
With all its must-be's and its may-be's!
The sage of eighty years and more
Once crept a nursling, on the floor,—
Kings, conquerors, judges,—all were babies.

The fearless soldier, who has faced
The serried bayonet's gleam appalling,
For nothing save a pin misplaced
The peaceful nursery has disgraced
With hours of unheroic bawling.

The mighty monarch, whose renown
Fills up the stately page historic,
Has howled and wakened half the town,
And finished off by gulping down
His castor-oil or paregoric.

The justice, who, in gown and cap,
Condemns a wretch to strangulation,
Has scratched his nurse and spilled his pap
And sprawled across his mother's lap
For wholesome law's administration.

Ah, life has many a reef to shun
Before in port we drop our anchor,
But when its course is proudly run,
Look aft! for there the work was done.
Life owes its headway to the spanker!

Yon seat of Justice well might awe
The fairest manhood's half-blown summer,—
There Parsons scourged the laggard law,
There reigned and ruled majestic Shaw,—
What ghosts to hail the last new-comer!

One cause of fear I faintly name,—
The dread lest duty's dereliction

364

Shall give so rarely cause for blame
Our guileless voters will exclaim,
“No need of human jurisdiction!”

What keeps the doctor's trade alive?
Bad air, bad water,—more's the pity!
But lawyers walk where doctors drive,
And starve in streets where surgeons thrive
Our Boston is so pure a city.

What call for judge or court, indeed,
When righteousness prevails so through it?
Our virtuous car conductors need
Only a card whereon they read
“Do right! It's naughty not to do it!”

The whirligig of time goes round
And changes all things but affection;
One blessed comfort may be found
In Heaven's broad statute, which has bound
Each household to its head's protection.

If e'er aggrieved, attacked, accused,
A sire may claim a son's devotion
To shield his innocence abused,
As old Anchises freely used
His offspring's legs for locomotion.

You smile. You did not come to weep,
Nor I my weakness to be showing;
And these gay stanzas, slight and cheap,
Have served their simple use—to keep
A father's eyes from overflowing.

DOROTHY QUINCY UPHAM

JUNE 7, 1883

Dear little Dorothy, Dorothy Q.,
What can I find to write to you?
You have two U's in your name, it's true,
And mine is adorned with a double-u;
But there's this difference in the U's,
That one you will stand a chance to lose
When a happy man of the bearded sex
Shall make it Dorothy Q. + X.

May Heaven smile bright on the blissful day
That teaches this lesson in Algebra!
When the orange blossoms crown your head,
Then read what your old great-uncle said,
And remember how in your baby-time
He scribbled a scrap of idle rhyme,—
Idle, it may be—but kindly, too,
For the little lady, Dorothy Q.

TO J. R. L. HOMEWARD BOUND

JUNE 15, 1885

[Brave Bird o' fredum] what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appeare
[After] those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take [all England with] our James.
Ben Jonson in memory of Shakespeare.

Adapted by O. W. H.

TO MARK TWAIN

ON HIS FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY

NOVEMBER 23, 1885

Ah Clemens, when I saw thee last,—
We both of us were younger,—
How fondly mumbling o'er the past
Is Memory's toothless hunger!

So fifty years have fled, they say,
Since first you took to drinking,—
I mean in Nature's milky way,—
Of course no ill I'm thinking.

But while on life's uneven road
Your track you've been pursuing,
What fountains from your wit have flowed—
What drinks you have been brewing!

I know whence all your magic came,—
Your secret I've discovered,—
The source that fed your inward flame—
The dreams that round you hovered:

365

Before you learned to bite or munch
Still kicking in your cradle,
The Muses mixed a bowl of punch
And Hebe seized the ladle.

Dear babe, whose fiftieth year to-day
Your ripe half-century rounded,
Your books the precious draught betray
The laughing Nine compounded.

So mixed the sweet, the sharp, the strong,
Each finds its faults amended,
The virtues that to each belong
In happier union blended.

And what the flavor can surpass
Of sugar, spirit, lemons?
So while one health fills every glass
Mark Twain for Baby Clemens!

