NUGATOR.
PARODY ON BRYANT'S AUTUMN.
| The very dullest days are come, the dullest of the year, When all our great Assembly men are gone away from here; Heaped up in yonder Capitol, how many bills lie dead, They just allowed to live awhile, to knock them on the head; Tom, Dick, and Harry all have gone and left the silent hall, And on the now deserted square we meet no one at all— Where are the fellows? the fine young fellows that were so lately here And vexed the drowsy ear of night with frolic and good cheer. Alas! they all are at their homes—the glorious race of fellows, And some perhaps are gone to forge, and some are at the bellows. Old Time is passing where they are, but Time will pass in vain; All never can, though some may be, transported here again: Old "What d'ye call him," he's been off a week, or maybe more, And took a little negro up, behind and one before; But What's his name and You know who, they lingered to the last, And neither had a dollar left and seemed to be downcast; Bad luck had fallen on them as falls the plague on men, And their phizzes were as blank as if they'd never smile again; And then when comes December next, as surely it will come, To call the future delegate from out his distant home, When the sound of cracking nuts is heard in lobby and in hall, And glimmer in the smoky light old Shockoe Hill and all, An old friend searches for the fellows he knew the year before, And sighs to find them on the Hill Capitoline, no more; But then he thinks of one who her promise had belied, The beautiful Virginia, who had fallen in her pride. In that great house 'twas said she fell where stands her gallant chief, Who well might weep in marble, that her race had been so brief— Yet not unmeet it was he thought—oh no, ye heavenly powers! Since she trusted those good fellows, who kept such shocking hours. |
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
| Audire magnos jam videor duces Non indecoro pulvere sordidos.—Hor. Car. L. ii. 1. |
I stood upon the heights above Charlestown, and was silently contrasting the then peaceful aspect of the scene with that which it presented on the day of wrath and blood which had rendered the place so memorable in story, as my fancy filled with images of the past and once more crowded the hill—not indeed with knights and paladins of old,
| Sed rusticorum mascula militum Proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus Versare glebas, et severae Matris ad arbitrium recisos Portare fustes.—Hor. Lib. iii. Car. 6. |
As the silent hosts arose in imagination before me, I thought of the complicated feelings which on that day must have stirred their hearts; I thought of the breasts which kindled under the insult of invasion and were nerved with the stern determination to play out the game upon which was staked their all of earthly hope or fear, and it struck me that the gallant Warren, whose voice had often made the patriot's heart to glow and nerved the warrior's arm, might perhaps have addressed them in sentiment something as follows: