Though the just critic pass my humble name, And sweeter lips have drained the cup of fame, While my gay stanza pleased the banquet's lords, The soul within was tuned to deeper chords! 60 Say, shall my arms, in other conflicts taught To swing aloft the ponderous mace of thought, Lift, in obedience to a school-girl's law, Mirth's tinsel wand or laughter's tickling straw? Say, shall I wound with satire's rankling spear The pure, warm hearts that bid me welcome here? No! while I wander through the land of dreams, To strive with great and play with trifling themes, Let some kind meaning fill the varied line. You have your judgment; will you trust to mine? 70 1846. And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found, 'T was filled with caudle spiced and hot, and handed smoking round. But, changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine, Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine, But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps, He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnapps. And then, of course, you know what 's next: it left the Dutchman's shore With those that in the Mayflower came,a hundred souls and more,— Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes, To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads. 20 Now being from Paris but recently, This fine young man would show his skill; And so they gave him, his hand to try, A hospital patient extremely ill. Some said that his liver was short of bile, This fine young man then up stepped he, 20 But since the case is a desperate one, 30 Then out his stethoscope he took, The bourdonnement is very clear,- There's empyema beyond a doubt; Now such as hate new-fashioned toys And vowed that his buzzing was all a hum. Green be the graves where her martyrs are lying! Shroudless and tombless they sunk to their rest, While o'er their ashes the starry fold flying Borne on her Northern pine, Spread her broad banner to storm and to sun; Heaven keep her ever free, Floats the fair emblem her heroes have 60 When lawyers take what they would give, And doctors give what they would take, When city fathers eat to live, Save when they fast for conscience' When one that hath a horse on sale That holds the iron on the hoof,- 20 Our gloves are stitched with special care, When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot Such dimples as would hold your fist, When publishers no longer steal, And pay for what they stole before,When the first locomotive's wheel Rolls through the Hoosac Tunnel's "Poems," 1849. Till then let Cumming blaze away, LATTER-DAY WARNINGS 1 When legislators keep the law, When banks dispense with bolts and locks, When berries-whortle, rasp and strawGrow bigger downwards through the box, 1 From the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, where it is introduced by: "I should have felt more nervous about the late comet, if I had thought the world was ripe. But it is very green yet, if I am not mistaken. If certain things, which seem to me essential to a millennium, had come to pass, should have been frightened; but they haven't." The Second Adventists were active and numerous in Boston in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Their prominent church building has since become notorious as a cheap variety show house. Atlantic Monthly, Nov., 1857. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS 1 This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,- 1 From the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. |