428

II

ours,

No fairer new moon's crescent. Would she but treat us poets so, So from our winter free us, And set our slow old sap aflow To sprout in fresh ideas!

"But, Willie, friend, don't turn me forth, Auld Clootie needs no gauger; And if on earth I had small worth, You've let in worse I 'se wager!" "Na, nane has knockit at the yett

But found me hard as whunstane; There's chances yet your bread to get Wi Auld Nick, gaugin' brunstane."

IX

Meanwhile, the Unco' Guid had ta'en
Their place to watch the process,
Flattening in vain on many a pane
Their disembodied noses.

Remember, please, 't is all a dream;
One can't control the fancies
Through sleep that stream with wayward
gleam,

Like midnight's boreal dances.

THE misspelt scrawl, upon the wall
By some Pompeian idler traced,
In ashes packed (ironic fact!)
Lies eighteen centuries uneffaced,
While many a page of bard and sage,
Deemed once mankind's immortal gain,
Lost from Time's ark, leaves no more mark
Than a keel's furrow through the main.

O Chance and Change! our buzz's range
Is scarcely wider than a fly's;
Then let us play at fame to-day,
To-morrow be unknown and wise;
And while the fair beg locks of hair,
And autographs, and Lord knows what,
Quick! let us scratch our moment's

AT THE COMMENCEMENT DINNER, 1866

IN ACKNOWLEDGING A TOAST TO THE SMITH PROFESSOR

I RISE, Mr. Chairman, as both of us know, With the impromptu I promised you three weeks ago,

Dragged up to my doom by your might and my mane,

To do what I vowed I'd do never again; And I feel like your good honest dough when possest

By a stirring, impertinent devil of yeast. You must rise," says the leaven. "I can't," says the dough;

"Just examine my bumps, and you'll see it 's no go."

"But you must," the tormentor insists, "'t is all right;

You must rise when I bid you, and, what's more, be light."

On a distant (as Gray calls it) prospect of Eating,

With a stomach half full and a cerebrum

hollow

As the tortoise-shell ere it was strung for Apollo,

Under contract to raise anerithmon gelasma

That floats for an instant 'twixt goblet and brain;

A breath-born perfection, half something, half naught,

And breaks if it strike the hard edge of a thought.

Do you ask me to make such? Ah no, not so simple;

Ask Apelles to paint you the ravishing dimple

Whose shifting enchantment lights Venus's cheek,

And the artist will tell you his skill is to seek;

Once fix it, 't is naught, for the charm of it rises

From the sudden bopeeps of its smiling surprises.

I've tried to define it, but what mother's