WHO will capture Donatello?
Roving cat!
Fierce, ungovernable fellow;
Musical as Leporello,—
Sharp and flat!
Terrible in a duello.
Ragamuffin, have you met a
Felis fat?
Ancestored in gay Valetta,
Where brown dames in black faldetta,
Walk and chat—
Hot his blood as flame of Ætna.
Beautiful, romantic, splendid
Autocrat!
To the forest, unattended,
Daring Donatello wended:
Owl and bat,
Weasel, mole, and mink, he rended.
Savage wildwood his unbounded
Habitat;
By no man or mastiff hounded,
By the midnight mirk surrounded—
Think of that!
Oft his caterwaul he sounded.
Freedom to the gallant fellow.
Exeat!
Victor in each fierce duello,
Midnight, madcap Leporello!
Roving cat!
Graceless, graceful Donatello!
GABRIEL OF SCHWARTZENWALD.
RHYME, and ring the changes well,
Sing the song of Gabriel,
Gabriel of Schwartzenwald.
Lo, a voice delusive called
From the Ohio’s crooked vale,
Saying, “Sail and sail and sail
Over the sea and hither away,
Westering to the Land of Play;
Happy region of Do-as-you-please,
Where the guilders grow on trees,
Where the peasants all are kings
And there be no underlings.”
Gabriel, the idle dreamer,
Heard the Utopian voice alluring;
Sought a sail-ship,—not a steamer;
Soon the vessel leaves her mooring,
Veers and tacks to Occident,
Bears him o’er the crinkled sea;
Never soul so indolent
Lounged upon a deck as he.
With the vagrant breeze he glides
Over sun-lit, moon-lit tides,
Skims to port and shore;
Spins along the shining rail,
Sleeps into Ohio’s vale,—
Wakes—the journey o’er.
Not an idler Gabriel sees,
Not a kreutzer on the trees;
Every bretzel must be bought;
Naught is proffered him for naught.
’Tis the Region of Unrest,
Busy, toiling, moiling West!
All the peasant kings he found
Building houses, tilling ground.
Gabriel of Schwartzenwald
From his dream is disenthralled;
Transatlantic, far away,
Eastward looms the Land of Play.