Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

INTRODUCTION.

WHEN, more than three years ago, my talented young parishioner, Mr. Biglow, came to me and submitted to my animadversions the first of his poems which he intended to commit to the more hazardous trial of a city newspaper, it never so much as entered my imagination to conceive that his productions would ever be gathered into a fair volume, and ushered into the august presence of the reading public by myself. So little are we short-sighted mortals able to predict the event! I confess that there is to me a quite new satisfaction in being associated (though only as sleeping partner) in a book which can stand by itself in an independent unity on the shelves of libraries. For there is always this drawback from the pleasure of printing a sermon, that, whereas the queasy stomach of this generation will not bear a discourse long enough to make a separate volume, those religious and godly-minded children (those Samuels, if I may call them so) of the brain must at first lie buried in an undistinguished heap, and then get such resurrection as is vouchsafed to them, mummy-wrapped with a score of others in a cheap binding, with no other mark of distinction than the word "Miscellaneous" printed upon the back. Far be it from me to claim any credit for the quite unexpected popularity which I am pleased to find these bucolic strains have attained unto.

If

I know myself, I am measurably free from the itch of vanity; yet I may be allowed to say that I was not backward to recognize in them a certain wild, puckery, acidulous (sometimes even verging toward that point which, in our rustic phrase, is termed shut-eye) flavor, not wholly unpleasing, nor unwhole

some, to palates cloyed with the sugariness of tamed and cultivated fruit. It may be, also, that some touches of my own, here and there, may have led to their wider acceptance, albeit solely from my larger experience of literature and authorship.*

I was, at first, inclined to discourage Mr. Biglow's attempts, as knowing that the desire to poetize is one of the diseases naturally incident to adolescence, which, if the fitting remedies be not at once and with a bold hand applied, may become chronic, and render one, who might else have become in due time an ornament of the social circle, a painful object even to nearest friends and relatives. But thinking, on a further experience, that there was a germ of promise in him which required only culture and the pulling up of weeds from around it, I thought it best to set before him the acknowledged examples of English composition in verse, and leave the rest to natural emulation. With this view, I accordingly lent him some volumes of Pope and Goldsmith, to the assiduous study of which he promised to devote his evenings. Not long afterward, he brought me some verses written upon that model, a specimen of which I subjoin, having changed some phrases of less elegancy, and a few rhymes objectionable to the cultivated ear. The poem consisted of childish reminis cences, and the sketches which follow

The reader curious in such matters may refer (if he can find them) to "A Sermon preached on the Anniversary of the Dark Day," "An Artillery Election Sermon," "A Discourse on the Late Eclipse," "Dorcas, a Funeral Sermon on the Death of Madam Submit Tidd, Relict of the late Experience Tidd, Esq.," &c., &c.

will not seem destitute of truth to those whose fortunate education began in a country village. And, first, let us hang up his charcoal portrait of the schooldame.

"Propped on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see The humble school-house of my A, B, C, Where well-drilled urchins, each behind his tire,

Waited in ranks the wished command to fire,
Then all together, when the signal came,
Dicharged their a-b abs against the dame.
Daughter of Danaus, who could daily pour
In treacherous pipkins her Pierian store,
She, 'mid the volleyed learning firm and calm,
Patted the furloughed ferule on her palm,
And, to our wonder, could divine at once'
Who flashed the pan, and who was down-
right dunce.

"There young Devotion learned to climb with ease

The gnarly limbs of Scripture family-trees,
And he was most commended and admired'
Who soonest to the topmost twig perspired;
Each name was called as many various ways
As pleased the reader's ear on different days,
So that the weather, or the ferule's stings,
Colds in the head, or fifty other things,
Transformed the helpless Hebrew thrice a
week

To guttural Pequot or resounding Greek,
The vibrant accent skipping here and there,
Just as it pleased invention or despair;
No controversial Hebraist was the Dame;
With or without the points pleased her the

same;

If any tyro found a name too tough,

And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough;

She nerved her larynx for the desperate thing, And cleared the five-barred syllables at a spring.

"Ah, dear old times! there once it was my hap,

Perched on a stool, to wear the long-eared cap;

From books degraded, there I sat at ease,
A drone, the envy of compulsory bees;
Rewards of merit, too, full many a time,
Each with its woodcut and its moral rhyme,
And pierced half-dollars hung on ribbons gay
About my neck-to be restored next day,
I carried home, rewards as shining then
As those which deck the lifelong pains of
men,

More solid than the redemanded praise
With which the world beribbons later days.

"Ah, dear old times! how brightly ye return! How, rubbed afresh, your phosphor traces

burn!

The ramble schoolward through dewsparkling meads

[blocks in formation]

more;

The squire was flattered, and the pauper knew

Old times acknowledged 'neath the threadbare blue!

Dropped at the corner of the embowered lane,

Whistling I wade the knee-deep leaves again,
While eager Argus, who has missed all day
The sharer of his condescending play,
Comes leaping onward with a bark elate
And boisterous tail to greet me at the gate;
That I was true in absence to our love
Let the thick dog's-ears in my primer
prove."

I add only one further extract, which will possess a melancholy interest to all such as have endeavored to glean the materials of revolutionary history from the lips of aged persons, who took a part in the actual making of it, and, finding the manufacture profitable, continued the supply in an adequate proportion to the demand.

"Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad His slow artillery up the Concord road,

A tale which grew in wonder, year by year,
As, every time he told it, Joe drew near
To the main fight, till, faded and grown gray,
The original scene to bolder tints gave way;
Then Joe had heard the foe's scared double-
quick

Beat on stove drum with one uncaptured stick,

And, ere death came the lengthening tale to lop,

Himself had fired, and seen a red-coat drop; Had Joe lived long enough, that scrambling fight

Had squared more nearly with his sense of right,

And vanquished Percy, to complete the tale, Had haminered stone for life in Concord jail.'

I do not know that the foregoing extracts ought not to be called my own rather than Mr. Biglow's, as, indeed, he maintained stoutly that my file had left nothing of his in them. I should not, perhaps, have felt entitled to take so great liberties with them, had I not more than suspected an hereditary vein of poetry in myself, a very near ancestor having written a Latin poem in the Harvard Gratulatio on the accession of George the Third. Suffice it to say, that, whether not satisfied with such limited approbation as I could conscientiously bestow, or from a sense of natural inaptitude, certain it is that my young friend could never be induced to any further essays in this kind.

He

affirmed that it was to him like writing in a foreign tongue, that Mr. Pope's versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks, in which one could fancy, after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm or tune, but which yet was only a poverty-stricken tick, tick, after all, and that he had never seen a sweet-water on a trellis

growing so fairly, or in forms so pleasing to his eye, as a fox-grape over a scrub-oak in a swamp. He added I know not what, to the effect that the sweet-water would only be the more disfigured by having its leaves starched and ironed out, and that Pegasus (so he called him) hardly looked right with his mane and tail in curl-papers. These and other such opinions I did not ong strive to eradicate, attributing them rather to a defective education and senses untuned by too long familiar

ity with purely natural objects, than to a perverted moral sense. I was the more inclined to this leniency since sufficient evidence was not to seek, that his verses, as wanting as they certainly were in classic polish and point, had somehow taken hold of the public ear in a surprising manner. So, only setting him right as to the quantity of the proper name Pegasus, I left him to follow the bent of his natural genius.

Yet could I not surrender him wholly to the tutelage of the pagan (which, literally interpreted, signifies village) muse without yet a further effort for his conversion, and to this end I resolved that whatever of poetic fire yet burned in myself, aided by the assiduous bellows of correct models, should be put

in requisition. Accordingly, when my ingenious young parishioner brought to my study a copy of verses which he had written touching the acquisition of territory resulting from the Mexican war, and the folly of leaving the question of slavery or freedom to the adjudication of chance, I did myself indite a short fable or apologue after the manner of Gay and Prior, to the end that he might see how easily even such subjects as he treated of were capable of a more refined style and more elegant expression. Mr. Biglow's production was as follows:

THE TWO GUNNERS,

A FABLE.

Two fellers, Isrel named and Joe,
One Sundy mornin' 'greed to go
Agunnin' soon's the bells wuz done
And meetin' finally begun,
So'st no one would n't be about
Ther Sabbath-breakin' to spy out.

Joe did n't want to go a mite;

He felt ez though 't warnt skeercely right,
But, when his doubts he went to speak on,
Isrel he up and called him Deacon,
An' kep' apokin' fun like sin
An' then arubbin' on it in,
Till Joe, less skeered o' doin' wrong
Than bein' laughed at, went along.

Past noontime they went trampin' round
An' nary thing to pop at found,
Till, fairly tired o' their spree,
They leaned their guns agin a tree,

An jest ez they wuz settin' down

To take their noonin', Joe looked roun'
And see (across lots in a pond
That warn't mor'n twenty rod beyond),
A goose that on the water sot
Ez ef awaitin' to be shot.

Isrel he ups and grabs his gun;

Sez he, "By ginger, here's some fun!"
"Don't fire," sez Joe, "it aint no use,
Thet's Deacon Peleg's tame wild-goose";
Sez Isrel, "I don't care a cent,
I've sighted an' I 'll let her went ";
Bang! went queen's-arm, ole gander flopped
His wings a spell, an' quorked, an' dropped.

Sez Joe, "I would n't ha' been hired
At that poor critter to ha' fired,
But, sence it's clean gin up the ghost,
We'll hev the tallest kind o' roast;
I guess our waistbands 'll be tight
'Fore it comes ten o'clock ternight.'

[ocr errors]

"I won't agree to no such bender,"
Sez Isrel, keep it tell it 's tender;
"T aint wuth a snap afore it 's ripe."
Sez Joe, "I'd jest ez lives eat tripe;
You air a buster ter suppose
I'd eat what makes me hol' my nose!

So they disputed to an' fro
Till cunnin' Isrel sez to Joe,
"Don't le's stay here an play the fool,
Le's wait till both on us git cool,
Jest for a day or two le's hide it
An' then toss up an' so decide it."
"Agreed!" sez Joe, an' so they did,
An' the ole goose wuz safely híd.

