The Mackerel poet who wrote those lines, my boy, may have been no rhetorician; but his theme was an inspiration giving him more than ordinary mastery of the figures of speech.
Yours, gravely,
Orpheus C. Kerr.
LETTER XCII.
IN WHICH OUR ENTHUSIASTIC CORRESPONDENT SURPASSES ÆSCHYLUS IN THE WAY OF AN INVOCATION; AND DESCRIBES REAR ADMIRAL HEAD'S GREAT NAVAL DEMONSTRATION AGAINST FORT PIANO.
Washington, D.C., April 20th, 1863.
Stand aside, my boy, and realize your own civilian insignificance, while I invoke all the gods of Old Olympus to aid me with their inspiration, in the tale of naval grandeur it is my duty to unfold.
Fired with the soul to hail my country great, and write her honors endless to the world, full to the sun I wave the eager pen, invoking all the lightning of the gods. Descend on me, Olympian dews, descend! that this tired brain, where oft the new-born thought hath died unblossomed in the fainting soil, may catch fresh vigor from the grateful balm, and teem thrice glorious in a nobler youth. By all the fire that glows in Homer's song, to make all ages flame anew with Troy; by all the music stirred in Virgil's lay, to make Æneas ever march the world; by all the heav'nly fury of the theme, Æschylus-taken, picturing gods to men; by all the Art o'er nature raised sublime, and unto Xenophon revealed by night, to make Ten Thousand nobler in Retreat than thrice ten thousand by a Cæsar led; by All that unto All hath been their All, I charge thee, oh, thou impulse of the gods! grand as the storm and chainless as the wind, descend on me! as lightning from the cloud descends to beacon what the storm makes dark. That I may write, in words of thunder born, such deeds as strengthen while they shake the world; that I may write, in lines to trumpets tuned, such acts as make men brothers to the gods; that I may write, in notes to mock the lute, such feats of cunning as lull Fate to sleep; that I may dip th' immortalizing pen in bright Pactolus' ever golden stream, and write, in language sweeter to the ear than Hymet's honey to soft Dion's lips, glories of arms to first make Nature crouch—then leap to something higher than herself!
(If any man objects to that sort of thing, my boy, may he be whipped to death by the aged maidens of the Confederacy, and utterly perish per flagellationem extremam.)