"You are old, Father William," the young man | O'er beauty's face, seeming to hide, More sweetly shows the blushing brideA soul whose intellectual beams
"And life must be hastening away;
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death; No mists do mask, no lazy streams
Now tell me the reason, I pray."
A happy soul, that all the way To heaven hath a summer's day!
"I a cheerful, young man," Father William Wouldst see a man whose well-warmed blood replied;
"Let the cause thy attention engage;
Bathes him in a genuine flood? A man whose tunèd humors be
In the days of my youth I remembered my God! A seat of rarest harmony?
And he hath not forgotten my age."
FROM "AS YOU LIKE IT," ACT II. SC. 2.
ADAM. Let me be your servant; Though I look old, yet am I strong and lusty: For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood; Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility. Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty, but kindly let me go with you; I'll do the service of a younger man In all your business and necessities.
Wouldst see blithe looks, fresh cheeks beguile
Age? Wouldst see December smile?
Wouldst see nest of new roses grow
In a bed of reverend snow?
Warm thoughts, free spirits flattering
Winter's self into a spring?-
In sum, wouldst see a man that can
Live to be old, and still a man?
Whose latest and most leadened hours
Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers;
And when life's sweet fable ends,
Soul and body part like friends —
No quarrels, murmurs, no delay
A kiss, a sigh, and so away?
This rare one, reader, wouldst thou see?
Hark, hither! and thyself be he!
TEMPERANCE, OR THE CHEAP
PHYSICIAN.
Go now! and with some daring drug
Bait thy disease; and, whilst they tug,
Thou, to maintain their precious strife,
Spend the dear treasures of thy life.
Go! take physic― dote upon
Some big-named composition,
The oraculous doctor's mystic bills-
Certain hard words made into pills;
And what at last shalt gain by these?
Only a costlier disease.
That which makes us have no need
Of physic, that's physic indeed.
Hark, hither, reader! wilt thou see
Nature her own physician be?
Wilt see a man all his own wealth,
His own music, his own health
A man whose sober soul can tell
How to wear her garments well -
Her garments that upon her sit
As garments should do, close and fit --
A well-clothed soul that 's not oppressed
Nor choked with what she should be dressed
A soul sheathed in a crystal shrine,
Through which all her bright features shine:
As when a piece of wanton lawn,
A thin aerial veil, is drawn
GO, FEEL WHAT I HAVE FELT.
[By a young lady, who was told that she was a monomaniac in het hatred of alcoholic liquors.]
Go, feel what I have felt,
Go, bear what I have borne ;
Sink 'neath a blow a father dealt,
And the cold, proud world's scorn:
Thus struggle on from year to year,
Thy sole relief the scalding tear.
Go, weep as I have wept
O'er a loved father's fall;
See every cherished promise swept,
Youth's sweetness turned to gall;
Hope's faded flowers strewed all the way
That led me up to woman's day.
Go, kneel as I have knelt;
Implore, beseech, and pray,
Strive the besotted heart to melt,
The downward course to stay;
Be cast with bitter curse aside, -
Thy prayers burlesqued, thy tears defied.
Go, stand where I have stood,
And see the strong man bow;
With gnashing teeth, lips bathed in blood,
And cold and livid brow;
Go, catch his wandering glance, and see
There mirrored his soul's misery.
Go, hear what I have heard,
The sobs of sad despair,
As memory's feeling-fount hath stirred,
And its revealings there
Have told him what he might have been,
Had he the drunkard's fate foreseen.
Go to a mother's side,
And her crushed spirit cheer;
Thine own deep anguish hide,
Wipe from her cheek the tear;
Mark her dimmed eye, her furrowed brow,
The gray that streaks her dark hair now,
The toil-worn frame, the trembling limb,
And trace the ruin back to him
Whose plighted faith, in early youth,
Promised eternal love and truth,
But who, forsworn, hath yielded up
This promise to the deadly cup,
And led her down from love and light,
From all that made her pathway bright,
And chained her there mid want and strife,
That lowly thing, a drunkard's wife!
And stamped on childhood's brow, so mild,
That withering blight, - a drunkard's child!
We are two travellers, Roger and I.
Roger's my dog:- come here, you scamp!
Jump for the gentlemen, mind your eye!
Over the table, look out for the lamp!-
The rogue is growing a little old;
March Halt! Now show how the rebel shakes
When he stands up to hear his sentence.
Now tell us how many drams it takes
To honor a jolly new acquaintance.
Five yelps, that's five; he's mighty knowing!
The night's before us, fill the glasses!
Five years we've tramped through wind and Quick, sir! I'm ill, my brain is going! weather,
And slept out-doors when nights were cold,
And ate and drank - and starved together.
We've learned what comfort is, I tell you!
A bed on the floor, a bit of rosin,
A fire to thaw our thumbs (poor fellow !
The paw he holds up there's been frozen),
Why not reform? That's easily said,
But I've gone through such wretched treat-
Sometimes forgetting the taste of bread,
And scarce remembering what meat meant,
If you had seen her, so fair and young,
Whose head was happy on this breast! If you could have heard the songs I sung When the wine went round, you would n't have guessed
That ever I, sir, should be straying
From door to door, with fiddle and dog, Ragged and penniless, and playing
To you to-night for a glass of grog!
She 's married since, a parson's wife;
"T was better for her that we should part,
Better the soberest, prosiest life
Than a blasted home and a broken heart.