TO YOUTHFUL RHYMESTERS

So youthful rhymesters when a poet sings
Feel at their shoulders for the envied wings
Flap their bare arms, cry “can” and wonder why
They like the song birds cannot sing and fly.

Beware, young dreamer! he that hopes to climb
To fame and fortune up the stairs of rhyme
Too oft will find his weary feet have found
A creaking treadmill travelling round and round
While on its path the world of action goes
And leaves its prizes with the men of prose.
Ill is the bough that yields the laurel wreath—
Its drip is poison to the herbs beneath—
And many an idle youth and bitter maid
Have seen their virtues languish in its shade
Though vain the task their fated course to stem
This bitter lesson I commend to them:
Who writes in verse that should have writ in prose
Is like a traveller walking on his toes,—
Happy the rhymester who in time has found
The heels he lifts were made to touch the ground.

FOR MISS HOWELLS' ALBUM

APRIL 24, 1887

It is winter with me now,—
Not a pippin on the bough
Save a single “froze-n-thaw”;
Spread your lap and it shall fall,—
It's an apple after all,
Though it's neither roast nor raw.

So my verse its life has lost
In its battles with the frost
And I fear the branch will break
While the leafless tree I climb
For this “froze-n-thaw” of rhyme
For a dear young maiden's sake.

TO THE REVEREND S. F. SMITH, D. D.

AUTHOR OF “MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE,” ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY

OCTOBER 21, 1888

While through the land the strains resound
What added fame can love impart
To him who touched the string that found
Its echoes in a Nation's heart?

No stormy ode, no fiery march,
His gentle memory shall prolong,
But on fair Freedom's climbing arch,
He shed the light of hallowed song.

Full many a poet's labored lines
A country's creeping waves will hide,—
The verse a people's love enshrines
Stands like the rock that breasts the tide.

366

Time wrecks the proudest piles we raise,—
The towers, the domes, the temples fall;
The fortress ever crumbles and decays,—
One breath of song outlasts them all.

CENTENNIAL OF WASHINGTON'S INAUGURAL

APRIL 30, 1889

Sceptres and thrones the morning realms have tried;
Earth for the people kept her sunset side.
Arts, manners, creeds the teeming Orient gave;
Freedom, the gift that freights the refluent wave,
Pays with one priceless pearl the guerdon due,
And leaves the Old World debtor to the New.

Long as the watch-towers of our crownless Queen
Front the broad oceans that she sits between,
May her proud sons their plighted faith maintain,
And guard unbroken Union's lengthening chain,—
Union, our peaceful sovereign, she alone
Can make or keep the western world our own!

TO SARAH WHITMAN

From Nature's precious quarry sought,
By hands untiring slowly wrought,
Behold the smooth translucent sphere,
As friendship's pledge made doubly dear!

What stone so clear has mortal found?
What figure like its faultless round?
All else must try some flaw to screen,—
But here perfection's self is seen.

Come thou, my birth-day's fair surprise,
And fill with light my fading eyes!
Close to the clock thy place shall be,—
The clock that chimes “Remember me!”

Thrice welcome, blessed, beauteous gift!
Thy silent speech our souls shall lift
Like thee unchanging to endure
Full-orbed, forever bright and pure.

THE LIVING DYNAMO

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

APRIL 18, 1892

Night after night the incandescent arc
Has fought its dazzling battle with the dark,
Our doubtful paths with purest ray illumed,
Untired, undimmed, unswerving, unconsumed.

A slender wire the living light conveys
That startles midnight with its noonday blaze.
Through that same channel streams the giant force
That whirls the wheels along their clanking course
When, like a mail-clad monster o'er the plain,
With clash and clamor sweeps the broomstick train.

Whence gains the wondrous wire its two-fold dower,
Its double heritage of light and power?
Ask of the motor-man,—he ought to know,—
And he will tell you “from the dynamo.”
And what, again, the dynamo inspires?
“A mighty engine, urged by quickening fires.”

When I behold that large, untiring brain
Which seventy winters have assailed in vain
Toiling, still toiling at its endless task,
With patience such as Sisyphus might ask,
To flood the paths of ignorance with light,

367

To speed the progress of the struggling right,
Its burning pulses borrowed from a heart
That claims in every grist a brother's part,
My lips repeat with reverence “Even so—
This is in truth a living Dynamo!”

