Eliab this occasion seized, Of the Eleven Thousand Virgins! Knott was perplexed and shook his head, He did not wish his child to wed With a suspected murderer, "To have it go no furderer." Accordingly, this artless maid The third door south from Bagg's Arcade,) And gave her hand to Hiram Slade, From which time forth, the ghosts were laid, And ne'er gave trouble after; thrown, And found thereunder a jaw-bone, Successive broods of laughter; was Still, if to Jaalam you go down, And one by Perez Tinkham; And Whereas the others think 'em And, last week, did n't Eliab Snooks (So say the best authorities;) Which ten cannot gloss over, Miss Knott missed not her lover. FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM IN the note introducing Fitz Adam's Story, infra p. 411, will be found a brief account of the unfinished poem of which this is a fragment. Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on, And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison? I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true; "T is out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new: The question boath for men and meates longe voyages ht beginne Lhes in a notshell, rather saye lhes in a case of tinne. But, though men may not travel now, as in the Middle Ages, With self-sustaining retinues of little giltedged pages, Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er he likes to roam, By sending his small pages (at so much per small page) home; And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve so well as then, Our outlay is about as small-just paper, ink, and pen. Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew; Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view, Then take an alias, change the sign, and the old trade renew; Indeed, 't is wondrous how each Age, though laughing at the Past, Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last; How it is sure its system would break up at once without The bunion which it will believe hereditary gout; How it takes all its swans for geese, nay, stranger yet and sadder, Sees in its treadmill's fruitless jog a heavenward Jacob's-ladder, Shouts, Lo, the Shining Heights are reached! One moment more aspire! Trots into cramps its poor, dear legs, gets never an inch the higher, And like the others, ends with pipe and mug beside the fire. There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips and watches with a sneer The green recruits that trudge and sweat where it had swinked whilere, And sighs to think this soon spent zeal should be in simple truth The only interval between old Fogyhood and Youth: 66 Well," thus it muses, "well, what odds? "T is not for us to warn; "T will be the same when we are dead, and was ere we were born; Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our store of winter's corn? Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent. received from Treadmill shares, We might... but these poor devils at last will get our easy-chairs. High aims and hopes have great rewards, they, too, serene and snug, Shall one day have their soothing pipe and their enlivening mug; From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath always heard the hum Of Good Times Coming, and will hear until the last day come; Young ears hear forward, old ones back, and, while the earth rolls on, Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps of Good Times Gone; Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an The great New Era dawns, the age of Thought, sure, I feel life stir within, each day with greater strength, When lo, the chick! from former chicks he differed not a jot, But grew and crew and scratched and went, like those before, to pot!" So muse the dim Emeriti, and, mournful though it be, I must confess a kindred thought hath sometimes come to me, Who, though but just of forty turned, have heard the rumorous fame Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all coming till they came. We're pretty nearly crazy here with change and go ahead, With flinging our caught bird away for two i' th' bush instead, With butting 'gainst the wall which we declare shall be a portal, And questioning Deeps that never yet have oped their lips to mortal; We're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and out of all condition, With mediums and prophetic chairs, and crickets with a mission, (The most astounding oracles since Balaam's donkey spoke, 'T would seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak.) Make but the public laugh, be sure 't will take you to be somebody; "T will wrench its button from your clutch, my densely earnest glum body; 'Tis good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie? Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop, And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop? Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then Why draw them sternly when you wish to trim your nails or pen? Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff; But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh; No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny, And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey, From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a clublick, So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public. Look how the dead leaves melt their way down through deep-drifted snow; They take the sun-warmth down with them - pearls could not conquer so; There is a moral here, you see; if you would preach, you must Steep all your truths in sunshine would you have them pierce the crust; Brave Jeremiah, you are grand and terrible, a sign And wonder, but were never quite a popular divine; Fancy the figure you would cut among the nuts and wine! I, on occasion, too, could preach, but hold it wiser far To give the public sermons it will take with its cigar, And morals fugitive, and vague as are these smoke-wreaths light . . I trace .. .. a. let me bless me ! 't is out of sight. In which see ... There are some goodish things at sea; for instance, one can feel A grandeur in the silent man forever at the wheel, That bit of two-legged intellect, that particle of drill, Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with reason, brain, and will, And makes the ship, though skies are black and headwinds whistle loud, Obey her conscience there which feels the loadstar through the cloud; And when by lusty western gales the fullsailed barque is hurled, Towards the great moon which, setting on the silent underworld, Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and shoots a broadening line, Of palpitant light from crest to crest across the ridgy brine, Then from the bows look back and feel a thrill that never stales, In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of onward-yearning sails; Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that A work of art that in its grace and grandeur may compare With any thing that any race has fashioned any where; "T is not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if you come to that, We think of Hyde Park Corner, and concede you beat us flat With your equestrian statue to a Nose and a Cocked hat; But 't is not a cathedral; well, e'en that we will allow, Both statues and cathedrals are anachronistic now; Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men who conquered you, You'd sell a bargain, if we'd take the deans and chapters too; No; mortal men build nowadays, as always heretofore, Good temples to the gods which they in very truth adore; The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all their willing flocks, Although they bow to stones no more, do bend the knee to stocks, And churches can't be beautiful though crowded, floor and gallery, If people worship preacher, and if preacher worship salary; "T is well to look things in the face, the god o' the modern universe, Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and libraries of puny verse, If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon his ledger- say, per Contra to a loss of so much stone, best Russia duck and paper; And, after all, about this Art men talk a deal of fudge, Each nation has its path marked out, from which it must not budge; The Romans had as little art as Noah in his ark, Yet somehow on this globe contrived to make an epic mark; Religion, painting, sculpture, song - for these they ran up jolly ticks With Greece and Egypt, but they were great artists in their politics, And if we make no minsters, John, nor epics, yet the Fates Are not entirely deaf to men who can build ships and states; The arts are never pioneers, but men have strength and health Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a commonwealth, Nay, can more easily go on and frame them by the dozen, Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear sympathizing cousin: And, though our restless Jonathan have not your graver bent, sure he Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, rapid, nineteenth century; This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid, Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wireleashed lightning now Replaces Delphos men don't leave the steamer for the scow; What public, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read The Iliad, the Shanameh, or the Nibelungenlied? Their public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah, the hairy GrafFolio and plesiosaur sleep well; we weary o'er a paragraph; The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles; From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles, As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused jars Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars; Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking, The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking, The newspapers take in the Age, and stocks do all the thinking. |