The smooth-bore is one in whose essence the mind Down a steep slated roof where there's nothing to grip, You slide and you slide, the blank horror in creases, You had rather by far be at once smashed to pieces, You fancy a whirlpool below white and frothing, tions For going just wrong in the tritest directions; When he's wrong he is flat, when he's right he can't show it, He'll tell you what Snooks said about the new poet,* Or how Fogrum was outraged by Tennyson's Prin cess; He has spent all his spare time and intellect since his Birth in perusing, on each art and science, Just the books in which no one puts any reliance, And to make him a sort of mosquito to be with, These sketches I made (not to be too explicit) *(If you call Snooks an owl, he will show by his looks From two honest fellows who made me a visit, And broke, like the tale of the Bear and the Fiddle, My reflections on Halleck short off by the middle; I shall not now go into the subject more deeply, For I notice that some of my readers look sleep❜ly, I will barely remark that, 'mongst civilized nations, There's none that displays more exemplary pa tience Under all sorts of boring, at all sorts of hours, frown 'Neath what Fourier nicknames the Boreal crown; Only think what that infinite bore-pow'r could do If applied with a utilitarian view; Suppose, for example, we shipped it with care They'd fill the whole waste with Artesian wells. "There comes Harry Franco, and, as he draws near, You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer; render; He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest, When he seems to be joking, be sure he's in earnest; He has common sense in a way that's uncommon, Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke, outer, Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her, Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart, "There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, In a way to make people of common-sense damn metres, Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind, Who-but hey-day! What's this? Messieurs Mathews and Poe, You mustn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so, Does it make a man worse that his character's such As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much? Why, there is not a bard at this moment alive More willing than he that his fellows should thrive; While you are abusing him thus, even now But remember that elegance also is force; As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon is, sigenes; I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, o't is That I've heard the old blind man recite his own rhapsodies, And my ear with that music impregnate may be, Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of the sea, Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature is cloven To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven; But, set that aside, and 'tis truth that I speak, In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline. That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art, 'Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife As quiet and chaste as the author's own life. "There comes Philothea, her face all a-glow, She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe And can't tell which pleases her most, to relieve So she'll listen with patience and let you unfold And, (to borrow a phrase from the nursery,) muched it, She has such a musical taste, she will go Any distance to hear one who draws a long bow; She will swallow a wonder by mere might and main And thinks it geometry's fault if she's fain To consider things flat, inasmuch as they're plain; Facts with her are accomplished, as Frenchmen would say, They will prove all she wishes them to either way, And, as fact lies on this side or that, we must try, If we're seeking the truth, to find where it don't lie; I was telling her once of a marvellous aloe That for thousands of years had looked spindling and sallow, And, though nursed by the fruitfullest powers of mud, Had never vouchsafed e'en so much as a bud, Till its owner remarked, (as a sailor, you know, Often will in a calm,) that it never would blow, |