Be ours to heed its lessons while we may,
Look up for light to guide our devious way—
Look forward bravely, look not weakly back
The past is done with, mind the coming track;
Look in with searching eye and courage stout,
But when temptation comes look out! look out!

Heaven grant all blessings time and earth can give
To him whose life has taught us how to live
Till on the golden dial of the spheres
The twentieth century counts its gathering years,
While many a birthday tells its cheerful tale,
And the round hundredth shouts All hail! All hail!

POEM ON THE OCCASION OF THE PRESENTATION OF MY PORTRAIT TO THE PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS

APRIL 30, 1892

“How came I here?” The portrait thus might speak,—
The crimson mantling in its canvas cheek,—
“Here in this concourse of the grave and wise
Who look upon me with inquiring eyes,
As on some homeless wanderer, caught astray?
An error loci, Boerhaave would say.
Is this great hive of industry my home?
Where is the Common? Where my gilded dome?
Where the Old South? The Frog pond? Most of all,
My sacred temple, Freedom's Faneuil Hall?”

No answer comes; no trick of human art
Can force those fixed unmoving lips apart.
He whom the picture shadows must explain
This lawless inroad on a strange domain.
Were it my votive offering, meant to show
My grateful sense of all the debts I owe
To your fair city, its unlooked-for face
Might find no caviller to dispute its place.
Yet though the friendly offering is not mine
It bears my benediction to the shrine
Where, if it meets a welcome, longer yet
Will stretch the column which displays my debt.
Friends of my earlier manhood, ever dear
Whose lives, whose labors all were centred here
How bright each figure stands before me now
With eyes undimmed and fair unwrinkled brow,
As when, with life before us yet untried,
We walked the “Latin Quarter” side by side
Through halls of death, through palaces of pain
That cast their shadows on the turbid Seine.

When o'er our coffee, at the old “Procope,”
Smiling we cast each other's horoscope
Daring the future's dubious path to scan,
Gerhard, your Gerhard was the coming man.
Strong-brained, strong-willed, inquiring, patient, wise,
He looked on truth with achromatic eyes;
Sure to succeed, for Nature, like a maid,

368

Loves best the lovers who are not afraid,
Lends them her hand to lead them where they please,
And trusts them boldly with her master-keys
Behold, unfading on the rolls of fame.
Typhus and Typhoid stamped with Gerhard's name.
Look on the stately form at Gerhard's side
He too shall live to be his city's pride.
Tall, manly, quiet, grave, but not austere,
Not slow of wit, a little dull of ear,
Him we predestined to the place he won,—
Norris, The Quaker City's noble son.
Armed with the skill that science renders sure
His look, his touch, were half his patients' cure;
What need his merits I should further tell?
His record stands; your pages know it well.

Still wandering, lonely, mid the funeral urns
To one loved name my saddening thought returns
Less to the many known, but to the few
A precious memory,—Stewardson, to you.
Through many a league we two together fared,
The traveller's comforts and discomforts shared,
When hills and valleys parted distant towns,
Long ere the railway smoothed their ups and downs.
In all the trials wearying days could bring
No fretful utterance ever left its sting.
Pity it was that, chased by pallid fears,
He walked in shadow through his morning years,
Talked of his early doom, and then, and then
Lived on, and on, past three score years and ten.
Too shy, perhaps too timid for success
He fought life's battle bravely not the less,—
Others left prouder memories, none more dear,—
For those a sigh, for Stewardson a tear.
Well, years rolled on, we went our several ways
Not unrewarded with our meed of praise;
Time took the weight and measure of our brains
Set us our tasks and paid us for our pains
At length (our side-locks fast were turning gray)
He brought our art that all-important day
When here our Aesculapian Congress met.
(Its second gathering, you will not forget.)
I with the crowd your far-famed city sought,
Pleased to behold the schools where Rush had taught,
Where Wistar labored and where Horner led
His thirsting flock to Surgery's fountain-head.
What kindly welcome with the rest I shared,—
A little pleased,—perhaps a little scared,
When Chapman hugged me in his huge embrace
With praise that lit a bonfire in my face,—
When Francis, guest at Mitchell's generous board,
My humble name across the table roared,
Coupled with one which figures on the roll
Of England's poets,—bless his worthy soul!
Garth,—good Sir Samuel, whose poetic spark
Scarce seen by day, still glimmers in the dark.
These flitting phantoms of the past survive
While grateful Memory keeps her fires alive.
Friends of the days that fear and anguish knew
My heart records a deeper debt to you.
To this kind refuge, hallowed evermore,
Her shattered sufferers fond affection bore.

369

Full many a father tracked his bleeding son
Fresh from the murderous conflict, lost or won,
Strayed through some quiet ward, and looking round,
In pity's sheltering arms the lost was found.
Enough! Enough! these eyes will overflow
In sweet remembrance of the debt I owe,—
A debt 'twould bankrupt gratitude to pay,—
But Heaven perhaps will hear me when I pray
Peace to your borders! Long may science reign
Supreme, unchallenged o'er her old domain!
While sons as worthy as their sires of old
Her borrowed sceptre still unbroken hold
Till a new Rush shall teach his time to think,
An unborn Leidy find the missing link.

TO J. M. F. ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY

FEBRUARY 23, 1893

I know thee well. From olden time
Thou hadst a weakness for a rhyme.
And wilt with gracious smile excuse
The languor of a laggard muse,
Whose gait betrays in every line
The weight of years outnumbering thine.
And who will care for blame or praise,
When love each syllable betrays?

The seven-barred gate has long been past,
The eighth tall decade cleared at last;
But when its topmost bar is crossed
Think not that life its charm hath lost;
Ginger will still be hot in mouth,
And winter winds blow sometimes south,
And youth might almost long to take
A slice of fourscore's frosted cake.

Thrice welcome to the chosen band,
Culled from the crowd by Nature's hand:
No warmer heart for us shall beat,
No freer hand in friendship meet.
Long may he breathe our mortal air,
For heaven has souls enough to spare.
Lay at his feet the fairest flowers—
Thank God he still is Earth's and ours.

ELLEN TERRY

HOMMAGE DE L'AUTEUR

JANUARY 17, 1894

Sur la scène
Toujours la Reine
Sans diadème
Encore la même

VERSION OF A FRAGMENT OF SAPPHO

Godlike the mortal seems to me
Nay greater than divinity
Who sits by thee and all the while
Can hear thy pleasant laugh and see thy smile!
From me such vision steals my soul away
My tongue is palsied,—I have naught to say
A subtile flame
Runs through each fibre of my joined frame,
My ears are ringing and my sight grows dim
Cold drops of sweat bedew each trembling limb
My face grows white and every laboring breath
Seems like the gasping harbinger of death.

THE COMBINATION

Thou wear'st a padlock on thy heart,
A lock without a key;
And none shall force its clasp apart
Save only he
Who gets its mystic letters in a row,
And so
Is lord of thee!
What may they be?

370

Try these four letters, G, O, L and D!
It has not stirred.
Now try L, O, V, E—ah! that's the word!

EPITAPH
I

From his far isle the gentle stranger came
Who taught our lips to love his liquid name,
Found a new home beneath our western sky
Won all our hearts and left us but to die.

EPITAPH
II

Not his the Buddhist's creed, the Christian's name,
Between two open doors a wind-blown flame;
His was the largest faith, the heaven-born creed
That shaped his life in thought, in speech, in deed.

ILLUSION

How oft, as children, on the stage
We've seen with wonder-opening eyes
A withered beldame bent with age—
The kindly fairy in disguise!

Not yet betrayed, through many a scene
She creeps around with cloak and cane,
So truthful in her speech and mien
To doubt her wrinkles were profane.

With trembling voice and tottering feet
She limps along from act to act
Still genuine in her thin deceit
To simple eyes; an honest fact.

What e'er the sable robe conceals
No truant fold of gauze betrays,
No straying border yet reveals
The gorgeous mantle's hidden blaze.

Four acts and something more have past—
Still virtue seems the losing side—
Each wrong more crushing than the last—
When lo! The sable robes divide;

The villain flies—the maiden kneels—
Behold! in angel splendors drest
From plume crowned head to spangled heels
The great enchantress stands confest!

IN THE DEAD SEASON

CAMBRIDGE

In the dead season when the boughs are bare
And chill from Labrador the wild winds blow
Beneath these outstretched arms that show so fair
In hanging sleeves that Summer bids them wear
A pilgrim round his birth-place wandering slow
As wayward memory led him here or there,
With lingering footsteps tracked the virgin snow.

Stripped of his royal vestments, naked, lone,
The immemorial monarch of the plain
Sat crownless, shivering on his marble throne;
Full many a bitter winter had he known
And shook his leaves in many a blinding rain
And felt his far-stretched rootlets tug and strain
When the roof-rending hurricane had blown.

Then he whom cradle memories lured to stray
Beneath the shadeless boughs that idly spread
Their net of crossing branches, tangled spray,
Against the sky's round hollow, dull and gray

371

With clouds portending tempest, overhead,
Saw the Greek page before him where he read
“As forest-leaves the tribes of men decay.”

The mighty deeds whereof the world hath sung
As each slow-moving century led its train
Art, History, Verse have shaped and told and sung
Vain all the toil of chisel, pencil, tongue
Image and record and resounding strain—
Vain is the sweetest lyre that hand hath strung
Marble and scroll and canvas, all are vain.

From dark abysses burst the ravening tides
And grind with foaming jaws the wasting land
O'er sunken Tyre the conqueror's trireme rides
To shineless night the bannered navy glides
Memnon sinks voiceless in the Lybian sand
Through Balbec's arch the giant keystone slides
The sceptre falls from mummied Pharoah's hand.

Earth, like a worn out medal shews no more
Her date and superscription; whence she came
Spinning her endless circles o'er and o'er
Turning the shore to sea, the sea to shore,
Forever changing, evermore the same,
Paving with mountain peaks her ocean floor,
No sage may guess, no prophet may proclaim.

Still wandering on he reached the holy ground
Where, under mossy slab and slanted stone
And shining obelisk and swelling mound
The silent generations slumber round
The village fathers modest Fame had known
Captains and Deacons, mighty men renowned
Whose crumbling bones the churchyard calls its own.

And with them mingled some of statelier name,
The ruffled Tory true to church and crown,
Esquire and Colonel; and the lofty dame
Whose glistening satin puts our pride to shame
As Copley's canvas hands her proudly down;
And grand divines whose Presidential fame
Once filled the grave old Academic town.

LOVE

While sunset stains the windows of the west
In parting glory drest,
Ere yet the evening star leads in the hours
That hush all voices in their leafy bowers
Save the lone bird's that shuns the light;
Ere in the burning chamber of the night
With sacramental rite
Of dewdrops on the cerements of the flowers
Its burden dropped, its sins confessed
Our long drawn day is laid at length at rest
We, flung together as the seeds are thrown
The sower's hand has strown,
But clinging as the iron sands that feel
The soul-like effluence of the enchanted steel,
We whom the years have tried
And clustered closer, striving to divide,
Beside our altar kneel
And thank the gracious Power that made our own

372

The sacred gift of love the best that life has known.

For what has life but love when all is told?
Fame? pleasure? empire? gold?
Fame breeds the worm that gnaws its greenest leaves;
Pleasure is hope that smiles and still deceives;
Power! target of envenomed cares!
Gold! See the rippled brow the ash-hued hairs
Its hoarding vassal wears!
A sable woof the loom of fate inweaves
With every web by time unrolled;
Love, only love it wraps in snow-white fold.

THE POET GROWS OLD

How I cut the fresh branches of succulent rhyme
In the spring of my years, my asparagus time!
To clip them, to bind them, how light was the toil,
As each morning they sprouted afresh from the soil!

Spring passed, still my pages of silvershod lines
Filled up like the pods on my marrow fat vines;
Uncared for they grew and unasked for they came,—
The peas and the poems,—with both 'twas the same.

And when the last crop on the meadow was mown,
When the apples were ripe, when the song-birds had flown,
My harvest of verse was awaiting me still
For the corn-field stood ready my basket to fill.

