Bunker Hill and Other Poems | Page 6

a portion of his fame?Our trumpets needs must blow!?On yonder hill the Lion fell,?But here was chipped the eagle's shell,--?That little hatchet did it well,?As all the world shall know!
WELCOME TO THE NATIONS
PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1876
BRIGHT on the banners of lily and rose?Lo! the last sun of our century sets!?Wreathe the black cannon that scowled on our foes,?All but her friendships the nation forgets?All but her friends and their welcome forgets!?These are around her; but where are her foes??Lo, while the sun of her century sets,?Peace with her garlands of lily and rose!
Welcome! a shout like the war trumpet's swell?Wakes the wild echoes that slumber around?Welcome! it quivers from Liberty's bell;?Welcome! the walls of her temple resound!?Hark! the gray walls of her temple resound?Fade the far voices o'er hillside and dell;?Welcome! still whisper the echoes around;?Welcome I still trembles on Liberty's bell!
Thrones of the continents! isles of the sea?Yours are the garlands of peace we entwine;?Welcome, once more, to the land of the free,?Shadowed alike by the pahn and the pine;?Softly they murmur, the palm and the pine,?"Hushed is our strife, in the land of the free";?Over your children their branches entwine,?Thrones of the continents! isles of the sea!
A FAMILIAR LETTER
TO SEVERAL CORRESPONDENTS
YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;?Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold??I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,?If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.
Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies,?As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool;?Just think! all the poems and plays and romances?Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool!
You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes,?And take all you want,--not a copper they cost,--?What is there to hinder your picking out phrases?For an epic as clever as "Paradise Lost"?
Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero,?Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean;?Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero?Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine.
There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother?That boarding-school flavor of which we 're afraid,--?There is "lush" is a good one, and "swirl" another,--?Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made.
With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes?You can cheat us of smiles when you've nothing to tell;?You hand us a nosegay of milliner's roses,?And we cry with delight, "Oh, how sweet they do smell!"
Perhaps you will answer all needful conditions?For winning the laurels to which you aspire,?By docking the tails of the two prepositions?I' the style o' the bards you so greatly admire.
As for subjects of verse, they are only too plenty?For ringing the changes on metrical chimes;?A maiden, a moonbeam, a lover of twenty?Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes.
Let me show you a picture--'tis far from irrelevant--?By a famous old hand in the arts of design;?'T is only a photographed sketch of an elephant,--?The name of the draughtsman was Rembrandt of Rhine.
How easy! no troublesome colors to lay on,?It can't have fatigued him,--no, not in the least,--?A dash here and there with a hap-hazard crayon,?And there stands the wrinkled-skinned, baggy-limbed beast.
Just so with your verse,--'t is as easy as sketching,--?You--can reel off a song without knitting your brow,?As lightly as Rembrandt a drawing or etching;?It is nothing at all, if you only know how.
Well; imagine you've printed your volume of verses:?Your forehead is wreathed with the garland of fame,?Your poems the eloquent school-boy rehearses,?Her album the school-girl presents for your name;
Each morning the post brings you autograph letters;?You'll answer them promptly,--an hour is n't much?For the honor of sharing a page with your betters,?With magistrates, members of Congress, and such.
Of course you're delighted to serve the committees?That come with requests from the country all round,?You would grace the occasion with poems and ditties?When they've got a new schoolhouse, or poor-house, or pound.
With a hymn for the saints and a song for the sinners,?You go and are welcome wherever you please;?You're a privileged guest at all manner of dinners,?You've a seat on the platform among the grandees.
At length your mere presence becomes a sensation,?Your cup of enjoyment is filled to its brim?With the pleasure Horatian of digitmonstration,?As the whisper runs round of "That's he!" or "That Is him!"
But remember, O dealer in phrases sonorous,?So daintily chosen, so tunefully matched,?Though you soar with the wings of the cherubim o'er us,?The ovum was human from which you were hatched.
No will of your own with its puny compulsion?Can summon the spirit that quickens the lyre;?It comes, if at all, like the Sibyl's convulsion?And touches the brain with a finger of fire.
So perhaps, after all, it's as well to be quiet,?If you've nothing you think is worth saying in prose,?As to furnish a meal of their cannibal diet?To the critics, by publishing, as you propose.
But it's all