Then sudden glory round me broke, "But, Willie, friend, don't turn me Of wings whose stroke to splendor woke forth, Anld Clootie needs no gauger; And if on earth I had small worth, You 've let in worse, I 'se wager!" "Na, nane has knockit at the yett But found me hard as whunstane; There's chances yet your bread to get Wi Auld Nick, gaugin' brunstane." IX. Meanwhile, the Unco' Guid had ta'en Like midnight's boreal dances. X. Creation's farthest verges; A cross stretched, ladder-like, secure XIV. I heard a voice serene and low (With my heart I seemed to hear it) The croon of new-made mother, XV. "If not a sparrow fall, unless The Father sees and knows it, Think! recks He less His form express, Old Willie's tone grew sharp's a knife: If only dear to Him the strong, "In primis, I indite ye, That never trip nor wander, "If scant his service at the kirk, He paters heard and aves THE misspelt scrawl, upon the wall From choirs that lurk in hedge and By some Pompeian idler traced, birk, From blackbird and from mavis; The cowering mouse, poor unroofed thing, In ashes packed (ironic fact!) your spite on Lost from Time's ark, leaves no more | As if the dull brain that you vented mark Than a keel's furrow through the main. O Chance and Change! our buzz's range Is scarcely wider than a fly's; Make our brief blaze, and be forgot! Too pressed to wait, upon her slate see, And put to task, your memory ask AT THE COMMENCEMENT DINNER, 1866, IN ACKNOWLEDGING A TOAST TO THE SMITH PROFESSOR. I RISE, Mr. Chairman, as both of us know, With the impromptu I promised you three weeks ago, Dragged up to my doom by your might and my mane, To do what I vowed I'd do never again; And I feel like your good honest dough when possest By a stirring, impertinent devil of yeast. "You must rise," says the leaven. "I can't," says the dough; "Just examine my bumps and you'll see it's no go." "But you must," the tormentor insists, t is all right; You must rise when I bid you, and, what's more, be light." "T is a dreadful oppression, this making men speak What they're sure to be sorry for all the next week; Some poor stick requesting, like Aaron's, to bud Into eloquence, pathos, or wit in cold blood, Could be got, like an ox, by mere poking, to Brighton. They say it is wholesome to rise with the With a vague apprehension from popular | Now since I've succeeded- I pray do it rises not frown To Ticknor's and Longfellow's classical gown, And profess four strange languages, which, luckless elf, I speak like a native (of Cambridge) myself, Let me beg, Mr. President, leave to propose A sentiment treading on nobody's toes, And give, in such ale as with pumphandles we brew, Their memory who saved us from all talking Hebrew, A toast that to deluge with water is good, For in Scripture they come in just after the flood: I give you the men but for whom, as I guess, sir, Modern languages ne'er could have had a professor, The builders of Babel, to whose zeal the lungs Of the children of men owe confusion of tongues; And a name all embracing I couple there- A PARABLE. the late AN ass munched thistles, while a nightingale From the sudden bopeeps of its smiling From passion's fountain flooded all the surprises. vale. |