Poems of James Russell Lowell Part 54

The careful reader will note, that, in the list which I have prepared, I have included the names of several Cisatlantic societies to which a place is not commonly a.s.signed in processions of this nature. I have ventured to do this, not only to encourage native ambition and genius, but also because I have never been able to perceive in what way distance (unless we suppose them at the end of a lever) could increase the weight of learned bodies. As far as I have been able to extend my researches among such stuffed specimens as occasionally reach America, I have discovered no generic difference between the antipodal _Fogrum j.a.ponic.u.m_ and the _F. Americanum_ sufficiently common in our own immediate neighborhood. Yet, with a becoming deference to the popular belief that distinctions of this sort are enhanced in value by every additional mile they travel, I have intermixed the names of some tolerably distant literary and other a.s.sociations with the rest.

I add here, also, an advertis.e.m.e.nt, which, that it may be the more readily understood by those persons especially interested therein, I have written in that curtailed and otherwise maltreated canine Latin, to the writing and reading of which they are accustomed.

Omnib. per tot. Orb. Terrar. Catalog. Academ. Edd.

Minim. gent. diplom. ab inclytiss. acad. vest. orans, vir. honorand.

operosiss., at sol. ut sciat. quant. glor. nom. meum (dipl. fort.

concess.) catal. vest. temp. futur. affer., ill. subjec., addit. omnib.

t.i.tul. honorar. qu. adh. non tant. opt. quam probab. put.

*.* _Litt. Uncial. distinx. ut Prs. S. Hist. Nat. Jaal._

_HOMERUS WILBUR_, Mr., Episc. Jaalam, S. T. D. 1850, et Yal. 1849, et Neo-Caes. et Brun. et Gulielm. 1852, et Gul. et Mar. et Bowd. et Georgiop. et Viridimont. et Columb. Nov. Ebor. 1853, et Amherst. et Watervill. et S. Jarlath. Hib. et S. Mar. et S. Joseph. et S. And. Scot.

1854, et Nashvill. et Dart. et d.i.c.kins. et Concord. et Wash. et Columbian. et Charlest. et Jeff. et Dubl. et Oxon. et Cantab, et caet.

1855, P. U. N. C. H. et J. U. D. Gott. et Osnab. et Heidelb. 1860, et Acad. BORE US. Berolin. Soc. et SS. RR. Lugd. Bat. et Patav. et Lond. et Edinb. et Ins. Feejee. et Null. Terr. et Pekin. Soc. Hon. et S. H. S. et S. P. A. et A. A. S. et S. Humb. Univ. et S. Omn. Rer. Quarund. q.

Aliar. Promov. Pa.s.samaquod. et H. P. C. et I. O. H. et ?. ?. F. et ?. ?. ?. et F. ?. ?. et Peucin. et Erosoph. et Philadelph. et Frat. in Unit. et: S. ?. et S. Archaeolog. Athen. et Acad. Scient. et Lit. Panorm.

et SS. R. H. Matrit. et Beeloochist. et Caffrar. et Caribb. et M. S.

Reg. Paris, et S. Am. Antiserv. Soc. Hon. et P. D. Gott. et LL.D. 1852, et D. C. L. et Mus. Doc. Oxon. 1860, et M. M. S. S. et M. D. 1854, et Med. Fac. Univ. Harv. Soc. et S. pro Convers. Pollywog. Soc. Hon. et Higgl. Piggl. et LL.B. 1853, et S. pro Christianiz. Moschet. Soc., et SS. Ante-Diluv. ubiq. Gent. Soc. Hon. et Civit. Cleric. Jaalam. et S.

pro Diffus. General. Tenebr. Secret. Corr.

INTRODUCTION.

When, more than three years ago, my talented young paris.h.i.+oner, Mr.