But winter has come with his icicle-spear
And built his white throne on the grave of the year
The blossoms are snowflakes he flings to the gale
And the seed that he casts in the furrow is hail.

The fields are all bare and the harvest is o'er
I come with my sickle and basket no more;
But a rusty old spade, and I prospect around
For the bread-fruit of Erin that grows underground.

TO AN AUTOGRAPH COLLECTOR

When next you wish an autograph, I hope
You'll furnish paper, stamp and envelope;
Why, when you tax a hard-worked weary man,
Not save him all the trouble that you can?

TO A BRIGHT BOY

I trust my counsel you will heed—
You're almost too quick witted;
Your brain is like a fiery steed
That needs to be well bitted
Don't treat it like a wooden toy
A child may safely play with;
You'd better hold it tight, my boy,
Or you'll be run away with!

TO CORINNA

Star of my childhood, long withdrawn
And veiled to me in midnight shade,
Still glowing on the mists of morn
Thine early light can never fade.
Thy glance perchance has lightly past
And wondered at my altered brow,
But thou as when I saw thee last
So are thy breathing features now.
The same dark hair—the same wild eye—
The voice like dying music's flow—
All seems as in the days gone by

373

Though woman's heart beats warm below
Our paths have parted far and wide,
They met but for a single hour,
But winds that roam the troubled tide
Still bear the fragrance of the flower
Thus to my memory thou hast been—
Thus to my future thou shalt be;
Though chance may dash her waves between
They cannot part my dreams from thee
And by thy pathway dark or bright
Fair girl, it yet may give thee joy
To know that thou hast touched with light
The visions of a nameless boy.

University of Virginia Library

ADDITIONAL POEMS 1838–1894 AND UNDATED

AN UNPUBLISHED POEM

FOR THE BOSTON SOCIETY OF MEDICAL IMPROVEMENT

SUNG AT THE HUNT

NAUSHON ISLAND

AT DARTMOUTH

HUNTING-SONG FOR 1839

NAUSHON

TO A. L. J.

TO A. L. J.

TO A. L. J.

A SCINTILLA

AT THE DINNER AFTER THE INAUGURATION OF JARED SPARKS HARVARD COLLEGE, JUNE 6, 1849

THE TASK

A VISION OF LIFE

WYCLIFFE

LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR

WILLIAM W. SWAIN

PLEASURE REMEMBERED

TO JULIA WARD HOWE

LETTER TO THE CONNECTICUT STATE MEDICAL SOCIETY

TO J. R. L.

TO J. R. L. FROM HOMER WILBUR

FROM AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH

MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY JUNE 27, 1855

CAMILLA

TWO POEMS FOR THE FESTIVAL OF ST. STEPHEN'S PARISH

I A DOLLAR'S WORTH

MOTTO

LETTER

II FAITH

MOTTO

LETTER

POSTCRIPT

CRIMEA

INTRODUCTION

FOR THE MEETING OF THE BURNS CLUB

FOR THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

AT A DINNER TO AGASSIZ

A SONG FOR THE WIDOW

SONG AT THE HUNT

THE HUNT

TO JAMES JACKSON, M. D.

WITH A GIFT OF SILVER SALT-CELLARS

OUR SECOND SELVES

VARIATIONS ON AN ARIA

ADIEUX Á LA VIE

FROM THE FRENCH OF NICOLAS GILBERT

LES BOHÉMIENS

FROM THE FRENCH OF BÉRANGER

ANSWER TO A TEETOTALER

THE EXAMINATION

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

PENITENTIA

TO E. AND L. A. WITH A PEAR

A LETTER TO ELIZA

STAR-SPANGLED BANNER

EXTRA STANZA

TRUMPET SONG

WITH TWELVE AUTOGRAPHS

WEARY

SONG OF WELCOME TO THE RUSSIAN FLEET

AN OLD GRADUATE'S VERSES

PHI BETA KAPPA DINNER, HARVARD JULY 21, 1864

PRELUDE

THE JUBILEE

Nauticus loquitur

TO JOHN PIERPONT

TO THE HARVARD ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK CITY

FOR A MONUMENT

I

II

I
A DOLLAR'S WORTH

II
FAITH

EPITAPH
I

EPITAPH
II