We have no leas, no larks, no rooks, No swains, no nightingales, No singing milkmaids (save in books): The poet does his best— It is the rhyme that fails!
NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.
OF BLUE CHINA.
There's a joy without canker or cark, There's a pleasure eternally new, 'T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark Of china that's ancient and blue; Unchipped, all the centuries through It has passed, since the chime of it rang, And they fashioned it, figure and hue, In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
These dragons (their tails, you remark, Into bunches of gillyflowers grew),— When Noah came out of the ark, Did these lie in wait for his crew? They snorted, they snapped, and they slew, They were mighty of fin and of fang, And their portraits Celestials drew In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
Here's a pot with a cot in a park, In a park where the peach-blossoms blew, Where the lovers eloped in the dark, Lived, died, and were changed into two Bright birds that eternally flew Through the boughs of the may, as they sang; 'T is a tale was undoubtedly true In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
ENVOY Come, snarl at my ecstasies, do, Kind critic; your "tongue has a tang," But—a sage never heeded a shrew In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
A RIDDLE. [14] THE LETTER "H".
'T was in heaven pronounced, and 't was muttered in hell, And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell; On the confines of earth 't was permitted to rest, And the depths of the ocean its presence confessed; 'T will be found in the sphere when 't is riven asunder, Be seen in the lightning and heard in the thunder. 'T was allotted to man with his earliest breath, Attends him at birth, and awaits him in death, Presides o'er his happiness, honor and health, Is the prop of his house, and the end of his wealth. In the heaps of the miser 't is hoarded with care, But is sure to be lost on his prodigal heir. It begins every hope, every wish it must bound, With the husbandman toils, and with monarchs is crowned. Without it the soldier, the seaman may roam, But woe to the wretch who expels it from home! In the whispers of conscience its voice will be found, Nor e'en in the whirlwind of passion be drowned. 'T will not soften the heart; but though deaf be the ear, It will make it acutely and instantly hear. Yet in shade let it rest, like a delicate flower, Ah, breathe on it softly,—it dies in an hour.