FROM

URANIA

A RHYMED LESSON

Be firm! One constant element in luck
Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck.
See yon tall shaft: it felt the earthquake's thrill,
Clung to its base, and greets the sunrise still.

Stick to your aim: the mongrel's hold will slip,
But only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip;
Small as he looks, the jaw that never yields
Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields.
Yet in opinions look not always back;
Your wake is nothing-mind the coming track:
Leave what you 've done for what you have to do;
Don't be "consistent," but be simply true.

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Don't catch the fidgets: you have found your place
Just in the focus of a nervous race,

Fretful to change and rabid to discuss,

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Full of excitements, always in a fuss.

Think of the patriarchs; then compare as men

These lean-cheeked maniacs of the tongue and pen!
Run, if you like, but try to keep your breath;
Work like a man, but don't be worked to death;
And with new notions-let me change the rule—
Don't strike the iron till it 's slightly cool.

1846?

1849.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main;

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

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Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

Before thee lies revealed

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil:

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn;

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE

OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY"

A Logical Story

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,

That was built in such a logical way

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1858.

It ran a hundred years to a day,

And then, of a sudden, it—ah, but stay,

I'll tell you what happened without delay,-
Scaring the parson into fits,

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Frightening people out of their wits

Have you ever heard of that, I say?

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Seventeen hundred and fifty-five;
Georgius Secundus was then alive—
Snuffy old drone from the German hive;
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot-
Jn hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace-lurking still;
Find it somewhere you must and will-
Above or below, or within or without;
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breaks down but doesn't wear out.
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an "I dew vum" or an "I tell you")
He would build one shay to beat the town
'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';

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It should be so built that it couldn' break daown:

"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t 's mighty plain

Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;

'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,

Is only jest

T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke-
That was for spokes and floor and sills;

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He sent for lancewood to make the thills;

The cross bars were ash, from the straightest trees;

The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese

But lasts like iron for things like these;

The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum"

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(Last of its timber-they couldn't sell 'em; Never an axe had seen their chips,

And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips);