I look into the burning coals, and see Faces and forms of things; but they soon pass, Melting one into other: the firm mass Crumbles, and breaks, and fades gradually, Shape into shape as in a dream may be, Into an image other than it was: And so on till the whole falls in, and has Not any likeness,—face, and hand, and tree, All gone. So with the mind: thought follows thought, This hastening, and that pressing upon this, A mighty crowd within so narrow room: And then at length heavy-eyed slumbers come, The drowsy fancies grope about, and miss Their way, and what was so alive is nought.
Papers of “The M.S. Society” {12}
{12} The Editor is requested to state that “M. S.” does not here mean Manuscript.
No. I. An Incident in the Siege of Troy, seen from a modern Observatory
Sixteen Specials in Priam's Keep Sat down to their mahogany: The League, just then, had made busters cheap, And Hesiod writ his “Theogony,” A work written to prove “that, if men would be men, And demand their rights again and again, They might live like gods, have infinite smokes, Drink infinite rum, drive infinite mokes, Which would come from every part of the known And civilized globe, twice as good as their own, And, finally, Ilion, the work-shop should be Of the world—one vast manufactory!”
From arrow-slits, port-holes, windows, what not, Their sixteen quarrels the Specials had shot From sixteen arblasts, their daily task; Why they'd to do it they didn't ask, For, after they'd done it, they sat down to dinner; The sixteen Specials they didn't get thinner; But kept quite loyal, and every day Asked no questions but fired away.
Would you like me to tell you the reason why These sixteen Specials kept letting fly From eleven till one, as the Chronicle speaks? They did it, my boys, to annoy the Greeks, Who kept up a perpetual cannonade On the walls, and threaten'd an escalade. The sixteen Specials were so arranged That the shots they shot were not shots exchanged, But every shot so told on the foe The Greeks were obliged to draw it mild: Diomedes—“A fix,” Ulysses—“No go” Declared it, the “king of men” cried like a child; Whilst the Specials, no more than a fine black Tom I keep to serenade Mary from The tiles, where he lounges every night, Knew nor cared what they did, and were perfectly right.
But the fact was thus: one Helenus, A man much faster than any of us, More fast than a gent at the top of a “bus,” More fast than the coming of “Per col. sus.” Which Shakespeare says comes galloping, (I take his word for anything) This Helenus had a cure of souls— He had cured the souls of several Greeks, Achilles sole or heel,—the rolls Of fame (not French) say Paris:—speaks Anatomist Quain thereof. Who seeks May read the story from z to a; He has handled and argued it every way;— A subject on which there's a good deal to say. His work was ever the best, and still is, Because of this note on the Tendo Achillis.
This Helenus was a man well bred, He was up in Electricity, Fortification, Theology, Æsthetics and Pugilicity; Celsus and Gregory he'd read; Knew every “dodge” of glove and fist; Was a capital curate, (I think I've said) And Transcendental Anatomist: Well up in Materia Medica, Right up in Toxicology, And Medical Jurisprudence, that sell! And the dead sell Physiology: Knew what and how much of any potation Would get him through any examination: With credit not small, had passed the Hall And the College——and they couldn't pluck him at all. He'd written on Rail-roads, delivered a lecture Upon the Electric Telegraph, Had played at single-stick with Hector, And written a paper on half-and-half.
With those and other works of note He was not at all a “people's man,” Though public, for the works he wrote Were not that sort the people can Admire or read; they were Mathematic The most part, some were Hydrostatic; But Algebraic, in the main, And full of a, b, c, and n— And other letters which perplex— The last was full of double x! In fact, such stuff as one may easily Imagine, didn't go down greasily, Nor calculated to produce Such heat as “cooks the public goose,” And does it of so brown a hue Men wonder while they relish too.