I have seen her? Once I was weak and spent
On the dusty road, a carriage stopped;
But little she dreamed, as on she went,
Who kissed the coin that her fingers dropped!
You 've set me talking, sir; I'm sorry;
It makes me wild to think of the change!
What do you care for a beggar's story?
Is it amusing? you find it strange?
I had a mother so proud of me!
A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO.
MAY the Babylonish curse
Straight confound my stammering verse,
If I can a passage see
In this word-perplexity,
Or a fit expression find,
Or a language to my mind
(Still the phrase is wide or scant),
To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT!
Or in any terms relate
Half my love, or half my hate;
For I hate, yet love, thee so,
That, whichever thing I show,
The plain truth will seem to be
A constrained hyperbole,
And the passion to proceed
More from a mistress than a weed.
Sooty retainer to the vine!
Bacchus' black servant, negro fine!
Sorcerer that mak'st us dote upon
Thy begrimed complexion,
And, for thy pernicious sake,
More and greater oaths to break
Than reclaimed lovers take
'Gainst women! Thou thy siege dost lay Much, too, in the female way,
While thou suck'st the laboring breath Faster than kisses, or than death.
Thou in such a cloud dost bind us
That our worst foes cannot find us,
And ill fortune, that would thwart us,
Shoots at rovers, shooting at us ;
While each man, through thy heightening steam
Does like a smoking Etna seem;
Do you know And all about us does express
(Fancy and wit in richest dress)
A Sicilian fruitfulness.
"T was well she died before – If the happy spirits in heaven can see The ruin and wretchedness here below?
Another glass, and strong, to deaden
This pain; then Roger and I will start. I wonder, has he such a lumpish, leaden,
Aching thing in place of a heart?
He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could,
No doubt, remembering things that were,
A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food,
And himself a sober, respectable cur.
I'm better now; that glass was warming.
You rascal limber your lazy feet!
We must be fiddling and performing
For
and bed, or starve in the street.
supper
Not a very gay life to lead, you think?
But soon we shall go where lodgings are free,
And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink; -
The sooner the better for Roger and me!
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE.
Thou through such a mist dost show us That our best friends do not know us, And, for those allowèd features Due to reasonable creatures, Liken'st us to fell chimeras, Monsters, that who see us, fear us; Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion.
Bacchus we know, and we allow His tipsy rites. But what art thou, That but by reflex canst show What his deity can do, As the false Egyptian spell Aped the true Hebrew miracle? Some few vapors thou mayst raise
The weak brain may serve to amaze :
But to the reins and nobler heart
Canst nor life nor heat impart.
Brother of Bacchus, later born!
The old world was sure forlorn,
Wanting thee, that aidest more
The god's victories than, before,
All his panthers, and the brawls
Of his piping Bacchanals.
These, as stale, we disallow,
Or judge of thee meant: only thou
His true Indian conquest art;
And, for ivy round his dart,
The reformed god now weaves
A finer thyrsus of thy leaves.
Scent to match thy rich perfume Chemic art did ne'er presume, Through her quaint alembic strain, None so sovereign to the brain. Nature, that did in thee excel, Framed again no second smell. Roses, violets, but toys
For the smaller sort of boys,
Or for greener damsels meant ;
Thou art the only manly scent.
Stinkingest of the stinking kind!
Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind!
Africa, that brags her foison,
Breeds no such prodigious poison!
Henbane, nightshade, both together,
Hemlock, aconite
Plant divine, of rarest virtue ;
Blisters on the tongue would hurt you!
'T was but in a sort I blamed thee;
None e'er prospered who defamed thee;
Irony all, and feigned abuse,
Such as perplexed lovers use
At a need, when, in despair
To paint forth their fairest fair,
Or in part but to express
That exceeding comeliness
Which their fancies doth so strike,
They borrow language of dislike;
And, instead of dearest Miss,
Jewel, honey, sweetheart, bliss,
And those forms of old admiring,
Call her cockatrice and siren,
Basilisk, and all that's evil,
Witch, hyena, mermaid, devil,
Ethiop, wench, and-blackamoor,
Monkey, ape, and twenty more;
Friendly trait'ress, loving foe,
Not that she is truly so,
But no other way they know,
A contentment to express
Borders so upon excess
That they do not rightly wot
Whether it be from pain or not.
Or, as men, constrained to part With what's nearest to their heart, While their sorrow's at the height Lose discrimination quite, And their hasty wrath let fall, To appease their frantic gall, On the darling thing, whatever, Whence they feel it death to sever, Though it be, as they, perforce, Guiltless of the sad divorce.
For I must (nor let it grieve thee, Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee. For thy sake, Tobacco, I
Would do anything but die,
And but seek to extend my days
Long enough to sing thy praise.
But, as she who once hath been
A king's consort is a queen
Ever after, nor will bate
Any tittle of her state
Though a widow, or divorced,
So I, from thy converse forced,
The old name and style retain,
A right Katherine of Spain;
And a seat, too, 'mongst the joys
Of the blest Tobacco Boys;
Where, though I, by sour physician,
Am debarred the full fruition
Of thy favors, I may catch
Some collateral sweets, and snatch
Sidelong odors, that give life
Like glances from a neighbor's wife;
And still live in the by-places
And the suburbs of thy graces;
And in thy borders take delight,
An unconquered Canaanite.
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