Additional Poems (1837-1848) | Page 8

must fail,--
If that ain't Judas on the largest scale!

Well, this is modest;--nothing else than that?
My coat? my boots? my
pantaloons? my hat?
My stick? my gloves? as well as all my wits,

Learning and linen,--everything that fits!
Jack, said my lady, is it grog you'll try,
Or punch, or toddy, if perhaps
you're dry?
Ah, said the sailor, though I can't refuse,
You know, my
lady, 't ain't for me to choose;
I'll take the grog to finish off my lunch,

And drink the toddy while you mix the punch.
. . . . . . . .
THE SPEECH. (The speaker, rising to be seen,
Looks very red,
because so very green.)
I rise--I rise--with unaffected fear,

(Louder!--speak louder!--who the deuce can hear?)
I rise--I said--with
undisguised dismay--
--Such are my feelings as I rise, I say
Quite
unprepared to face this learned throng,
Already gorged with
eloquence and song;
Around my view are ranged on either hand

The genius, wisdom, virtue of the land;
"Hands that the rod of empire
might have swayed"
Close at my elbow stir their lemonade;
Would
you like Homer learn to write and speak,
That bench is groaning with
its weight of Greek;
Behold the naturalist who in his teens
Found
six new species in a dish of greens;
And lo, the master in a statelier
walk,
Whose annual ciphering takes a ton of chalk;
And there the
linguist, who by common roots
Thro' all their nurseries tracks old
Noah's shoots,--
How Shem's proud children reared the Assyrian piles,

While Ham's were scattered through the Sandwich Isles!
--Fired at the thought of all the present shows,
My kindling fancy
down the future flows:
I see the glory of the coming days
O'er

Time's horizon shoot its streaming rays;
Near and more near the
radiant morning draws
In living lustre (rapturous applause);
From
east to west the blazing heralds run,
Loosed from the chariot of the
ascending sun,
Through the long vista of uncounted years
In
cloudless splendor (three tremendous cheers).
My eye prophetic, as
the depths unfold,
Sees a new advent of the age of gold;
While o'er
the scene new generations press,
New heroes rise the coming time to
bless,--
Not such as Homer's, who, we read in Pope,
Dined without
forks and never heard of soap,--
Not such as May to Marlborough
Chapel brings,
Lean, hungry, savage, anti-everythings,
Copies of
Luther in the pasteboard style,--
But genuine articles, the true Carlyle;

While far on high the blazing orb shall shed
Its central light on
Harvard's holy head,
And learning's ensigns ever float unfurled

Here in the focus of the new-born world
The speaker stops, and,
trampling down the pause,
Roars through the hall the thunder of
applause,
One stormy gust of long-suspended Ahs!
One whirlwind
chaos of insane hurrahs!
. . . . . . . .
THE SONG. But this demands a briefer line,--
A shorter muse, and
not the old long Nine;
Long metre answers for a common song,

Though common metre does not answer long.
She came beneath the forest dome
To seek its peaceful shade,
An
exile from her ancient home,
A poor, forsaken maid;
No banner,
flaunting high above,
No blazoned cross, she bore;
One holy book
of light and love
Was all her worldly store.
The dark brown shadows passed away,
And wider spread the green,

And where the savage used to stray
The rising mart was seen;
So,
when the laden winds had brought

Their showers of golden rain,

Her lap some precious gleanings caught,
Like Ruth's amid the grain.

But wrath soon gathered uncontrolled
Among the baser churls,
To
see her ankles red with gold,
Her forehead white with pearls.
"Who
gave to thee the glittering bands
That lace thine azure veins?
Who
bade thee lift those snow-white hands
We bound in gilded chains?"
"These are the gems my children gave,"
The stately dame replied;

"The wise, the gentle, and the brave,
I nurtured at my side.
If envy
still your bosom stings,
Take back their rims of gold;
My sons will
melt their wedding-rings,
And give a hundred-fold!"
. . . . . . . .
THE TOAST. Oh tell me, ye who thoughtless ask
Exhausted nature
for a threefold task,
In wit or pathos if one share remains,
A safe
investment for an ounce of brains!
Hard is the job to launch the
desperate pun,
A pun-job dangerous as the Indian one.
Turned by
the current of some stronger wit
Back from the object that you mean
to hit,
Like the strange missile which the Australian throws,
Your
verbal boomerang slaps you on the nose.
One vague inflection spoils
the whole with doubt,
One trivial letter ruins all, left out;
A knot
can choke a felon into clay,
A not will save him, spelt without the k;

The smallest word has some unguarded spot,
And danger lurks in i
without a dot.
Thus great Achilles, who had shown his zeal
In healing wounds, died
of a wounded heel;
Unhappy chief, who, when in childhood doused,

Had saved his bacon had his feet been soused
Accursed heel that
killed a hero stout
Oh, had your mother known that you were out,

Death had not entered at the trifling part
That still defies the small
chirurgeon's art
With corns and bunions,--not the glorious John,

Who wrote the book we all have pondered on,
But other bunions,
bound in fleecy hose,

To "Pilgrim's Progress" unrelenting foes!
. .