Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/120

112 :The many-volumed thunder; Some augurs counted nine,—some, ten,—
 * Some said, 'twas war,—some, famine,—

And all, that other-minded men
 * Would get a precious.

Proud Pallas sighed, "It will not do;
 * Against the Muse I've sinned, oh!"

And her torn rhymes sent flying through
 * Olympus's back window.

Then, packing up a peplus clean,
 * She took the shortest path thence,

And opened, with a mind serene, A Sunday-school in Athens.

The verses? Some, in ocean swilled,
 * Killed every fish that bit to 'em;

Some Galen caught, and, when distilled,
 * Found morphine the residuum;

But some that rotted on the earth
 * Sprang up again in copies,

And gave two strong narcotics birth,—
 * Didactic bards and poppies.

Years after, when a poet asked
 * The Goddess's opinion,

As being one whose soul had basked
 * In Art's clear-aired dominion,—

"Discriminate," she said, "betimes;
 * The Muse is unforgiving;

Put all your beauty in your rhymes,
 * Your morals in your living."

a day," said a friend not long since, "a day as sweet, calm, cool, and bright as that whose wedding and funeral song the poet sings in the same verse, when I stood upon the white sea-coast near Naples, and looked far away across the blue, silent waters, and up the gray, flowery steeps, to where the towering cone of Vesuvius cleaves the skies. It was in the spring-time; luxuriant nature seemed to have nothing to do but to grow and bloom, and the huge mountain itself was profoundly at peace,—smiling a welcome, apparently, to the delicate bean-plants and wild vines which clambered up its sides, and