Now 't wuz the hottest kind o' weather,
An' when at last they come together,
It did n't signify which won,
Fer all the mischief hed ben done:
The goose wuz there, but, fer his soul,
Joe would n't ha' tetched it with a pole;
But Isrel kind o' liked the smell on't
An' made his dinner very well on't.

My own humble attempt was in manner and form following, and I print it here, I sincerely trust, out of no vainglory, but solely with the hope of doing good.

LEAVING THE MATTER OPEN.

A TALE.

BY HOMER WILBUR, A. M.

Two brothers once, an ill-matched pair、 Together dwelt (no matter where),

To whom an Uncle Sam, or some one, Had le t a house and farm in cominon⚫ The two in principles and habits

Were different as rats from rabbits; Stout Farmer North, with frugal care, Laid up provision for his heir,

Not scorning with hard sun-browned hands
To scrape acquaintance with his lands;
Whatever thing he had to do

He did, and made it pay him, too;
He sold his waste stone by the pound,
His drains made water-wheels spin round,
His ice in summer-time he sold,

His wood brought profit when 't was cold,
He dug and delved from morn till night,
Strove to make profit square with right,
Lived on his means, cut no great dash,
And paid his debts in honest cash.

On tother hand, his brother South
Lived very much from hand to mouth,
Played gentleman, nursed dainty hands,
Borrowed North's money on his lands,
And culled his morals and his graces
From cock-pits, bar-rooms, fights, and races;
His sole work in the farming line
Was keeping droves of long-legged swine,
Which brought great bothers and expenses
To North in looking after fences,
And, when they happened to break through.
Cost him both time and temper too,
For South insisted it was plain

He ought to drive them home again,
And North consented to the work
Because he loved to buy cheap pork.

Meanwhile, South's swine increasing fast,
His farm became too small at last,
So, having thought the matter over,
And feeling bound to live in clover
And never pay the clover's worth,
He said one day to Brother North :-

"Our families are both increasing,
And, though we labor without ceasing,
Our produce soon will be too scant
To keep our children out of want;
They who wish fortune to be lasting
Must be both prudent and forecasting;
We soon shall need more land; a lot
I know, that cheaply can be bo't;
You lend the cash, I'll buy the acres,
And we 'll be equally partakers."

Poor North, whose Anglo-Saxon Llood
Gave him a hankering after mud,
Wavered a moment, then consented,
And, when the cash was paid, repented;
To make the new land worth a pin,
Thought he, it must be all fenced in,
For, if South's swine once get the run on't
No kind of farming can be done on't;
If that don't suit the other side,
'T is best we instantly divide.

But somehow South could ne'er incline
This way or that to run the line,
And always found some new pretence
'Gainst setting the division fence;
At last he said :-

"For peace's sake, Liberal concessions I will make; Though I believe, upon my soul, I've a just title to the whole, I'll make an offer which I call Gen'rous, we 'll have no fence at all; Then both of us, whene'er we choose, Can take what part we want to use; If you should chance to need it first, Pick you the best, I'll take the worst.'

"Agreed!" cried North; thought he, This fall

With wheat and rye I'll sow it all;
In that way I shall get the start,
And South may whistle for his part.
So thought, so done, the field was sown,
And, winter having come and gone,
Sly North walked blithely forth to spy,
The progress of his wheat and rye;
Heavens, what a sight! his brother's swine
Had asked themselves all out to dine,
Such grunting, munching, rooting, shoving,
The soil seemed all alive and moving,
As for his grain, such work they'd made
on't,

He could n't spy a single blade on't.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

"I paid the money";
"That," answered South, is from the point,
The ownership, you 'll grant, is joint;
I'm sure my only hope and trust is
Not law so much as abstract justice,
Though, you remember, 't was agreed
That so and so-consult the deed;
Objections now are out of date,
They might have answered once, but Fate
Quashes them at the point we've got to;
Obsta principiis, that 's my motto.'
So saying, South began to whistle
And looked as obstinate as gristle,
While North wer. homeward, each brown
paw

Clenched like a knot of natural law,
And all the while, in either ear,
Heard something clicking wondrous clear.

To turn now to other matters, there are two things upon which it would seem fitting to dilate somewhat more largely in this place, -the Yankee character and the Yankee dialect. And, first, of the Yankee character, which has wanted neither open maligners, nor even more dangerous enemies in the persons of those unskilful painters who have given to it that hardness, angularity, and want of proper perspective, which, in truth, belonged, not to their subject, but to their own niggard and unskilful pencil.

came

New England was not so much the colony of a mother country, as a Hagar driven forth into the wilderness. The little self-exiled band which hither in 1620 came, not to seek gold, but to found a democracy. They came that they might have the privilege to work and pray, to sit upon hard benches and listen to painful preachers as long as they would, yea, even unto thirtyseventhly, if the spirit so willed it. And surely, if the Greek might boast his Thermopyla, where three hundred men fell in resisting the Persian, we may well be proud of our Plymouth Rock, where a handful of men, women, and children not merely faced, but you

« ElőzőTovább »