Biglow, came to me and submitted to my animadversions the first of his poems which he intended to commit to the more hazardous trial of a city newspaper, it never so much as entered my imagination to conceive that his productions would ever be gathered into a fair volume, and ushered into the august presence of the reading public by myself. So little are we short-sighted mortals able to predict the event! I confess that there is to me a quite new satisfaction in being a.s.sociated (though only as sleeping partner) in a book which can stand by itself in an independent unity on the shelves of libraries. For there is always this drawback from the pleasure of printing a sermon, that, whereas the queasy stomach of this generation will not bear a discourse long enough to make a separate volume, those religious and G.o.dly-minded children (those Samuels, if I may call them so) of the brain must at first lie buried in an undistinguished heap, and then get such resurrection as is vouchsafed to them, mummy-wrapt with a score of others in a cheap binding, with no other mark of distinction than the word "_Miscellaneous_" printed upon the back. Far be it from me to claim any credit for the quite unexpected popularity which I am pleased to find these bucolic strains have attained unto. If I know myself, I am measurably free from the itch of vanity; yet I may be allowed to say that I was not backward to recognize in them a certain wild, puckery, acidulous (sometimes even verging toward that point which, in our rustic phrase, is termed _shut-eye_) flavor, not wholly unpleasing, nor unwholesome, to palates cloyed with the sugariness of tamed and cultivated fruit. It may be, also, that some touches of my own, here and there, may have led to their wider acceptance, albeit solely from my larger experience of literature and authors.h.i.+p.[J]

[Footnote J: The reader curious in such matters may refer (if he can find them) to "A Sermon preached on the Anniversary of the Dark Day," "An Artillery Election Sermon," "A Discourse on the Late Eclipse," "Dorcas, a Funeral Sermon on the Death of Madam Submit Tidd, Relict of the late Experience Tidd, Esq.," &c., &c.]

I was, at first, inclined to discourage Mr. Biglow's attempts, as knowing that the desire to poetize is one of the diseases naturally incident to adolescence, which, if the fitting remedies be not at once and with a bold hand applied, may become chronic, and render one, who might else have become in due time an ornament of the social circle, a painful object even to nearest friends and relatives. But thinking, on a further experience, that there was a germ of promise in him which required only culture and the pulling up of weeds from around it, I thought it best to set before him the acknowledged examples of English composition in verse, and leave the rest to natural emulation. With this view, I accordingly lent him some volumes of Pope and Goldsmith, to the a.s.siduous study of which he promised to devote his evenings. Not long afterward, he brought me some verses written upon that model, a specimen of which I subjoin, having changed some phrases of less elegancy, and a few rhymes objectionable to the cultivated ear. The poem consisted of childish reminiscences, and the sketches which follow will not seem dest.i.tute of truth to those whose fortunate education began in a country village. And, first, let us hang up his charcoal portrait of the school-dame.

"Propt on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see The humble school-house of my A, B, C, Where well-drilled urchins, each behind his tire, Waited in ranks the wished command to fire, Then all together, when the signal came, Discharged their _a-b abs_ against the dame.

Daughter of Danaus, who could daily pour In treacherous pipkins her Pierian store, She, mid the volleyed learning firm and calm Patted the furloughed ferule on her palm, And, to our wonder, could divine at once Who flashed the pan, and who was downright dunce.

"There young Devotion learned to climb with ease The gnarly limbs of Scripture family-trees, And he was most commended and admired Who soonest to the topmost twig perspired; Each name was called as many various ways As pleased the reader's ear on different days, So that the weather, or the ferule's stings, Colds in the head, or fifty other things, Transformed the helpless Hebrew thrice a week To guttural Pequot or resounding Greek, The vibrant accent skipping here and there, Just as it pleased invention or despair; No controversial Hebraist was the Dame; With or without the points pleased her the same; If any tyro found a name too tough, And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough; She nerved her larynx for the desperate thing, And cleared the five-barred syllables at a spring.

