I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of Eblis, in "Vathek," and how each shape, as it lifted its hand from its breast, showed its heart,--a burning coal. The real Hall of Eblis stands on yonder summit. Go there on the next visiting-day, and ask that figure crouched in the corner, huddled up like those Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the sitting posture, to lift its hand,--look upon its heart, and behold, not fire, but ashes.--No, I must not think of such an ending! Dying would be a much more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty. Make a will and leave her a house or two and some stocks, and other little financial conveniences, to take away her necessity for keeping school.--I wonder what nice young man's feet would be in my French slippers before six months were over! Well, what then? If a man really loves a woman, of course he wouldn't marry her for the world, if he were not quite sure that he was the best person she could by any possibility marry.
----It is odd enough to read over what I have just been writing.--It is the merest fancy that ever was in the world. I shall never be married. She will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take tea with her and her husband, sometimes. No coffee, I hope, though,--it depresses me sadly. I feel very miserably;--they must have been grinding it at home.--Another morning walk will be good for me, and I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be glad of a little fresh air before school.
----The throbbing flushes of the poetical intermittent have been coming over me from time to time of late. Did you ever see that electrical experiment which consists in passing a flash through letters of gold-leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some name or legend springs out of the darkness in characters of fire?
There are songs all written out in my soul, which I could read, if the flash might but pass through them,--but the fire must come down from heaven. Ah! but what if the stormy nimbus of youthful passion has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged cirrus of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered cumulus of sluggish satiety? I will call on her whom the dead poets believed in, whom living ones no longer worship,--the immortal maid, who, name her what you will,--Goddess, Muse, Spirit of Beauty,--sits by the pillow of every youthful poet, and bends over his pale forehead until her tresses lie upon his cheek and rain their gold into his dreams.
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MUSA.
O my lost Beauty!--hast thou folded quite Thy wings of morning light Beyond those iron gates Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, And Age upon his mound of ashes waits To chill our fiery dreams, Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams? Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, Whose flowers are silvered hair!-- Have I not loved thee long, Though my young lips have often done thee wrong And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song? Ah, wilt thou yet return, Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn? Come to me!--I will flood thy silent shrine With my soul's sacred wine, And heap thy marble floors As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores In leafy islands walled with madrepores And lapped in Orient seas, When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze. Come to me!--thou shalt feed on honeyed words, Sweeter than song of birds;-- No wailing bulbul's throat, No melting dulcimer's melodious note, When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, Thy ravished sense might soothe With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth. Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, Sought in those bowers of green Where loop the clustered vines And the close-clinging dulcamara twines,-- Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines, And Summer's fruited gems, And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems. Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,-- Or stretched by grass-grown graves, Whose gray, high-shouldered stones, Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones Still slumbering where they lay While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away! Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing! Still let me dream and sing,-- Dream of that winding shore Where scarlet cardinals bloom,--for me no more,-- The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, And clustering nenuphars Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars! Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!-- Come while the rose is red,-- While blue-eyed Summer smiles O'er the green ripples round yon sunken piles Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, And on the sultry air The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer! Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain With thrills of wild sweet pain!-- On life's autumnal blast, Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast,-- Once loving thee, we love thee to the last!-- Behold thy new-decked shrine, And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine!" |
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[THE TRUSTEE'S LAMENT.]
Per aspera ad astra.
(SCENE.--Outside the gate of the Astronomical Observatory at Albany.) There was a time when I was blest; The stars might rise in East or West With all their sines and wonders; I cared for neither great nor small, As pointedly unmoved by all As, on the top of steeple tall, A lightning-rod at thunders. What did I care for Science then? I was a man with fellow-men, And called the Bear the Dipper; Segment meant piece of pie,--no more; Cosine, the parallelogram that bore JOHN SMITH & CO. above a door; Arc, what called Noah skipper. No axes weighed upon my mind, (Unless I had a few to grind.) And as for my astronomy, Had Hedgecock's quadrant then been known, I might a lamp-post's height have shown By gas-tronomic skill,--if none Find fault with the metonymy. O hours of innocence! O ways How far from these unhappy days When all is vicy-versy! No flower more peaceful took its due Than I, who then no difference knew 'Twixt Ursy Major and my true Old crony, Major Hersey. Now in long broils and feuds we roast, Like Strasburg geese that living toast To make a liver-paté,-- And all because we fondly strove To set the city of our love In scientific fame above Her sister Cincinnati! We built our tower and furnished it With everything folks said was fit, From coping-stone to grounsel; And then, to give a knowing air, Just nominally assigned its care To that unmanageable affair, A Scientific Council. We built it, not that one or two Astronomers the stars might view And count the comets' hair-roots, But that it might by all be said How very freely we had bled,-- We were not laying out a bed To force their early square-roots. The observations we wished made Were on the spirit we'd displayed, Worthy of Athens' high days; But they've put in a man who thinks Only of planets' nodes and winks, So full of astronomic kinks He eats star-fish on Fridays. The instruments we did not mean For seeing through, but to be seen At tap of Trustee's knuckle; But the Director locks the gate, And makes ourselves and strangers wait While he is ciphering on a slate The rust of Saturn's buckle. So on the wall's outside we stand, Admire the keyhole's contour grand And gateposts' sturdy granite;-- But, ah, is Science safe, we say, With one who treats Trustees this way? Who knows but he may snub, some day, A well-conducted planet? Who knows what mischief he may brew With such a telescope brand-new At the four-hundredth power? He may bring some new comet down So near that it'll singe the town And do the Burgess-Corps crisp-brown Ere they can storm his tower. We wanted (having got our show) Some man, that had a name or so, To be our public showman; But this one shuts and locks the gate: Who'll answer but he'll peculate, (And, faith, some stars are missed of late,) Now that he's watched by no man? Our own discoveries he may steal, Or put night's candles out, to deal At junkshops with the sockets: Savants, in other lands or this, If any theory you miss Whereon your cipher graven is, Don't fail to search his pockets! Lock up your comets: if that fails, Then notch their ears and clip their tails, That you at need may swear to 'em; And watch your nebulous flocks at night, For, if your palings are not tight, He may, to gratify his spite, Let in the Little Bear to 'em. Then he's so quarrelsome, we've fears He'll set the very Twins by the ears,-- So mad, if you resist him, He'd get Aquarius to play A milkman's trick, some cloudy day, And water all the Milky Way To starve some sucking system. But plaints are vain! through wrath or pride, The Council all espouse his side And will our missives con no more; And who that knows what savants are, Each snappish as a Leyden jar, Will hope to soothe the wordy war 'Twixt Ologist and Onomer? Search a Reform Convention, where He- and she-resiarehs prepare To get the world in their power, You will not, when 'tis loudest, find Such gifts to hug and snarl combined As drive each astronomic mind With fifty-score Great-Bear-power! No! put the Bootees on your foot, Elope with Virgo, strive to shoot That arrow of O'Ryan's, Drain Georgian Ciders to the lees, Attempt what crackbrained thing you please, But dream not you can e'er appease An angry man of science! Ah, would I were, as I was once, To fair Astronomy a dunce, Or launching jeux d'esprit at her, Of light zodiacal making light, Deaf to all tales of comets bright, And knowing but such stars as might Roll r-rs at our theatre! Then calm I drew my night-cap on, Nor bondsman was for what went on Ere morning in the heavens; Twas no concern of mine to fix The Pleiades at seven or six,-- But now the omnium genitrix Seems all at sixes and sevens. Alas, 'twas in an evil hour We signed the paper for the tower, With Mrs. D. to head it! For, if the Council have their way, We've merely had, as Frenchmen say, The painful maladie du pay, While they get all the credit! Boys, henceforth doomed to spell Trustees, Think not it ends in double ease To those who hold the office; Shun Science as you would Despair, Sit not in Cassiopeia's chair, Nor hope from Berenice's hair To bring away your trophies! |
[THE POCKET-CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTH.]
Well, it has happened, and we have survived it pretty well. The Democratic Almanacs predicted a torrent, a whirlwind, and we know not what meteoric phenomena,--but the next day Nature gave no sign, the dome of the State-House was in its place, the Monument was as plumb as ever, no chimney mourned a ravished brick, and the Republican Party took its morning tea and toast in peace and safety. On the whole, it must be considered a wonderful escape. Since Partridge's time there had been no such prophecies,--since Miller's, no such perverse disobligingness in the event.
But what had happened? Why, the Democratic Young Men's Celebration, to be sure, and Mr. Choate's Oration.