Thou, that readest, be resolute, learn to be strong and to suffer!
Let the dead Past bury its dead and act in the Present!
Bear a banner of strange devices, "Forever" and "Never!"
Build in the walls of time the fame of a permanent Nauvoo,
So that thy brethren may see it and say, "Go thou and do likewise!"
This poem does not altogether meet with his comrades' approval; Zoïlus retorts that "it is no easy thing to be funny in hexameters; the Sapphic verse is much more practicable."
The Gannet hereupon asserts that he could write an imitation of Longfellow's higher strains—not of those which are so well known and so much quoted—which would be fairer to the poet, and after a short interval produces—
THE SEWING-MACHINE.
A strange vibration from the cottage window
My vagrant steps delayed,