Verses from the Oldest Poolio | Page 2

light chariot skims the unruffled plain.?As when sedition fires the public mind,?And maddening fury leads the rabble blind,?The blazing torch lights up the dread alarm,?Rage points the steel and fury nerves the arm,?Then, if some reverend Sage appear in sight,?They stand--they gaze, and check their headlong flight,--?He turns the current of each wandering breast?And hushes every passion into rest,--?Thus by the power of his imperial arm?The boiling ocean trembled into calm;?With flowing reins the father sped his way?And smiled serene upon rekindled day.
THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS
Written after a general pruning of the trees around Harvard College. A little poem, on a similar occasion, may be found in the works of Swift, from which, perhaps, the idea was borrowed; although I was as much surprised as amused to meet with it some time after writing the following lines.
IT was not many centuries since,?When, gathered on the moonlit green,?Beneath the Tree of Liberty,?A ring of weeping sprites was seen.
The freshman's lamp had long been dim,?The voice of busy day was mute,?And tortured Melody had ceased?Her sufferings on the evening flute.
They met not as they once had met,?To laugh o'er many a jocund tale?But every pulse was beating low,?And every cheek was cold and pale.
There rose a fair but faded one,?Who oft had cheered them with her song;?She waved a mutilated arm,?And silence held the listening throng.
"Sweet friends," the gentle nymph began,?"From opening bud to withering leaf,?One common lot has bound us all,?In every change of joy and grief.
"While all around has felt decay,?We rose in ever-living prime,?With broader shade and fresher green,?Beneath the crumbling step of Time.
"When often by our feet has past?Some biped, Nature's walking whim,?Say, have we trimmed one awkward shape,?Or lopped away one crooked limb?
"Go on, fair Science; soon to thee?Shall. Nature yield her idle boast;?Her vulgar fingers formed a tree,?But thou halt trained it to a post.
"Go, paint the birch's silver rind,?And quilt the peach with softer down;?Up with the willow's trailing threads,?Off with the sunflower's radiant crown!
"Go, plant the lily on the shore,?And set the rose among the waves,?And bid the tropic bud unbind?Its silken zone in arctic caves;
"Bring bellows for the panting winds,?Hang up a lantern by the moon,?And give the nightingale a fife,?And lend the eagle a balloon!
"I cannot smile,--the tide of scorn,?That rolled through every bleeding vein,?Comes kindling fiercer as it flows?Back to its burning source again.
"Again in every quivering leaf?That moment's agony I feel,?When limbs, that spurned the northern blast,?Shrunk from the sacrilegious steel.
"A curse upon the wretch who dared?To crop us with his felon saw!?May every fruit his lip shall taste?Lie like a bullet in his maw.
"In every julep that he drinks,?May gout, and bile, and headache be;?And when he strives to calm his pain,?May colic mingle with his tea.
"May nightshade cluster round his path,?And thistles shoot, and brambles cling;?May blistering ivy scorch his veins,?And dogwood burn, and nettles sting.
"On him may never shadow fall,?When fever racks his throbbing brow,?And his last shilling buy a rope?To hang him on my highest bough!"
She spoke;--the morning's herald beam?Sprang from the bosom of the sea,?And every mangled sprite returned?In sadness to her wounded tree.
THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
THERE was a sound of hurrying feet,?A tramp on echoing stairs,?There was a rush along the aisles,--?It was the hour of prayers.
And on, like Ocean's midnight wave,?The current rolled along,?When, suddenly, a stranger form?Was seen amidst the throng.
He was a dark and swarthy man,?That uninvited guest;?A faded coat of bottle-green?Was buttoned round his breast.
There was not one among them all?Could say from whence he came;?Nor beardless boy, nor ancient man,?Could tell that stranger's name.
All silent as the sheeted dead,?In spite of sneer and frown,?Fast by a gray-haired senior's side?He sat him boldly down.
There was a look of horror flashed?From out the tutor's eyes;?When all around him rose to pray,?The stranger did not rise!
A murmur broke along the crowd,?The prayer was at an end;?With ringing heels and measured tread,?A hundred forms descend.
Through sounding aisle, o'er grating stair,?The long procession poured,?Till all were gathered on the seats?Around the Commons board.
That fearful stranger! down he sat,?Unasked, yet undismayed;?And on his lip a rising smile?Of scorn or pleasure played.
He took his hat and hung it up,?With slow but earnest air;?He stripped his coat from off his back,?And placed it on a chair.
Then from his nearest neighbor's side?A knife and plate he drew;?And, reaching out his hand again,?He took his teacup too.
How fled the sugar from the bowl?How sunk the azure cream!?They vanished like the shapes that float?Upon a summer's dream.
A long, long draught,--an outstretched hand,--?And crackers, toast, and tea,?They faded from the stranger's touch,?Like dew upon the sea.
Then clouds were dark on many a brow,?Fear sat upon their souls,?And, in a bitter agony,?They clasped their buttered rolls.
A whisper trembled through the crowd,?Who could the stranger be??And some were silent, for they thought?A cannibal