"Ah, dear old times! there once it was my hap, Perched on a stool, to wear the long-eared cap; From books degraded, there I sat at ease, A drone, the envy of compulsory bees; Rewards of merit, too, full many a time, Each with its woodcut and its moral rhyme, And pierced half-dollars hung on ribbons gay About my neck--to be restored next day, I carried home, rewards as s.h.i.+ning then As those which deck the lifelong pains of men, More solid than the redemanded praise With which the world beribbons later days.

"Ah, dear old times! how brightly ye return!

How, rubbed afresh, your phosphor traces burn!

The ramble schoolward through dewsparkling meads; The willow-wands turned Cinderella steeds, The impromptu pinbent hook, the deep remorse O'er the chance-captured minnow's inchlong corse; The pockets, plethoric with marbles round, That still a s.p.a.ce for ball and pegtop found, Nor satiate yet, could manage to confine Horsechestnuts, flagroot, and the kite's wound twine, And, like the prophet's carpet could take in, Enlarging still, the popgun's magazine; The dinner carried in the small tin pail, Shared with the dog, whose most beseeching tail And dripping tongue and eager ears belied The a.s.sumed indifference of canine pride; The caper homeward, shortened if the cart Of neighbor Pomeroy, trundling from the mart, O'ertook me,--then, translated to the seat I praised the steed, how staunch he was and fleet, While the bluff farmer, with superior grin, Explained where horses should be thick, where thin, And warned me (joke he always had in store) To shun a beast that four white stockings wore.

What a fine natural courtesy was his!

His nod was pleasure, and his full bow bliss; How did his well-thumbed hat, with ardor rapt, Its decorous curve to every rank adapt!

How did it graduate with a courtly ease The whole long scale of social differences, Yet so gave each his measure running o'er, None thought his own was less, his neighbor's more; The squire was flattered, and the pauper knew Old times acknowledged 'neath the threadbare blue!

Dropped at the corner of the embowered lane, Whistling I wade the knee-deep leaves again, While eager Argus, who has missed all day The sharer of his condescending play, Comes leaping onward with a bark elate And boisterous tail to greet me at the gate; That I was true in absence to our love Let the thick dog's-ears in my primer prove."

I add only one further extract, which will possess a melancholy interest to all such as have endeavored to glean the materials of revolutionary history from the lips of aged persons, who took a part in the actual making of it, and, finding the manufacture profitable, continued the supply in an adequate proportion to the demand.

"Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad His slow artillery up the Concord road, A tale which grew in wonder, year by year, As, every time he told it, Joe drew near To the main fight, till, faded and grown gray, The original scene to bolder tints gave way; Then Joe had heard the foe's scared double-quick Beat on stove drum with one uncaptured stick, And, ere death came the lengthening tale to lop, Himself had fired, and seen a red-coat drop; Had Joe lived long enough, that scrambling fight Had squared more nearly with his sense of right, And vanquished Percy, to complete the tale, Had hammered stone for life in Concord jail."

I do not know that the foregoing extracts ought not to be called my own rather than Mr. Biglow's, as, indeed, he maintained stoutly that my file had left nothing of his in them. I should not, perhaps, have felt ent.i.tled to take so great liberties with them, had I not more than suspected an hereditary vein of poetry in myself, a very near ancestor having written a Latin poem in the Harvard _Gratulatio_ on the accession of George the Third. Suffice it to say, that, whether not satisfied with such limited approbation as I could conscientiously bestow, or from a sense of natural inapt.i.tude, certain it is that my young friend could never be induced to any further essays in this kind. He affirmed that it was to him like writing in a foreign tongue,--that Mr. Pope's versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks, in which one could fancy, after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm or tune, but which yet was only a poverty-stricken _tick, tick_, after all,--and that he had never seen a sweet-water on a trellis growing so fairly, or in forms so pleasing to his eye, as a fox-grape over a scrub-oak in a swamp. He added I know not what, to the effect that the sweet-water would only be the more disfigured by having its leaves starched and ironed out, and that Pegsus (so he called him) hardly looked right with his mane and tail in curl-papers. These and other such opinions I did not long strive to eradicate, attributing them rather to a defective education and senses untuned by too long familiarity with purely natural objects, than to a perverted moral sense. I was the more inclined to this leniency since sufficient evidence was not to seek, that his verses, wanting as they certainly were in cla.s.sic polish and point, had somehow taken hold of the public ear in a surprising manner.

