"See there the grim gray rounding Of the bullet of the earth Tumbling steep In the uncontinented deep." He looks on that, and he turns pale. Cooped in a ship he cannot steer, Risk or ruin he must share.1 I scowl on him with my cloud, Then, at last, I let him down Once more into his dapper town, As in the old poetic fame Betrays the more abounding might, So call not waste that barren cone Above the floral zone, Where forests starve: It is pure use; What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse? Ages are thy days, Thou grand affirmer of the present tense,' And type of permanence! Firm ensign of the fatal Being, Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief, That will not bide the seeing! Hither we bring Our insect miseries to thy rocks; Where flowers each stone rosette and metope brave; Still is the haughty pile erect Complement of human kind, Our sumptuous indigence, O barren mound, thy plenties fill! Thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense An opaker star, Seen haply from afar, Above the horizon's hoop, A moment, by the railway troop, As o'er some bolder height they speed,By circumspect ambition, By errant gain, By feasters and the frivolous, Recallest us, And makest sane. Mute orator! well skilled to plead, And send conviction without phrase, Thou dost succor and remede The shortness of our days, And promise, on thy Founder's truth, Long morrow to this mortal youth.' FABLE THE mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter' Little Prig;' Bun replied, • You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And I think it no disgrace If I'm not so large as you, I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my Neither can you crack a nut.' ODE INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING THOUGH loath to grieve The evil time's sole patriot, I cannot leave My honied thought For the priest's cant, Or statesman's rant. If I refuse My study for their politique, Puts confusion in my brain. But who is he that prates Of better arts and life? Go, blindworm, go, Behold the famous States Harrying Mexico With rifle and with knife! Or who, with accent bolder, Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer? |