Fanny Part 10

CLXXIV.

And envying the loud playfulness and mirth Of those who pa.s.s'd him, gay in youth and hope, He took at Jupiter a s.h.i.+lling's worth Of gazing, through the showman's telescope; Sounds as of far-off bells came on his ears, He fancied 'twas the music of the spheres.

CLXXV.

He was mistaken, it was no such thing, 'Twas Yankee Doodle play'd by Scudder's band; He mutter'd, as he linger'd listening, Something of freedom and our happy land; Then sketch'd, as to his home he hurried fast, This sentimental song--his saddest, and his last.

I.

Young thoughts have music in them, love And happiness their theme; And music wanders in the wind That lulls a morning dream.

And there are angel voices heard, In childhood's frolic hours, When life is but an April day Of suns.h.i.+ne and of showers.

II.

There's music in the forest leaves When summer winds are there, And in the laugh of forest girls That braid their sunny hair.

The first wild bird that drinks the dew, From violets of the spring, Has music in his song, and in The fluttering of his wing.

III.

There's music in the dash of waves When the swift bark cleaves their foam; There's music heard upon her deck, The mariner's song of home, When moon and star beams smiling meet At midnight on the sea-- And there is music--once a week In Scudder's balcony.

IV.

But the music of young thoughts too soon Is faint, and dies away, And from our morning dreams we wake To curse the coming day.

And childhood's frolic hours are brief, And oft in after years Their memory comes to chill the heart, And dim the eye with tears.

V.

To-day, the forest leaves are green, They'll wither on the morrow, And the maiden's laugh be changed ere long To the widow's wail of sorrow.

Come with the winter snows, and ask Where are the forest birds?

The answer is a silent one, More eloquent than words.

VI.

The moonlight music of the waves In storms is heard no more, When the living lightning mocks the wreck At midnight on the sh.o.r.e, And the mariner's song of home has ceased, His corse is on the sea-- And music ceases when it rains In Scudder's balcony.

THE RECORDER.

THE RECORDER.

A PEt.i.tION.

BY THOMAS CASTALY.

Dec. 20, 1828.

"On they move In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft RECORDERS."

_Milton._

"Live in Settles numbers one day more!"

_Pope._

My dear RECORDER, you and I Have floated down life's stream together, And kept unharm'd our friends.h.i.+p's tie Through every change of Fortune's sky, Her pleasant and her rainy weather.

Full sixty times since first we met, Our birthday suns have risen and set, And time has worn the baldness now Of Julius Caesar on your brow; Your brow, like his, a field of thought, With broad deep furrows, spirit-wrought, Whose laurel harvests long have shown As green and glorious as his own; And proudly would the CaeSAR claim Companions.h.i.+p with R*K*R'S name, His peer in forehead and in fame.

Both eloquent and learn'd and brave, Born to command and skill'd to rule, One made the citizen a slave, The other makes him more--a fool.

The Caesar an imperial crown, His slaves' mad gift, refused to wear, The R*k*r put his fool's cap on, And found it fitted to a hair; The Caesar, though by birth and breeding, Travel, the ladies, and light reading, A gentleman in mien and mind, And fond of Romans and their mothers, Was heartless as the Arab's wind, And slew some millions of mankind, Including enemies and others.

The R*k*r, like Bob Acres, stood Edgeways upon a field of blood, The where and wherefore Swartwout knows, Pull'd trigger, as a brave man should, And shot, G.o.d bless them--his own toes.

The Caesar pa.s.s'd the Rubicon With helm, and s.h.i.+eld, and breastplate on, Das.h.i.+ng his war-horse through the waters; The R*k*r would have built a barge Or steamboat at the city's charge, And pa.s.s'd it with his wife and daughters.

But let that pa.s.s. As I have said, There's naught, save laurels, on your head, And time has changed my cl.u.s.tering hair, And shower'd the snow-flakes thickly there; And though our lives have ever been, As different as their different scene; Mine more renown'd for rhymes than riches Yours less for scholars.h.i.+p than speeches; Mine pa.s.s'd in low-roof'd leafy bower, Yours in high halls of pomp and power, Yet are we, be the moral told, Alike in one thing--growing old, Ripen'd like summer's cradled sheaf, Faded like autumn's falling leaf-- And nearing, sail and signal spread, The quiet anchorage of the dead.

For such is human life, wherever The voyage of its bark may be, On home's green-bank'd and gentle river Or the world's sh.o.r.eless, sleepless sea.

