EXCERPTS
FROM AN EPISTLE TO A FRIEND.
———
BY ERASTUS W. ELLSWORTH.
———
Good Friend—dear heart—companion of my youth,
Whose soul was honor, and whose words were truth;
Methinks I see your smile of quick surprise,
As o’er these rhymes you glance your curious eyes.
But is it strange, if in an idle hour,
I cull these blossoms from the Muses’ bower?
Frail though they be, and blown but for a day,
The heart’s best language they may best convey;
In climes more genial, more adorned than ours,
The poet and the lover talk with flowers;
Then, though some richer gift were mine, to send,
This should be thine, my old familiar friend.
If for a while it cheat thee of a care,
With fond remembrance of the things that were—
Renew a thought, a hope that once was dear,
Or hint an adage for a future year,
I scarce shall think these lines were vainly writ,
Nor quite disown my Muse’s random wit.
Time, that has made us boys, and makes as men,
Will never, never bring the past again;
But wingéd memory half the wish supplies,
Which he who bears the scythe and glass denies:
He—the grim sexton of our dying years—
She—“Old Mortality” of sepulchres—
Both lay their fingers where our lives have flown,
And touch, in turn, each monumental stone.
Recall, my friend, the days when sent to school,
We framed our first idea of tyrant rule.
Long ere we turned the world’s dark pages o’er,
Glued with the vassal’s tears, the martyr’s gore—
Knew that a Cæsar passed a Rubicon,
Or wrongful Britain laid a Stamp-act on,
We drudged in study at another’s will,
While the free light fell warm on wood and hill—
Wrought with the service of an eye askance,
Beneath a master’s rogue-detecting glance:
Possessed with fear, lest trick or task might draw
The rod that fell without the forms of law;
Possessed with wrath to see our wealth expire—
Tops, apples, penknives in the penal fire.
How oft the slate, whose sable field should show
Platoons of figures ranked in studied row—
Squadrons of sums arrayed in careful lines—
Victualled with grocer’s bills of fruits and wines,
Betrayed a scene that crowned a day’s disgrace,
Before that sternly, sadly smiling face—
Trees, houses, elephants, and dogs and men,
Where half the Arabian’s science should have been;
And only this much learned, of figured lore,
That time subtracted—always left a score.
But when those long-loved hours were come, that took
From those reveréd hands the rod and book,
Our, like all vassal hearts, set quickly free,
Sought at a bound the largest liberty.
Self-exiled then, to meadow stream and wood,
We dropped half-read the tale of Robin Hood;
Though guiltless of his suits of Lincoln green,
Dear, as to him, was every sylvan scene.
Shade of old Crusoe, with thy dog and gun,
And thy lone isle beneath a southern sun!
Shades of the lords that made such rare disport
Beneath the oaks of Arden’s rural court!
As o’er my little day I cast my view,
Contrasting what I know, with what I knew,
Your lot no hardship seems: to you were given
The world of nature and the lights of heaven,
What time the sun came flaming from the deep,
Bursting the curtained clouds of morning sleep,
Or night, majestic, paced the solemn skies,
Wrapped in a woof of starry mysteries—
All times, all seasons, as they came and went,
Soothed with sweet thought the ills of banishment.
No rude, unbidden guest invaded there,
Nor the harsh din of congregated care;
The heart, all ruffled in the haunts of men,
Like to a quiet sea became again—
Like to the deep reflection of the skies,
Its faith-born hopes, and sage moralities.
This much, at least, my devious muse would say:
Our golden age, my friend, has passed away—
Passed, with the careless dress, and elfin looks,
That showed our books were trees and running brooks.
But something more I would awhile recall,
Then let, with lingering hand, the curtain fall.
Dear to this heart—O now how passing dear,
With the sad change of each dispatchful year!—
Seems every waif of hours when life was new,
Though home’s small scene contained its little view.
Home that, however mean or grand, supplies
A gay kaleidoscope to youthful eyes.
Say not, gray Wisdom, that its wonders pass,
The mere deceit of beads and broken glass.
Here, to thy rugged front, and locks of snow,
Thy solemn eye, and beard’s descending flow,
I dare avouch, of life’s most pleasing way,
The best is gilded with the morning ray.
See all our life the coinage of our eye;
(O shut thy book—let go philosophy!)
In Youth the pennies pass, ’tis no less strange
That Age and Manhood clink the silver change.
Through all estates our joys alike are vain;
Then chide not one who turns to youth again.
One rainbow vision of youth’s earnest eyes
Is worth a stack of staid philosophies.
Fields, waters, forests where we roamed of yore,
What thronging memories haunt ye evermore:
In yonder glen the brook is gliding still,
Whose turf-dammed waters turned the mimic mill.
Yon wood still woos us to its deep embrace,
Whose shadows wrought a summer’s resting place,
When from our brows the caps were careless thrown,
The hunter’s tackle and the game laid down,
As the long daylight, wearing towards a close,
Breathed the soft airs of languor and repose.
There, stretched at length, we mused, with half shut eye,
To the leaf-kissing wind’s light lullaby,
That, ever and anon, with murmur deep,
Did through the pine’s Æolian organ creep.
Tired with the varied travel of the day,
The sound of game unheeded passed away—
The bursting thunder of a partridge wing—
The frolick blue-jay’s nasal caroling—
The tawny thrush, that peeped with curious look,
A rustic starer, from his leafy nook—
The crow, hoarse cawing as we met his eye—
The squirrels, bickering on the oaks hard by;
Red-liveried elves, who taught their brains to say—
“Whene’er the cat doth sleep the mice may play.”
No more they feared the gun’s successless skill,
Banged with clear malice, and intent to kill,
But shelled their nuts with self-complacent air,
And chid as, plainly, for invading there.
Through loopholes of the intertwisted green
Came the far glimpse of many a sylvan scene—
Parts of a smiling vale, a glorious sphere,
Warm with the vigorous manhood of the year;
Deep-bosomed haunts, where honest-handed toil
Renewed the strength that dressed his native soil,
While the gray spire, towards the drooping west,
With heavenward finger, showed a world of rest.