Burlesques | Page 4

day,
fresh and glorious as the untired Sun-God. He is Eros, the ever young.
Dark, dark were this world of ours had either Divinity left it--dark
without the day-beams of the Latonian Charioteer, darker yet without
the daedal Smile of the God of the Other Bow! Dost know him, reader?

Old is he, Eros, the ever young. He and Time were children together.
Chronos shall die, too; but Love is imperishable. Brightest of the
Divinities, where hast thou not been sung? Other worships pass away;
the idols for whom pyramids were raised lie in the desert crumbling
and almost nameless; the Olympians are fled, their fanes no longer rise
among the quivering olive-groves of Ilissus, or crown the
emerald-islets of the amethyst Aegean! These are gone, but thou
remainest. There is still a garland for thy temple, a heifer for thy stone.
A heifer? Ah, many a darker sacrifice. Other blood is shed at thy altars,
Remorseless One, and the Poet Priest who ministers at thy Shrine
draws his auguries from the bleeding hearts of men!
While Love hath no end, Can the Bard ever cease singing? In Kingly
and Heroic ages, 'twas of Kings and Heroes that the Poet spake. But in
these, our times, the Artisan hath his voice as well as the Monarch. The
people To-Day is King, and we chronicle his woes, as They of old did
the sacrifice of the princely Iphigenia, or the fate of the crowned
Agamemnon.
Is Odysseus less august in his rags than in his purple? Fate, Passion,
Mystery, the Victim, the Avenger, the Hate that harms, the Furies that
tear, the Love that bleeds, are not these with us Still? are not these still
the weapons of the Artist? the colors of his palette? the chords of his
lyre? Listen! I tell thee a tale-- not of Kings--but of Men--not of
Thrones, but of Love, and Grief, and Crime. Listen, and but once more.
'Tis for the last time (probably) these fingers shall sweep the strings.
E. L. B. L.
NOONDAY IN CHEPE.
'Twas noonday in Chepe. High Tide in the mighty River City!--its
banks wellnigh overflowing with the myriad-waved Stream of Man!
The toppling wains, bearing the produce of a thousand marts; the gilded
equipage of the Millionary; the humbler, but yet larger vehicle from the
green metropolitan suburbs (the Hanging Gardens of our Babylon), in
which every traveller might, for a modest remuneration, take a
republican seat; the mercenary caroche, with its private freight; the

brisk curricle of the letter-carrier, robed in royal scarlet: these and a
thousand others were laboring and pressing onward, and locked and
bound and hustling together in the narrow channel of Chepe. The
imprecations of the charioteers were terrible. From the noble's
broidered hammer-cloth, or the driving-seat of the common coach, each
driver assailed the other with floods of ribald satire. The pavid matron
within the one vehicle (speeding to the Bank for her semestrial pittance)
shrieked and trembled; the angry Dives hastening to his office (to add
another thousand to his heap,) thrust his head over the blazoned panels,
and displayed an eloquence of objurgation which his very Menials
could not equal; the dauntless street urchins, as they gayly threaded the
Labyrinth of Life, enjoyed the perplexities and quarrels of the scene,
and exacerbated the already furious combatants by their poignant
infantile satire. And the Philosopher, as he regarded the hot strife and
struggle of these Candidates in the race for Gold, thought with a sigh of
the Truthful and the Beautiful, and walked on, melancholy and serene.
'Twas noon in Chepe. The ware-rooms were thronged. The flaunting
windows of the mercers attracted many a purchaser: the glittering panes
behind which Birmingham had glazed its simulated silver, induced
rustics to pause: although only noon, the savory odors of the Cook
Shops tempted the over hungry citizen to the bun of Bath, or to the
fragrant potage that mocks the turtle's flavor--the turtle! O dapibus
suprimi grata testudo Jovis! I am an Alderman when I think of thee!
Well: it was noon in Chepe.
But were all battling for gain there? Among the many brilliant shops
whose casements shone upon Chepe, there stood one a century back
(about which period our tale opens) devoted to the sale of Colonial
produce. A rudely carved image of a negro, with a fantastic plume and
apron of variegated feathers, decorated the lintel. The East and West
had sent their contributions to replenish the window.
The poor slave had toiled, died perhaps, to produce yon pyramid of
swarthy sugar marked "ONLY 6 1/2d."--That catty box, on which was
the epigraph "STRONG FAMILY CONGO ONLY 3s. 9d," was from
the country of Confutzee--that heap of dark produce bore the legend

"TRY OUR REAL NUT"--'Twas Cocoa--and that nut the Cocoa-nut,
whose milk