The cataract-throb of her mill-hearts I hear,
The swift strokes of trip-hammers weary my ear,
Sledges ring upon anvils, through logs the saw

screams,

Blocks swing to their place, beetles drive home the beams:

It is songs such as these that she croons to the din Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and year in, While from earth's farthest corner there comes not a breeze

But wafts her the buzz of her gold-gleaning bees: What though those horn hands have as yet found small time,

For painting and sculpture and music and rhyme? These will come in due order, the need that pressed

sorest

Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest, To bridle and harness the rivers, the steam, Making that whirl her mill-wheels, this tug in her team,

To vassalize old tyrant Winter, and make

Him delve surlily for her on river and lake ;— When this New World was parted, she strove not to shirk

Her lot in the heirdom, the tough, silent Work,
The hero-share ever, from Herakles down
To Odin, the Earth's iron sceptre and crown;
Yes, thou dear, noble Mother! if ever men's praise
Could be claimed for creating heroical lays,
Thou hast won it; if ever the laurel divine
Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory is
thine!

Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this rude
Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and sub-

dued;

Thou hast written them plain on the face of the

planet

In brave, deathless letters of iron and granite; Thou hast printed them deep for all time; they

are set

From the same runic type-fount and alphabet
With thy stout Berkshire hills and the arms of thy
Bay,-

They are staves from the burly old Mayflower lay.
If the drones of the Old World, in querulous ease,
Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly to
these,

Or, if they deny these are Letters and Art,
Toil on with the same old invincible heart;
Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based and
grand

Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand,
And creating, through labors undaunted and long,
The theme for all Sculpture and Painting and
Song!

"But my good mother Baystate wants no praise of mine,

She learned from her mother a precept divine About something that butters no parsnips, her forte In another direction lies, work is her sport,

(Though she'll curtsey and set her cap straight, that she will,

If you talk about Plymouth and one Bunker's hill.)

Dear, notable goodwife! by this time of night,
Her hearth is swept clean, and her fire burning

bright,

And she sits in a chair (of home plan and make)

rocking,

Musing much, all the while, as she darns on a

stocking,

Whether turkeys will come pretty high next Thanksgiving

Whether flour 'll be so dear, for, as sure as she's

living,

She will use rye-and-injun then, whether the pig By this time ain't got pretty tolerable big,

And whether to sell it outright will be best,

Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt down the

rest,

At this minute, she'd swop all my verses, ah,

cruel!

For the last patent stove that is saving of fuel;
So I'll just let Apollo go on, for his phiz

Shows I've kept him awaiting too long as it is."

"If our friend, there, who seems a reporter, is done

With his burst of emotion, why, I will go on,"
Said Apollo; some smiled, and, indeed, I must own
There was something sarcastic, perhaps, in his
tone;-

"There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit;

A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit
The electrical tingles of hit after hit;

In long poems 'tis painful sometimes and invites
A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes,
Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spite-
fully

As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully, And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning

Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning.

He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre,
But many admire it, the English pentameter,
And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly

With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse,

Nor e'er achieved aught in't so worthy of praise As the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise.

You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon;

Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme

on,

Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of

Holmes.

His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric

Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes
That are trodden upon are your own or your
foes'.

"There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb

With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme,

He might get on alone, spite of brambles and

boulders,

But he can't with that bundle he has on his

shoulders,

The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reach

ing

Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and

preaching;

His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,

But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,

At the head of a march to the last new Jerusa

lem.

"There goes Halleck, whose Fanny's a pseudo Don Juan,

With the wickedness out that gave salt to the true

one,

He's a wit, though, I hear, of the very first order, And once made a pun on the words soft Recorder; More than this, he's a very great poet, I'm told, And has had his works published in crimson and gold,

6

With something they call Illustrations,' to wit,
Like those with which Chapman obscured Holy
Writ,*

Which are said to illustrate, because, as I view it,
Like lucus a non, they precisely don't do it;
Let a man who can write what himself under-
stands

Keep clear, if he can, of designing men's hands,
Who bury the sense, if there's any worth having,
And then very honestly call it engraving.

But, to quit badinage, which there isn't much wit in,

Halleck's better, I doubt not, than all he has writ

ten;

In his verse a clear glimpse you will frequently find,

If not of a great, of a fortunate mind,

Which contrives to be true to its natural loves
In a world of back-offices, ledgers, and stoves.
When his heart breaks away from the brokers and
banks,

And kneels in its own private shrine to give thanks,

There's a genial manliness in him that earns

Our sincerest respect, (read, for instance, his

66

Burns,")

* (Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.)