Chapter 7

Impelled by feelings in their nature kind, But slightly weak and somewhat undefined, Rush at each other, make a sudden stand, Begin to talk, expatiate, and expand; Each looks quite radiant, seems extremely struck, Their meeting so was such a piece of luck; Each thinks the other thinks he 's greatly pleased To screw the vice in which they both are squeezed; So there they talk, in dust, or mud, or snow, Both bored to death, and both afraid to go! Your hat once lifted, do not hang your fire, Nor, like slow Ajax, fighting still, retire; When your old castor on your crown you clap, Go off; you've mounted your percussion cap.

Some words on LANGUAGE may be well applied, And take them kindly, though they touch your pride. Words lead to things; a scale is more precise,-- Coarse speech, bad grammar, swearing, drinking, vice. Our cold Northeaster's icy fetter clips The native freedom of the Saxon lips; See the brown peasant of the plastic South, How all his passions play about his mouth! With us, the feature that transmits the soul, A frozen, passive, palsied breathing-hole. The crampy shackles of the ploughboy's walk Tie the small muscles when he strives to talk; Not all the pumice of the polished town Can smooth this roughness of the barnyard down; Rich, honored, titled, he betrays his race By this one mark,--he's awkward in the face;-- Nature's rude impress, long before he knew The sunny street that holds the sifted few. It can't be helped, though, if we're taken young, We gain some freedom of the lips and tongue; But school and college often try in vain To break the padlock of our boyhood's chain One stubborn word will prove this axiom true,-- No quondam rustic can enunciate view.

A few brief stanzas may be well employed To speak of errors we can all avoid. Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope The careless lips that speak of so'ap for soap; Her edict exiles from her fair abode The clownish voice that utters ro'ad for road Less stern to him who calls his coat a co'at, And steers his boat, believing it a bo'at, She pardoned one, our classic city's boast, Who said at Cambridge mo'st instead of most, But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot To hear a Teacher call a root a ro'ot.

Once more: speak clearly, if you speak at all; Carve every word before you let it fall; Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star, Try over-hard to roll the British R; Do put your accents in the proper spot; Don't,--let me beg you,--don't say "How?" for "What?" And when you stick on conversation's burs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful _urs_.

From little matters let us pass to less, And lightly touch the mysteries of DRESS; The outward forms the inner man reveal,-- We guess the pulp before we cut the peel.

I leave the broadcloth,--coats and all the rest,-- The dangerous waistcoat, called by cockneys "vest," The things named "pants" in certain documents, A word not made for gentlemen, but "gents;" One single precept might the whole condense Be sure your tailor is a man of sense; But add a little care, a decent pride, And always err upon the sober side.

Three pairs of boots one pair of feet demands, If polished daily by the owner's hands; If the dark menial's visit save from this, Have twice the number,--for he 'll sometimes miss. One pair for critics of the nicer sex, Close in the instep's clinging circumflex, Long, narrow, light; the Gallic boot of love, A kind of cross between a boot and glove. Compact, but easy, strong, substantial, square, Let native art compile the medium pair. The third remains, and let your tasteful skill Here show some relics of affection still; Let no stiff cowhide, reeking from the tan, No rough caoutchoue, no deformed brogan, Disgrace the tapering outline of your feet, Though yellow torrents gurgle through the street.

Wear seemly gloves; not black, nor yet too light, And least of all the pair that once was white; Let the dead party where you told your loves Bury in peace its dead bouquets and gloves; Shave like the goat, if so your fancy bids, But be a parent,--don't neglect your kids.

Have a good hat; the secret of your looks Lives with the beaver in Canadian brooks; Virtue may flourish in an old cravat, But man and nature scorn the shocking hat. Does beauty slight you from her gay abodes? Like bright Apollo, you must take to Rhoades,-- Mount the new castor,--ice itself will melt; Boots, gloves, may fail; the hat is always felt.

Be shy of breastpins; plain, well-ironed white, With small pearl buttons,--two of them in sight,-- Is always genuine, while your gems may pass, Though real diamonds, for ignoble glass. But spurn those paltry Cisatlantic lies That round his breast the shabby rustic ties; Breathe not the name profaned to hallow things The indignant laundress blushes when she brings!

Our freeborn race, averse to every check, Has tossed the yoke of Europe from its _neck_; From the green prairie to the sea-girt town, The whole wide nation turns its collars down. The stately neck is manhood's manliest part; It takes the life-blood freshest from the heart. With short, curled ringlets close around it spread, How light and strong it lifts the Grecian head! Thine, fair Erechtheus of Minerva's wall; Or thine, young athlete of the Louvre's hall, Smooth as the pillar flashing in the sun That filled the arena where thy wreaths were won, Firm as the band that clasps the antlered spoil Strained in the winding anaconda's coil I spare the contrast; it were only kind To be a little, nay, intensely blind. Choose for yourself: I know it cuts your ear; I know the points will sometimes interfere; I know that often, like the filial John, Whom sleep surprised with half his drapery on, You show your features to the astonished town With one side standing and the other down;-- But, O, my friend! my favorite fellow-man! If Nature made you on her modern plan, Sooner than wander with your windpipe bare,-- The fruit of Eden ripening in the air,-- With that lean head-stalk, that protruding chin, Wear standing collars, were they made of tin! And have a neckcloth--by the throat of Jove!-- Cut from the funnel of a rusty stove!

The long-drawn lesson narrows to its close, Chill, slender, slow, the dwindled current flows; Tired of the ripples on its feeble springs, Once more the Muse unfolds her upward wings.

Land of my birth, with this unhallowed tongue, Thy hopes, thy dangers, I perchance had sung; But who shall sing, in brutal disregard Of all the essentials of the "native bard"? Lake, sea, shore, prairie, forest, mountain, fall, His eye omnivorous must devour them all; The tallest summits and the broadest tides His foot must compass with its giant strides, Where Ocean thunders, where Missouri rolls, And tread at once the tropics and the poles; His food all forms of earth, fire, water, air, His home all space, his birthplace everywhere.

Some grave compatriot, having seen perhaps The pictured page that goes in Worcester's Maps, And, read in earnest what was said in jest, "Who drives fat oxen"--please to add the rest,-- Sprung the odd notion that the poet's dreams Grow in the ratio of his hills and streams; And hence insisted that the aforesaid "bard," Pink of the future, fancy's pattern-card, The babe of nature in the "giant West," Must be of course her biggest and her best.

Oh! when at length the expected bard shall come, Land of our pride, to strike thine echoes dumb, (And many a voice exclaims in prose and rhyme, It's getting late, and he's behind his time,) When all thy mountains clap their hands in joy, And all thy cataracts thunder, "That 's the boy,"-- Say if with him the reign of song shall end, And Heaven declare its final dividend!

Becalm, dear brother! whose impassioned strain Comes from an alley watered by a drain; The little Mincio, dribbling to the Po, Beats all the epics of the Hoang Ho; If loved in earnest by the tuneful maid, Don't mind their nonsense,--never be afraid!

The nurse of poets feeds her winged brood By common firesides, on familiar food; In a low hamlet, by a narrow stream, Where bovine rustics used to doze and dream, She filled young William's fiery fancy full, While old John Shakespeare talked of beeves and wool!

No Alpine needle, with its climbing spire, Brings down for mortals the Promethean fire, If careless nature have forgot to frame An altar worthy of the sacred flame. Unblest by any save the goatherd's lines, Mont Blanc rose soaring through his "sea of pines;" In vain the rivers from their ice-caves flash; No hymn salutes them but the Ranz des Vaches, Till lazy Coleridge, by the morning's light, Gazed for a moment on the fields of white, And lo! the glaciers found at length a tongue, Mont Blanc was vocal, and Chamouni sung!

Children of wealth or want, to each is given One spot of green, and all the blue of heaven! Enough if these their outward shows impart; The rest is thine,--the scenery of the heart.

If passion's hectic in thy stanzas glow, Thy heart's best life-blood ebbing as they flow; If with thy verse thy strength and bloom distil, Drained by the pulses of the fevered thrill; If sound's sweet effluence polarize thy brain, And thoughts turn crystals in thy fluid strain,-- Nor rolling ocean, nor the prairie's bloom, Nor streaming cliffs, nor rayless cavern's gloom, Need'st thou, young poet, to inform thy line; Thy own broad signet stamps thy song divine! Let others gaze where silvery streams are rolled, And chase the rainbow for its cup of gold; To thee all landscapes wear a heavenly dye, Changed in the glance of thy prismatic eye; Nature evoked thee in sublimer throes, For thee her inmost Arethusa flows,-- The mighty mother's living depths are stirred,-- Thou art the starred Osiris of the herd!

A few brief lines; they touch on solemn chords, And hearts may leap to hear their honest words; Yet, ere the jarring bugle-blast is blown, The softer lyre shall breathe its soothing tone.

New England! proudly may thy children claim Their honored birthright by its humblest name Cold are thy skies, but, ever fresh and clear, No rank malaria stains thine atmosphere; No fungous weeds invade thy scanty soil, Scarred by the ploughshares of unslumbering toil. Long may the doctrines by thy sages taught, Raised from the quarries where their sires have wrought, Be like the granite of thy rock-ribbed land,-- As slow to rear, as obdurate to stand; And as the ice that leaves thy crystal mine Chills the fierce alcohol in the Creole's wine, So may the doctrines of thy sober school Keep the hot theories of thy neighbors cool!

If ever, trampling on her ancient path, Cankered by treachery or inflamed by wrath, With smooth "Resolves" or with discordant cries, The mad Briareus of disunion rise, Chiefs of New England! by your sires' renown, Dash the red torches of the rebel down! Flood his black hearthstone till its flames expire, Though your old Sachem fanned his council-fire!

But if at last, her fading cycle run, The tongue must forfeit what the arm has won, Then rise, wild Ocean! roll thy surging shock Full on old Plymouth's desecrated rock! Scale the proud shaft degenerate hands have hewn, Where bleeding Valor stained the flowers of June! Sweep in one tide her spires and turrets down, And howl her dirge above Monadnock's crown!

List not the tale; the Pilgrim's hallowed shore, Though strewn with weeds, is granite at the core; Oh, rather trust that He who made her free Will keep her true as long as faith shall be! Farewell! yet lingering through the destined hour, Leave, sweet Enchantress, one memorial flower!

An Angel, floating o'er the waste of snow That clad our Western desert, long ago, (The same fair spirit who, unseen by day, Shone as a star along the Mayflower's way,)-- Sent, the first herald of the Heavenly plan, To choose on earth a resting-place for man,-- Tired with his flight along the unvaried field, Turned to soar upwards, when his glance revealed A calm, bright bay enclosed in rocky bounds, And at its entrance stood three sister mounds.

The Angel spake: "This threefold hill shall be The home of Arts, the nurse of Liberty! One stately summit from its shaft shall pour Its deep-red blaze along the darkened shore; Emblem of thoughts that, kindling far and wide, In danger's night shall be a nation's guide. One swelling crest the citadel shall crown, Its slanted bastions black with battle's frown, And bid the sons that tread its scowling heights Bare their strong arms for man and all his rights! One silent steep along the northern wave Shall hold the patriarch's and the hero's grave; When fades the torch, when o'er the peaceful scene The embattled fortress smiles in living green, The cross of Faith, the anchor staff of Hope, Shall stand eternal on its grassy slope; There through all time shall faithful Memory tell, 'Here Virtue toiled, and Patriot Valor fell; Thy free, proud fathers slumber at thy side; Live as they lived, or perish as they died!'"

AN AFTER-DINNER POEM

(TERPSICHORE)

Read at the Annual Dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 24, 1843.

IN narrowest girdle, O reluctant Muse, In closest frock and Cinderella shoes, Bound to the foot-lights for thy brief display, One zephyr step, and then dissolve away!

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Short is the space that gods and men can spare To Song's twin brother when she is not there. Let others water every lusty line, As Homer's heroes did their purple wine; Pierian revellers! Know in strains like these The native juice, the real honest squeeze,--- Strains that, diluted to the twentieth power, In yon grave temple might have filled an hour. Small room for Fancy's many-chorded lyre, For Wit's bright rockets with their trains of fire, For Pathos, struggling vainly to surprise The iron tutor's tear-denying eyes, For Mirth, whose finger with delusive wile Turns the grim key of many a rusty smile, For Satire, emptying his corrosive flood On hissing Folly's gas-exhaling brood, The pun, the fun, the moral, and the joke, The hit, the thrust, the pugilistic poke,-- Small space for these, so pressed by niggard Time, Like that false matron, known to nursery rhyme,-- Insidious Morey,--scarce her tale begun, Ere listening infants weep the story done.

Oh, had we room to rip the mighty bags That Time, the harlequin, has stuffed with rags! Grant us one moment to unloose the strings, While the old graybeard shuts his leather wings. But what a heap of motley trash appears Crammed in the bundles of successive years! As the lost rustic on some festal day Stares through the concourse in its vast array,-- Where in one cake a throng of faces runs, All stuck together like a sheet of buns,-- And throws the bait of some unheeded name, Or shoots a wink with most uncertain aim, So roams my vision, wandering over all, And strives to choose, but knows not where to fall.

Skins of flayed authors, husks of dead reviews, The turn-coat's clothes, the office-seeker's shoes, Scraps from cold feasts, where conversation runs Through mouldy toasts to oxidated puns, And grating songs a listening crowd endures, Rasped from the throats of bellowing amateurs; Sermons, whose writers played such dangerous tricks Their own heresiarchs called them heretics, (Strange that one term such distant poles should link, The Priestleyan's copper and the Puseyan's zinc); Poems that shuffle with superfluous legs A blindfold minuet over addled eggs, Where all the syllables that end in ed, Like old dragoons, have cuts across the head; Essays so dark Champollion might despair To guess what mummy of a thought was there, Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a zebra in a parson's chaise; Lectures that cut our dinners down to roots, Or prove (by monkeys) men should stick to fruits,-- Delusive error, as at trifling charge Professor Gripes will certify at large; Mesmeric pamphlets, which to facts appeal, Each fact as slippery as a fresh-caught eel; And figured heads, whose hieroglyphs invite To wandering knaves that discount fools at sight: Such things as these, with heaps of unpaid bills, And candy puffs and homoeopathic pills, And ancient bell-crowns with contracted rim, And bonnets hideous with expanded brim, And coats whose memory turns the sartor pale, Their sequels tapering like a lizard's tale,-- How might we spread them to the smiling day, And toss them, fluttering like the new-mown hay, To laughter's light or sorrow's pitying shower, Were these brief minutes lengthened to an hour.

The narrow moments fit like Sunday shoes,-- How vast the heap, how quickly must we choose! A few small scraps from out his mountain mass We snatch in haste, and let the vagrant pass. This shrunken CRUST that Cerberus could not bite, Stamped (in one corner) "Pickwick copyright," Kneaded by youngsters, raised by flattery's yeast, Was once a loaf, and helped to make a feast. He for whose sake the glittering show appears Has sown the world with laughter and with tears, And they whose welcome wets the bumper's brim Have wit and wisdom,--for they all quote him. So, many a tongue the evening hour prolongs With spangled speeches,--let alone the songs; Statesmen grow merry, lean attorneys laugh, And weak teetotals warm to half and half, And beardless Tullys, new to festive scenes, Cut their first crop of youth's precocious greens, And wits stand ready for impromptu claps, With loaded barrels and percussion caps, And Pathos, cantering through the minor keys, Waves all her onions to the trembling breeze; While the great Feasted views with silent glee His scattered limbs in Yankee fricassee.

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise. Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart, Is ever pliant to the master's art; Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdraws And sheathes in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light tremor of her grateful purr.

But what sad music fills the quiet hall, If on her back a feline rival fall! And oh, what noises shake the tranquil house If old Self-interest cheats her of a mouse.

Thou, O my country, hast thy foolish ways, Too apt to purr at every stranger's praise; But if the stranger touch thy modes or laws, Off goes the velvet and out come the claws! And thou, Illustrious! but too poorly paid In toasts from Pickwick for thy great crusade, Though, while the echoes labored with thy name, The public trap denied thy little game, Let other lips our jealous laws revile,-- The marble Talfourd or the rude Carlyle,-- But on thy lids, which Heaven forbids to close Where'er the light of kindly nature glows, Let not the dollars that a churl denies Weigh like the shillings on a dead man's eyes! Or, if thou wilt, be more discreetly blind, Nor ask to see all wide extremes combined. Not in our wastes the dainty blossoms smile That crowd the gardens of thy scanty isle. There white-cheeked Luxury weaves a thousand charms; Here sun-browned Labor swings his naked arms. Long are the furrows he must trace between The ocean's azure and the prairie's green; Full many a blank his destined realm displays, Yet sees the promise of his riper days Far through yon depths the panting engine moves, His chariots ringing in their steel-shod grooves; And Erie's naiad flings her diamond wave O'er the wild sea-nymph in her distant cave! While tasks like these employ his anxious hours, What if his cornfields are not edged with flowers? Though bright as silver the meridian beams Shine through the crystal of thine English streams, Turbid and dark the mighty wave is whirled That drains our Andes and divides a world!

But lo! a PARCHMENT! Surely it would seem The sculptured impress speaks of power supreme; Some grave design the solemn page must claim That shows so broadly an emblazoned name. A sovereign's promise! Look, the lines afford All Honor gives when Caution asks his word: There sacred Faith has laid her snow-white hands, And awful Justice knit her iron bands; Yet every leaf is stained with treachery's dye, And every letter crusted with a lie. Alas! no treason has degraded yet The Arab's salt, the Indian's calumet; A simple rite, that bears the wanderer's pledge, Blunts the keen shaft and turns the dagger's edge; While jockeying senates stop to sign and seal, And freeborn statesmen legislate to steal. Rise, Europe, tottering with thine Atlas load, Turn thy proud eye to Freedom's blest abode, And round her forehead, wreathed with heavenly flame, Bind the dark garland of her daughter's shame! Ye ocean clouds, that wrap the angry blast, Coil her stained ensign round its haughty mast, Or tear the fold that wears so foul a scar, And drive a bolt through every blackened star! Once more,--once only,--- we must stop so soon: What have we here? A GERMAN-SILVER SPOON; A cheap utensil, which we often see Used by the dabblers in aesthetic tea, Of slender fabric, somewhat light and thin, Made of mixed metal, chiefly lead and tin; The bowl is shallow, and the handle small, Marked in large letters with the name JEAN PAUL. Small as it is, its powers are passing strange, For all who use it show a wondrous change; And first, a fact to make the barbers stare, It beats Macassar for the growth of hair. See those small youngsters whose expansive ears Maternal kindness grazed with frequent shears; Each bristling crop a dangling mass becomes, And all the spoonies turn to Absaloms Nor this alone its magic power displays, It alters strangely all their works and ways; With uncouth words they tire their tender lungs, The same bald phrases on their hundred tongues "Ever" "The Ages" in their page appear, "Alway" the bedlamite is called a "Seer;" On every leaf the "earnest" sage may scan, Portentous bore! their "many-sided" man,-- A weak eclectic, groping vague and dim, Whose every angle is a half-starved whim, Blind as a mole and curious as a lynx, Who rides a beetle, which he calls a "Sphinx." And oh, what questions asked in clubfoot rhyme Of Earth the tongueless and the deaf-mute Time!

Here babbling "Insight" shouts in Nature's ears His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres; There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, With "Whence am I?" and "Wherefore did I come?" Deluded infants! will they ever know Some doubts must darken o'er the world below, Though all the Platos of the nursery trail Their "clouds of glory" at the go-cart's tail? Oh might these couplets their attention claim That gain their author the Philistine's name (A stubborn race, that, spurning foreign law, Was much belabored with an ass's jaw.)

Melodious Laura! From the sad retreats That hold thee, smothered with excess of sweets, Shade of a shadow, spectre of a dream, Glance thy wan eye across the Stygian stream! The slipshod dreamer treads thy fragrant halls, The sophist's cobwebs hang thy roseate walls, And o'er the crotchets of thy jingling tunes The bard of mystery scrawls his crooked "runes." Yes, thou art gone, with all the tuneful hordes That candied thoughts in amber-colored words, And in the precincts of thy late abodes The clattering verse-wright hammers Orphic odes. Thou, soft as zephyr, wast content to fly On the gilt pinions of a balmy sigh; He, vast as Phoebus on his burning wheels, Would stride through ether at Orion's heels. Thy emblem, Laura, was a perfume-jar, And thine, young Orpheus, is a pewter star. The balance trembles,--be its verdict told When the new jargon slumbers with the old!

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Cease, playful goddess! From thine airy bound Drop like a feather softly to the ground; This light bolero grows a ticklish dance, And there is mischief in thy kindling glance. To-morrow bids thee, with rebuking frown, Change thy gauze tunic for a home-made gown, Too blest by fortune if the passing day Adorn thy bosom with its frail bouquet, But oh, still happier if the next forgets Thy daring steps and dangerous pirouettes!

MEDICAL POEMS

THE MORNING VISIT