Who can declare?-not thou, pervading boy
Whom pibrochs pierce not, crystals cannot cloy;-
Not thou soft Architect of silvery gleams,
Whose soul would simmer in Hesperian streams,
Th' exhaustless fire-the bosom's azure bliss,
That hurtles, life-like, o'er a scene like this;-
Defies the distant agony of Day-
And sweeps o'er hecatombs-away! away!
Say shall Destruction's lava load the gale,
The furnace quiver and the mountain quail?
Say shall the son of Sympathy pretend
His cedar fragrance with our Chief's to blend?
There, where the gnarled monuments of sand
Howl their dark whirlwinds to the levin brand;
Conclusive tenderness; fraternal grog,
Tidy conjunction; adamantine bog,
Impetuous arrant toadstool; Thundering quince,
Repentant dog-star, inessential Prince,
Expound. Pre-Adamite evcatful gun,
Crush retribution, currant-jelly, pun,
Oh! eligible Darkness, fender, sting,
Heav'n-born Insanity, courageous thing.
Intending, bending, scouring, piercing all,
Death like pomatum, tea, and crabs must fall.
IF we square a lump of pemmican
And cube a pot of tea,
Divide a musk ox by the span
From noon to half-past three;
If we calculate the Eskimo
By solar parallax,
Divide the sextant by a floe
And multiply the cracks
By nth-powered igloos, we may prove
All correlated facts.
THE Thingumbob sat at eventide,
On the shore of a shoreless sea,
Expecting an unexpected attack
From something it could not foresee.
A still calm rests on the angry waves,
The low wind whistles a mournful tune,
And the Thingumbob sighs to himself, "Alas,
I've had no supper now since noon."
AH! who has seen the mailèd lobster rise,
Clap her broad wings, and, soaring, claim the skies?
When did the owl, descending from her bower,
Crop, 'midst the fleecy flocks, the tender flower;
Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb,
In the salt wave, and, fish-like, try to swim?
The same with plants, potatoes 'tatoes breed,
The costly cabbage springs from cabbage-seed;
Lettuce to lettuce, leeks to leeks succeed;
Nor e'er did cooling cucumbers presume
To flower like myrtle, or like violets bloom.
I'm thankful that the sun and moon
Are both hung up so high,
That no presumptuous hand can stretch
And pull them from the sky.
A Country Summer Pastoral
If they were not, I have no doubt
But some reforming ass
Would recommend to take them down
And light the world with gas.
A COUNTRY SUMMER PASTORAL
As written by a learned scholar of the city from knowledge derived from etymological deductions rather than from actual experience.
I WOULD flee from the city's rule and law,
From its fashion and form cut loose,
And go where the strawberry grows on its straw,
And the gooseberry on its goose;
Where the catnip tree is climbed by the cat
As she crouches for her prey—
The guileless and unsuspecting rat
On the rattan bush at play.
I will watch at ease for the saffron cow
And the cowlet in their glee,
As they leap in joy from bough to bough
On the top of the cowslip tree;
Where the musical partridge drums on his drum,
And the dog devours the dogwood plum
And the wood chuck chucks his wood,
In the primitive solitude.
And then to the whitewashed dairy I'll turn,
Where the dairymaid hastening hies,
Her ruddy and golden-haired butter to churn
From the milk of her butterflies;
And I'll rise at morn with the early bird,
To the fragrant farm-yard pass,
When the farmer turns his beautiful herd
Of grasshoppers out to grass.
'Twas after a supper of Norfolk brawn
That into a doze I chanced to drop,
And thence awoke in the grey of dawn,
In the wonder-land of Turvey Top.
A land so strange I never had seen,
And could not choose but look and laugh-
A land where the small the great includes,
And the whole is less than the half!
A land where the circles were not lines
Round central points, as schoolmen show,
And the parallels met whenever they chose,
And went playing at touch-and-go!
There-except that every round was square,
And save that all the squares were rounds-
No surface had limits anywhere,
So they never could beat the bounds.
In their gardens, fruit before blossom came,
And the trees diminished as they grew;
And you never went out to walk a mile,
It was the mile that walked to you.
The people there are not tall or short,
Heavy or light, or stout or thin,
And their lives begin where they should leave off,
Or leave off where they should begin.
There childhood, with naught of childish glee,
Looks on the world with thoughtful brow;
'Tis only the aged who laugh and crow,
And cry
"We have done with it now!"
A singular race! what lives they spent!
Got up before they went to bed!
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