Chapter XXIV

Dear Bard and Brother! let who may
Against thy faults be railing,
(Though far, I pray, from us be they
That never had a failing!)
One toast I’ll give, and that not long,
Which thou wouldst pledge if present,--
To him whose song, in nature strong,
Makes man of prince and peasant!

IN AN ALBUM.

The misspelt scrawl, upon the wall By some Pompeian idler traced, In ashes packed (ironic fact!) Lies eighteen centuries uneffaced, While many a page of bard and sage, Deemed once mankind’s immortal gain, Lost from Time’s ark, leaves no more mark Than a keel’s furrow through the main.

O Chance and Change! our buzz’s range Is scarcely wider than a fly’s; Then let us play at fame to-day, To-morrow be unknown and wise; And while the fair beg locks of hair, And autographs, and Lord knows what, Quick! let us scratch our moment’s match, Make our brief blaze, and be forgot!

Too pressed to wait, upon her slate Fame writes a name or two in doubt; Scarce written, these no longer please, And her own finger rubs them out: It may ensue, fair girl, that you Years hence this yellowing leaf may see, And put to task, your memory ask In vain, “This Lowell, who was he?”

AT THE COMMENCEMENT DINNER, 1866, IN ACKNOWLEDGING A TOAST TO THE SMITH PROFESSOR.

I rise, Mr. Chairman, as both of us know, With the impromptu I promised you three weeks ago, Dragged up to my doom by your might and my mane, To do what I vowed I’d do never again; And I feel like your good honest dough when possest By a stirring, impertinent devil of yeast. “You must rise,” says the leaven. “I can’t,” says the dough; “Just examine my bumps, and you’ll see it’s no go.” “But you must,” the tormentor insists, “'tis all right; You must rise when I bid you, and, what’s more, be light.”

’Tis a dreadful oppression, this making men speak What they ’re sure to be sorry for all the next week; This asking some poor stick, like Aaron’s, to bud Into eloquence, pathos, or wit in cold blood, As if the dull brain that you vented your spite on Could be got, like an ox, by mere poking, to Brighton.

They say it is wholesome to rise with the sun, And I dare say it may be if not overdone; (I think it was Thomson who made the remark ’Twas an excellent thing in its way--for a lark;) But to rise after dinner and look down the meeting On a distant (as Gray calls it) prospect of Eating, With a stomach half full and a cerebrum hollow As the tortoise-shell ere it was strung for Apollo, Under contract to raise anerithmon gelasma With rhymes so hard hunted they gasp with the asthma, And jokes not much younger than Jethro’s phylacteries, Is something I leave you yourselves to characterize.

I’ve a notion, I think, of a good dinner speech, Tripping light as a sandpiper over the beach, Swerving this way and that as the wave of the moment Washes out its slight trace with a dash of whim’s foam on ’t, And leaving on memory’s rim just a sense Something graceful had gone by, a live present tense; Not poetry,--no, not quite that, but as good, A kind of winged prose that could fly if it would. ’Tis a time for gay fancies as fleeting and vain As the whisper of foam-beads on fresh-poured champagne, Since dinners were not perhaps strictly designed For manœuvering the heavy dragoons of the mind. When I hear your set speeches that start with a pop, Then wander and maunder, too feeble to stop, With a vague apprehension from popular rumor There used to be something by mortals called humor, Beginning again when you thought they were done, Respectable, sensible, weighing a ton, And as near to the present occasions of men As a Fast Day discourse of the year eighteen ten, I--well, I sit still, and my sentiments smother, For am I not also a bore and a brother?

And a toast,--what should that be? Light, airy, and free, The foam-Aphrodite of Bacchus’s sea, A fancy-tinged bubble, an orbed rainbow-stain, That floats for an instant ’twixt goblet and brain; A breath-born perfection, half something, half naught, And breaks if it strike the hard edge of a thought. Do you ask me to make such? Ah no, not so simple; Ask Apelles to paint you the ravishing dimple Whose shifting enchantment lights Venus’s cheek, And the artist will tell you his skill is too weak; Once fix it, ’tis naught, for the charm of it rises From the sudden bopeeps of its smiling surprises.

I’ve tried to define it, but what mother’s son Could ever yet do what he knows should be done? My rocket has burst, and I watch in the air Its fast-fading heart’s-blood drop back in despair; Yet one chance is left me, and, if I am quick, I can palm off, before you suspect me, the stick.

Now since I’ve succeeded--I pray do not frown-- To Ticknor’s and Longfellow’s classical gown, And profess four strange languages, which, luckless elf, I speak like a native (of Cambridge) myself, Let me beg, Mr. President, leave to propose A sentiment treading on nobody’s toes, And give, in such ale as with pump-handles _we_ brew, Their memory who saved us from all talking Hebrew,-- A toast that to deluge with water is good, For in Scripture they come in just after the flood: I give you the men but for whom, as I guess, sir, Modern languages ne’er could have had a professor, The builders of Babel, to whose zeal the lungs Of the children of men owe confusion of tongues; And a name all-embracing I couple therewith, Which is that of my founder--the late Mr. Smith.

A PARABLE.

An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale From passion’s fountain flooded all the vale. “Hee-haw!” cried he, “I hearken,” as who knew For such ear-largess humble thanks were due. “Friend,” said the wingèd pain, “in vain you bray, Who tunnels bring, not cisterns, for my lay; None but his peers the poet rightly hear, Nor mete we listeners by their length of ear.”

COLONNA, ITALY, 1852.