So, only setting him right as to the quant.i.ty of the proper name Pegasus, I left him to follow the bent of his natural genius.

Yet could I not surrender him wholly to the tutelage of the pagan (which, literally interpreted, signifies village) muse without yet a further effort for his conversion, and to this end I resolved that whatever of poetic fire yet burned in myself, aided by the a.s.siduous bellows of correct models, should be put in requisition. Accordingly, when my ingenious young paris.h.i.+oner brought to my study a copy of verses which he had written touching the acquisition of territory resulting from the Mexican war, and the folly of leaving the question of slavery or freedom to the adjudication of chance, I did myself indite a short fable or apologue after the manner of Gay and Prior, to the end that he might see how easily even such subjects as he treated of were capable of a more refined style and more elegant expression. Mr. Biglow's production was as follows:--

THE TWO GUNNERS.

A FABLE.

Two fellers, Isrel named and Joe, One Sundy mornin' 'greed to go Agunnin' soon's the bells wuz done And meetin' finally begun, So 'st no one wouldn't be about Ther Sabbath-breakin' to spy out.

Joe didn't want to go a mite; He felt ez though 't warnt skeercely right, But, when his doubts he went to speak on, Isrel he up and called him Deacon, An' kep' apokin' fun like sin An' then arubbin' on it in, Till Joe, less skeered o' doin' wrong Than bein' laughed at, went along.

Past noontime they went trampin' round An' nary thing to pop at found, Till, fairly tired o' their spree, They leaned their guns agin a tree, An' jest ez they wuz settin' down To take their noonin', Joe looked roun'

And see (across lots in a pond That warn't more 'n twenty rod beyond,) A goose that on the water sot Ez ef awaitin' to be shot.

Isrel he ups and grabs his gun; Sez he, "By ginger, here's some fun!"

"Don't fire," sez Joe, "it aint no use, Thet's Deacon Peleg's tame wild-goose;"

Sez Isrel, "I don't care a cent, I've sighted an' I'll let her went;"

_Bang!_ went queen's-arm, ole gander flopped His wings a spell, an' quorked, an' dropped.

Sez Joe, "I wouldn't ha' been hired At that poor critter to ha' fired, But, sence it's clean gin up the ghost, We'll hev the tallest kind o' roast; I guess our waistbands 'll be tight 'Fore it comes ten o'clock ternight."

"I won't agree to no such bender,"

Sez Isrel, "keep it tell it's tender; 'T aint wuth a snap afore it's ripe."

Sez Joe, "I'd jest ez lives eat tripe; You _air_ a buster ter suppose I'd eat what makes me hol' my nose!"

So they disputed to an' fro Till cunnin' Isrel sez to Joe, "Don't less stay here an' play the fool, Less wait till both on us git cool, Jest for a day or two less hide it An' then toss up an' so decide it."

"Agreed!" sez Joe, an' so they did, An' the ole goose wuz safely hid.

Now 't wuz the hottest kind o' weather, An' when at last they come together, It didn't signify which won, Fer all the mischief hed ben done: The goose wuz there, but, fer his soul, Joe wouldn't ha' tetched it with a pole; But Isrel kind o' liked the smell on't An' made _his_ dinner very well on't.

My own humble attempt was in manner and form following, and I print it here, I sincerely trust, out of no vainglory, but solely with the hope of doing good.

LEAVING THE MATTER OPEN.

A TALE.