Part 20 (1/2)
-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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s through them,-but the fire must come down from heaven.
Ah! but what if the stormy _nimbus_ of youthful pa.s.sion has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged _cirrus_ of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered _c.u.mulus_ of sluggish satiety? I will call on her whom the dead poets believed in, whom living ones no longer wors.h.i.+p,-the immortal maid, who, name her what you will,-G.o.ddess, 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.
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 s.h.i.+ne 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 palm toss, plume-like, in the breeze.
Come to me!-thou shalt feed on honied 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 cl.u.s.tered vines And the close-clinging dulcamara twines,- Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight s.h.i.+nes, 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 gra.s.s-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 sh.o.r.e Where scarlet cardinals bloom,-for me no more,- The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, And cl.u.s.tering 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 On the green ripples round you 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, pa.s.sion-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!”
CHAPTER XI
[The company looked a little fl.u.s.tered one morning when I came in,-so much so, that I inquired of my neighbor, the divinity-student,) what had been going on. It appears that the young fellow whom they call John had taken advantage of my being a little late (I having been rather longer than usual dressing that morning) to circulate several questions involving a quibble or play upon words,-in short, containing that indignity to the human understanding, condemned in the pa.s.sages from the distinguished moralist of the last century and the ill.u.s.trious historian of the present, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as a _pun_.
After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of paper containing some of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the presence of more reflective natures.-It was asked, ”Why tertian and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects.” Some interesting physiological relation would be naturally suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that the answer is in the paltry equivocation, that they _skip_ a day or two.-”Why an Englishman must go to the Continent to weaken his grog or punch.” The answer proves to have no relation whatever to the temperance-movement, as no better reason is given than that island-(or, as it is absurdly written, _ile and_) water won't mix.-But when I came to the next question and its answer, I felt that patience ceased to be a virtue. ”Why an onion is like a piano” is a query that a person of sensibility would be slow to propose; but that in an educated community an individual could be found to answer it in these words,-”Because it smell odious,” _quasi_, it's melodious,-is not credible, but too true. I can show you the paper.
Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such things. I know most conversations reported in books are altogether above such trivial details, but folly will come up at every table as surely as purslain and chickweed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This young fellow ought to have talked philosophy, I know perfectly well; but he didn't,-he made jokes.]
I am willing,-I said,-to exercise your ingenuity in a rational and contemplative manner.-No, I do not proscribe certain forms of philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous Disputations, ”De Sancto Matrimonio.” I will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my friend the Professor.
[Picture: The Deacon]
THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: OR THE WONDERFUL ”ONE-HOSS-SHAY.”
A LOGICAL STORY.
HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it-ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits,- Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
_Georgius Secundus_ was then alive,- Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always _somewhere_ a weakest spot,- In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,-lurking still Find it somewhere you must and will,- Above or below, or within or without,- And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, A chaise _b.r.e.a.s.t.s down_, but doesn't _wear out_.
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, With an ”I dew vum,” or an ”I tell _yeou_,”) He would build one shay to beat the taown 'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it _couldn'_ break daown- -”Fur,” said the Deacon, ”'t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan the strain; 'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest.”
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,- That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees; The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the ”Settler's ellum,”- Last of its timber,-they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died.