Greece, Rome, nay, your namesake, old Roger, With Truth's nameless delvers who wrought In the dark mines of Truth, helped to prod your Fine brain with the goad of their thought. As mummy was prized for a rich hue The painter no elsewhere could find, So 't was buried men's thinking with which you Gave the ripe mellow tone to your mind. I heard the proud strawberry saying, "Only look what a ruby I've made!" It forgot how the bees in their maying Had brought it the stuff for its trade. And yet there's the half of a truth in it, And my Lord might his copyright sue; For a thought 's his who kindles new youth in it, Or so puts it as makes it more true. The birds but repeat without ending And we men through our old bit of song run, Until one just improves on the rest, And we call a thing his, in the long run, Who utters it clearest and best. AUSPEX. My heart, I cannot still it, Shall whirl dead leaves and snow. THE LESSON. Had they been swallows only, A moment, sweet delusion, THE PREGNANT COMMENT. When next upon the page I chance, This feeling fresher than a boy's? Laughing, one day she gave the key, Then added, with a smile demure, Whose downcast lids veiled triumph Speech of poet, speech of lover. IV. HUMOR AND SATIRE. FITZ ADAM'S STORY. [The greater part of this poem was written many years ago as part of a larger one, to be called "The Nooning," made up of tales in verse, some of them grave, some comic. It gives me a sad pleasure to remember that I was encouraged in this project by my friend the late Arthur Hugh Clough.] THE next whose fortune 't was a tale to tell Was one whom men, before they thought, loved well, And after thinking wondered why they did, For half he seemed to let them, half forbid, And wrapped him so in humors, sheath on sheath, "T was hard to guess the mellow soul beneath; But, once divined, you took him to your heart, While he appeared to bear with you as part Of life's impertinence, and once a year Betrayed his true self by a smile or tear, Or rather something sweetly-shy and loath, Withdrawn ere fully shown, and mixed of both. A cynic? Not precisely: one who thrust Against a heart too prone to love and trust, Who so despised false sentiment he knew Scarce in himself to part the false and true, And strove to hide, by roughening-o'er the skin, Those cobweb nerves he could not dull within. Gentle by birth, but of a stem decayed, Keen as an acid for an alkali, Yet you could feel, through his sardonic tone, He loved them all, unless they were his own. You might have called him, with his humorous twist, A kind of human entomologist: As these bring home, from every walk they take, Their hat-crowns stuck with bugs of curious make, So he filled all the lining of his head worse But that he had, or feigned, contempt of verse; Called it tattooing language, and held rhymes The young world's lullaby of ruder times. Bitter in words, too indolent for gall, saw. Scratching a match to light his pipe anew, With eyes half shut some musing whiffs he drew, And thus began: "I give you all my word, I think this mock-Decameron absurd; Boccaccio's garden! how bring that to pass In our bleak clime save under double glass? The moral east-wind of New England life Would snip its gay luxuriance like a knife; Mile-deep the glaciers brooded here, they say, Through ons numb; we feel their chill to-day. These foreign plants are but half-hardy still, Die on a south, and on a north wall chill. Had we stayed Puritans! They had some heat (Though whence derived I have my own conceit), But you have long ago raked up their fires; Where they had faith, you 've ten shamGothic spires. Why more exotics? Try your native vines, And in some thousand years you may have wines; Your present grapes are harsh, all pulps and skins, And want traditions of ancestral bins That saved for evenings round the polished board Old lava-fires, the sun-steeped hillside's hoard. Without a Past, you lack that southern wall O'er which the vines of Poesy should crawl; Still they're your only hope; no midnight oil Makes up for virtue wanting in the soil; Manure them well and prune them; 't won't be France, Nor Spain, nor Italy, but there's your chance. You have one story-teller worth a score Of dead Boccaccios, - nay, add twenty more, A hawthorn asking spring's most dainty breath, And him you 're freezing pretty well to death. However, since you say so, I will tease My memory to a story by degrees, Though you will cry, Enough!' I'm wellnigh sure, Ere I have dreamed through half my overture. Stories were good for men who had no books, (Fortunate race!) and built their nests like rooks In lonely towers, to which the Jongleur brought His pedler's box of cheap and tawdry thought, With here and there a fancy fit to see Wrought to quaint grace in golden filigree, Some ring that with the Muse's finger yet Is warm, like Aucassin and Nicolete; The morning newspaper has spoilt his trade, (For better or for worse, I leave unsaid,) |