'My son,' the King replied. 'Why ask'st thou? Tell!'
'IBRAM!' then spoke the dervish to him straight,
'I'll answer thee, nor longer make thee wait.
The place where travelers come, and go as well,
Is, really, not a palace, but—hotel!'
Yea, friends; and, as another genial poet has discovered, life itself is but a hostelrie or tavern, where some get the highest rooms, while others, of greater social weight, gravitate downwards into the first story, sinking like gold to the bottom of the hotel pan,—that is O.W. HOLMES', his idea, reader, not ours. Apropos of HOLMES and kings—his thousands of reader friends have ere this seen with pleasure that the Emperor of all the French was not unmindful of one of his brother-potentates,—in the world of song,—when he paid OLIVER WENDELL the courteous compliment which has of late gone the rounds, and which conferred as much honor on the giver as the taker thereof.
The Spring poems have begun. Vide licet.
TO AN EARLY BIRD.
In homely phrase we oft are told
'Tis early birds that catch the worms;