Yes, you have floated down the tide Of time, a swan in grace and pride And majesty and beauty, till The law, the Ariel of your will, Power's best beloved, the law of libel (A bright link in the legal chain) Expounded, settled, and made plain, By your own charge, the jurors' Bible, Has clipp'd the venom'd tongue of slander, That dared to call you "Party's gander, The leader of the geese who make Our cities' parks and ponds their home, And keep her liberties awake By cackling, as their sires saved Rome.

Grander of Party's pond, wherein Lizard, and toad, and terrapin, Your alehouse patriots, are seen, In Faction's feverish suns.h.i.+ne basking;"

And now, to rend this veil of lies, Word-woven by your enemies, And keep your sainted memory free From tarnish with posterity, I take the liberty of asking Permission, sir, to write your life, With all its scenes of calm and strife, And all its turnings and its windings, A poem, in a quarto volume-- Verse, like the subject, blank and solemn, With elegant appropriate bindings, Of rat and mole skin the one half, The other a part fox, part calf.

Your portrait, graven line for line, From that immortal bust in plaster, The master piece of Art's great master, Mr. Praxiteles Browere, Whose trowel is a thing divine, Shall smile and bow, and promise there, And twenty-nine fine forms and faces (The Corporation and the Mayor), Linked hand in hand, like loves and graces, Shall hover o'er it, group'd in air, With wild pictorial dance and song; The song of happy bees in bowers, The dance of Guido's graceful hours, All scattering Flus.h.i.+ng's garden flowers Round the dear head they've loved so long.

I know that you are modest, know That when you hear your merit's praise, Your cheeks quick blushes come and go, Lily and rose-leaf, sun and snow, Like maidens' on their bridal days.

I know that you would fain decline To aid me and the sacred nine, In giving to the asking earth The story of your wit and worth; For if there be a fault to cloud The brightness of your clear good sense, It is, and be the fact allow'd, Your only failing--Diffidence!

An amiable weakness--given To justify the sad reflection, That in this vale of tears not even A R*k*r is complete perfection, A most romantic detestation Of power and place, of pay and ration; A strange unwillingness to carry The weight of honour on your shoulders, For which you have been named, the very Sensitive Plant of office-holders, A shrinking bashfulness, whose grace Gives beauty to your manly face.

Thus shades the green and growing vine The rough bark of the mountain pine, Thus round her freedom's waking steel Harmodius wreathed his country's myrtle; And thus the golden lemon's peel Gives fragrance to a bowl of turtle.

True, "many a flower," the poet sings, "Is born to blush unseen;"

But you, although you blush, are not The flower the poets mean.

In vain you wooed a lowlier lot: In vain you clipp'd your eagle-wings-- Talents like yours are not forgot And buried with earth's common things.

No! my dear R*k*r, I would give My laurels, living and to live, Or as much cash as you could raise on Their value, by hypothecation, To be, for one enchanted hour, In beauty, majesty, and power, What you for forty years have been, The Oberon of life's fairy scene.

An anxious city sought and found you In a blessed day of joy and pride, Scepter'd your jewell'd hand, and crown'd you Her chief, her guardian, and her guide.

Honours which weaker minds had wrought In vain for years, and knelt and pray'd for, Are all your own, unpriced, unbought, Or (which is the same thing) unpaid for.

Painfully great! against your will Her hundred offices to hold, Each chair with dignity to fill, And your own pockets with her gold.

A sort of double duty, making Your task a serious undertaking.

With what delight the eyes of all Gaze on you, seated in your Hall, Like Sancho in his island, reigning, Loved leader of its motley hosts Of lawyers and their bills of costs, And all things thereto appertaining, Such as crimes, constables, and juries, Male pilferers and female furies, The police and the _polissons_, Illegal right and legal wrong.

Bribes, perjuries, law-craft, and cunning, Judicial drollery and punning; And all the _et ceteras_ that grace That genteel, gentlemanly place!

Or in the Council Chamber standing With eloquence of eye and brow, Your voice the music of commanding, And fascination in your bow, Arranging for the civic shows Your "men in buckram," as per list, Your John Does and your Richard Roes, Those Dummys of your games of whist.

The Council Chamber--where authority Consists in two words--a majority.

For whose contractors' jobs we pay Our last dear sixpences for taxes, As freely as in Sylla's day, Rome bled beneath his lictors' axes.