Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/252

244 on these occasions. But they tease him, and coax him, and can't do without him, and feel all over his poor weak head until they get their fingers on the fontanelle, (the Professor will tell you what this means,—he says the one at the top of the head always remains open in poets,) until, by gentle pressure on that soft pulsating spot, they stupefy him to the point of acquiescence.

There are times, though, he says, when it is a pleasure, before going to some agreeable meeting, to rush out into one's garden and clutch up a handful of what grows there,—weeds and violets together,—not cutting them off, but pulling them up by the roots with the brown earth they grow in sticking to them. That's his idea of a post-prandial performance. Look here, now. These verses I am going to read you, he tells me, were pulled up by the roots just in that way, the other day.—Beautiful entertainment,—names there on the plates that flow from all English-speaking tongues as familiarly as and or the; entertainers known wherever good poetry and fair title-pages are held in esteem; guest a kind-hearted, modest, genial, hopeful poet, who sings to the hearts of his countrymen, the British people, the songs of good cheer which the better days to come, as all honest souls trust and believe, will turn into the prose of common life. My friend, the Poet, says you must not read such a string of verses too literally. If he trimmed it nicely below, you wouldn't see the roots, he says, and he likes to keep them, and a little of the soil clinging to them.

This is the farewell my friend, the Poet, read to his and our friend, the Poet:—

singer of the coming time,
 * Sweet minstrel of the joyous present,

Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme,
 * The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant,

Good-bye! Good-bye!—Our hearts and hands,
 * Our lips in honest Saxon phrases,

Cry, God be with him, till he stands
 * His feet among the English daisies!

'Tis here we part;—for other eyes
 * The busy deck, the fluttering streamer,

The dripping arms that plunge and rise,
 * The waves in foam, the ship in tremor,

The kerchiefs waving from the pier,
 * The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him,

The deep blue desert, lone and drear,
 * With heaven above and home before him!

His home!—the Western giant smiles,
 * And twirls the spotty globe to find it;—

This little speck the British Isles?
 * 'Tis but a freckle,—never mind it!—

He laughs, and all his prairies roll,
 * Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles,

And ridges stretched from pole to pole
 * Heave till they crack their iron knuckles!

But Memory blushes at the sneer,
 * And Honor turns with frown defiant,

And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
 * Laughs louder than the laughing giant:—

"An islet is a world," she said,
 * "When glory with its dust has blended,

And Britain keeps her noble dead Till earth and seas and skies are rended!"

Beneath each swinging forest-bough
 * Some arm as stout in death reposes,—

From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow
 * Her valor's life-blood runs in roses;

Nay, let our brothers of the West
 * Write smiling in their florid pages,

One-half her soil has walked the rest
 * In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages!

Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp,
 * From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather,

The British oak with rooted grasp
 * Her slender handful holds together;—

With cliffs of white and bowers of green,
 * And Ocean narrowing to caress her,

And hills and threaded streams between,—
 * Our little mother isle, God bless her!

In earth's broad temple where we stand,
 * Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us,

We hold the missal in our hand,
 * Bright with the lines our Mother taught us;

Where'er its blazoned page betrays
 * The glistening links of gilded fetters,

Behold, the half-turned leaf displays
 * Her rubric stained in crimson letters!

Enough! To speed a parting friend
 * 'Tis vain alike to speak and listen;—

Yet stay,—these feeble accents blend
 * With rays of light from eyes that glisten.