Poems from The Teacups | Page 6

anglers play their trout.
A question
drops among the listening crew
And hits the traveller, pat on
Timbuctoo.
We're on the Niger, somewhere near its source,--
Not
the least hurry, take the river's course
Through Kissi, Foota, Kankan,
Bammakoo,
Bambarra, Sego, so to Timbuctoo,
Thence down to
Youri;--stop him if we can,
We can't fare worse,--wake up the
Congressman!
The Congressman, once on his talking legs,
Stirs up
his knowledge to its thickest dregs;
Tremendous draught for dining
men to quaff!
Nothing will choke him but a purpling laugh.
A
word,--a shout,--a mighty roar,--'t is done;
Extinguished; lassoed by a
treacherous pun.
A laugh is priming to the loaded soul;
The
scattering shots become a steady roll,
Broke by sharp cracks that run
along the line,
The light artillery of the talker's wine.
The kindling
goblets flame with golden dews,
The hoarded flasks their tawny fire
diffuse,
And the Rhine's breast-milk gushes cold and bright,
Pale as
the moon and maddening as her light;
With crimson juice the thirsty
southern sky
Sucks from the hills where buried armies lie,
So that
the dreamy passion it imparts
Is drawn from heroes' bones and lovers'
hearts.
But lulls will come; the flashing soul transmits
Its gleams of
light in alternating fits.
The shower of talk that rattled down amain

Ends in small patterings like an April's rain;
With the dry sticks all bonfires are begun;
Bring the first fagot, proser
number one
The voices halt; the game is at a stand;
Now for a solo
from the master-hand
'T is but a story,--quite a simple thing,--
An
aria touched upon a single string,
But every accent comes with such a
grace
The stupid servants listen in their place,
Each with his waiter
in his lifted hands,
Still as a well-bred pointer when he stands.
A
query checks him: "Is he quite exact?"
(This from a grizzled,
square-jawed man of fact.)
The sparkling story leaves him to his fate,


Crushed by a witness, smothered with a date,
As a swift river,
sown with many a star,
Runs brighter, rippling on a shallow bar.

The smooth divine suggests a graver doubt;
A neat quotation bowls
the parson out;
Then, sliding gayly from his own display,
He laughs
the learned dulness all away.
So, with the merry tale and jovial song,

The jocund evening whirls itself along,
Till the last chorus shrieks
its loud encore,
And the white neckcloths vanish through the door.
One savage word!--The menials know its tone,
And slink away; the
master stands alone.
Well played, by ------"; breathe not what were
best unheard; His goblet shivers while he speaks the word,--
"If wine
tells truth,--and so have said the wise,--
It makes me laugh to think
how brandy lies!
Bankrupt to-morrow,--millionnaire to-day,--
The
farce is over,--now begins the play!"
The spring he touches lets a
panel glide;
An iron closet harks beneath the slide,
Bright with such
treasures as a search might bring
From the deep pockets of a truant
king.
Two diamonds, eyeballs of a god of bronze,
Bought from his
faithful priest, a pious bonze;
A string of brilliants; rubies, three or
four;
Bags of old coin and bars of virgin ore;
A jewelled poniard
and a Turkish knife,
Noiseless and useful if we come to strife.
Gone!
As a pirate flies before the wind,
And not one tear for all he leaves
behind
From all the love his better years have known
Fled like a
felon,--ah! but not alone!
The chariot flashes through a lantern's
glare,--
Oh the wild eyes! the storm of sable hair!
Still to his side
the broken heart will cling,--
The bride of shame, the wife without the
ring
Hark, the deep oath,--the wail of frenzied woe,--
Lost! lost to
hope of Heaven and peace below!
He kept his secret; but the seed of crime
Bursts of itself in God's
appointed time.

The lives he wrecked were scattered far and wide;

One never blamed nor wept,--she only died.
None knew his lot,
though idle tongues would say
He sought a lonely refuge far away,

And there, with borrowed name and altered mien,
He died unheeded,

as he lived unseen.
The moral market had the usual chills
Of Virtue
suffering from protested bills;
The White Cravats, to friendship's
memory true,
Sighed for the past, surveyed the future too;
Their
sorrow breathed in one expressive line,--
"Gave pleasant dinners;
who has got his wine?"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The reader paused,--the Teacups knew his ways,--
He, like the rest,
was not averse to praise.
Voices and hands united; every one
Joined
in approval: "Number Three, well done!"
"Now for the Exile's story; if my wits
Are not at fault, his curious
record fits
Neatly as sequel to the tale we've heard;
Not wholly wild
the fancy, nor absurd
That this our island hermit well might be
That
story's hero, fled from over sea.
Come, Number Seven, we would not
have you strain
The fertile powers of that inventive brain.
Read us
'The Exile's Secret'; there's enough
Of dream-like fiction and fantastic
stuff
In the strange web of mystery that invests
The lonely isle
where sea birds build their nests."
"Lies! naught but lies!" so Number Seven began,--
No harm was
known of that secluded man.
He lived alone,--who would n't if he
might,
And leave the rogues and idiots out of sight?
A foolish
story,--still, I'll do