“I can safely say I never heard any thing like it,” added Oriel in a similar tone.
“I entertained an incipient conviction that you would find it marvellously admirable,” replied the poet, elevating his head, and stroking his mustachios. “’Tis ineffably divine, is it not?”
“Beautiful!” exclaimed both, looking at each other with a smile of peculiar meaning.
“Beautiful!” echoed Long Chi, raising his voice and eyebrows. “By the invulnerable tail of Confucius, ’tis something for which a name cannot be found. But exquisitely perfect as it may be, here is a production that excels it in the very unapproachableness of its excellence.”
While the two friends listened with admirable patience, the young Chinese unfolded another paper, and read with the same gravity these lines:—
“When first we met ’twas in the spring,
When dicky birds begin to sing,
When nature dishes up her greens
To make removes for rural scenes;
And teaches, with unaltered brows,
When trees take leaf, to make their boughs;
Then first I met thee passing by,
Then first I had thee—in my eye.
“When next we met ’twas summer time,
When trees, well loaded, seemed to prime;
And other plants just taking root,
Meaning no harm, began to shoot;
When beans their hollow ‘shells’ would doff,
And marrow fats were going off;
Then first our hearts were growing warm,
Then first I had thee—arm in arm.
“’Twas autumn when we met again,
When sunshine parched the peas and plain;
When plums are blooming on the wall,
And into flour would gladly fall;
When apples are to fritters torn,
And earth’s square feet feel many a corn:
Then first did I forget my fears,
Then first I had thee—box my ears.
“I saw thee last when winter, nice
In eating, loves to have his ice;
When ‘cold without’ comes near and far,
And all his sweetmeats frosted are,
To ballot when the white balls roll
Unask’d for, hastening to the poll:
Then first I ‘broke the ice,’ and then
Was I the happiest of men.”