Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/166

 Richard Riker. Mine passed in low-roofed leafy bower, Yours in high halls of pomp and power, Yet are we, be the moral told, Alike in one thing — growing old; Ripened like summer's cradled sheaf, Faded like Autumn's falling leaf — And nearing, sail and signal spread, The quiet anchorage of the dead : For such is human life, wherever The voyage of its bark may be. On home's green-banked and gentle river, Or the world's shoreless, sleepless sea. Yes, you have floated down the tide Of time, a Swan in grace and pride And majesty and beauty, till The law, the Ariel of your will, Power's best beloved, the law of libel (A bright link in the feudal chain). Expounded, settled, and made plain. By your own charge, the Juror's Bible, Has clipped the venomed tongue of Slander, That dared to call you " Party's Gander, The leader of the geese who make Our city's parks and ponds their home. And keep her liberties awake By cackling, as their sires saved Rome. Gander of Party's pond, wherein Lizard, and toad, and terrapin, Your ale-house patriots, are seen, In Faction's feverish sunshine basking." And now, to rend this veil of lies. Word-woven by your enemies. And keep your sainted memory free, From tarnish with posterity, I take the liberty of asking Permission, sir, to write your life. With all its scenes of calm and strife. And all its turnings and its windings, A poem in a quarto volume, Verse like the subject, blank and solemn, With elegant appropriate bindings, Of rat and mole skin the one half, The other a part fox, part calf. Your portrait graven line for line. From that immortal bust in plaster, The masterpiece of Art's great Master, Mr. Praxiteles Browere, Whose trowel is a thing divine, Shall smile and bow, and promise there, And twenty-nine fine forms and faces, The Corporation and the Mayor, Linked hand in hand, like Loves and Graces, Shall hover o'er it grouped in air With wild pictorial dance and song; The song of happy bees in bowers,

143

The dance of Guido's graceful hours, All scattering Flushing's garden flowers Round the dear head they loved so long. I know that you are modest, know That when you hear your merit's praise, Your cheek's quick blushes come and go, Lily and rose-leaf, sun and snow, Like maidens' on their bridal days. I know that you would fain decline To aid me and the sacred nine, In giving to the asking Earth, The story of your wit and worth; For if there be a fault to cloud The brightness of your clear good sense, It is, and be the fact allowed, Your only failing — Diffidence! An amiable weakness — given To justify the sad reflection, That in this vale of tears not even A Riker is complete perfection. A most romantic detestation Of power and place, of pay and ration; A strange unwillingness to carry The weight of honor on your shoulders, For which you have been named, the very Sensitive plant of office holders. A shrinking bashfulness, whose grace Gives beauty to your manly face. Thus shades the green and glowing vine The rough bark of the mountain pine, Thus round her Freedom's waking steel Harmonious wreathed his country's myrtle; And thus the golden lemon's peel Gives fragrance to a bowl of turtle.

True " many a flower," the poet sings, "Is born to blush unseen," But you, although you blush, are not The flower the poets mean. In vain you wooed a lowlier lot. In vain you dipt your eagle-wings; Talents like yours are not forgot And buried with Earth's common things. No! my dear Riker, I would give My laurels, living and to live, Or as much cash as you could raise on Their value, by hypothecation, To be for one enchanted hour. In beauty, majesty and power, What you for forty years have been. The Oberon of life's fairy scene! An anxious city sought and found you In a blest day of joy and pride.