Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/848

840 When once our feet should venture on these wilds,

The night would prove a sweet, still solitude,—

Not dark for eyes that, earnest as a child's,

Strove in the chaos but for truth and good?

And oh, sweet liberty, though wizard gleams

And elfin shapes should frighten or allure,

To find the pathway of our hopes and dreams,—

By toil to sweeten what we should endure,—

To journey on, though but a little way,

Towards the morning and the fir-clad heights,—

To follow the sweet voices, till the day

Bloomed in its flush of colors and of lights,—

To look back on the valley and the prison,

The windows smouldering still with midnight fires,

And know the joy and triumph to have risen

Out of that falsehood into new desires!

O friends! it may be hard our chains to burst,

To scale the ramparts, pass the sentinels;

Dark is the night; but we are not the first

Who break from the enchanter's evil spells.

Though they pursue us with their scoffs and darts,

Though they allure us with their siren song,

Trust we alone the light within our hearts!

Forth to the air! Freedom will dawn ere long!

inebriating, but exhilarating punch; not punch of which the more a man imbibes the worse he is, but punch of which the deeper the quaffings the better the effects; not a compound of acids and sweets, hot water and fire-water, to steal away the brains,—but a finer mixture of subtler elements, conducive to mental and moral health; not, in a word, punch, the drink, but "Punch," the wise wag, the genial philosopher, with his brevity of stature, goodly-conditioned paunch, next-to-nothing legs, protuberant back, bill-hook nose, and twinkling eyes,—to speak respectfully, Mr. Punch, attended by the solemnly-sagacious, ubiquitously-versatile "Toby," together with the invisible company of skirmishers of the quill and pencil, producing in his name those ever-welcome sheets, flying forth the world over, with hebdomadal punctuality. Of the ingredients and salutary influence of this Punch—an institution and power of the age, no more to be overlooked among the forces of the nineteenth century than is the steam-engine or the magnetic telegraph—we propose to speak;—not, however, because of the comicality of the theme; for the fun that surrounds, permeates, and saturates it would hardly move us to discourse of it here, if it had not higher claims to attention. To take Punch only for a clown is to mistake him egregiously. Joker as he is, he himself is no joke. The fool's-cap he wears does not prove him to be a fool; and even when he touches the tip of his nasal organ with his fore-finger and winks so irresistibly, meaning lurks in his facetious features,