THE SHOEMAKER.
Thou Poet, who, like any lark,
Dost whet thy beak and trill
From misty morn till murky dark,
Nor ever pipe thy fill:
Hast thou not, in thy cheery note,
One poor chirp to confer—
One verseful twitter to devote
Unto the Shoe-ma-ker?
At early dawn he doth peg in
His noble work and brave;
And eke from cark and wordly sin
He seeketh soles to save;
And all day long, with quip and song,
Thus stitcheth he the way
Our feet may know the right from wrong,
Nor ever go a stray.
Soak kip in mind the Shoe-ma-ker,
Nor slight his lasting fame:
Alway he waxeth tenderer
In warmth of our acclaim;—
Aye, more than any artisan
We glory in his art
Who ne'er, to help the under man,
Neglects the upper part.
But toe the mark for him, and heel
Respond to thee in kine—
Or kid—or calf, shouldst thou reveal
A taste so superfine:
Thus let him jest—join in his laugh—
Draw on his stock, and be
A shoer'd there's no rival half
Sole liberal as he.
Then, Poet, hail the Shoe-ma-ker
For all his goodly deeds,—
Yea, bless him free for booting thee—
The first of all thy needs!
And when at last his eyes grow dim,
And nerveless drops his clamp,
In golden shoon pray think of him
Upon his latest tramp.
THE OLD RETIRED SEA CAPTAIN.
The old sea captain has sailed the seas
So long, that the waves at mirth,
Or the waves gone wild, and the crests of these,
Were as near playmates from birth:
He has loved both the storm and the calm, because
They seemed as his brothers twain,—
The flapping sail was his soul's applause,
And his rapture, the roaring main.
But now—like a battered hulk seems he,
Cast high on a foreign strand,
Though he feels "in port," as it need must be,
And the stay of a daughter's hand—
Yet ever the round of the listless hours,—
His pipe, in the languid air—
The grass, the trees, and the garden flowers,
And the strange earth everywhere!
And so betimes he is restless here
In this little inland town,
With never a wing in the atmosphere
But the wind-mill's, up and down;
His daughter's home in this peaceful vale,
And his grandchild 'twixt his knees—
But never the hail of a passing sail,
Nor the surge of the angry seas!