To linger here in faith to find 'em;
Forward!—nor pause to think of pain,—
Till somewhere, on a nobler plain,
A surer Hope shall lead the train
Of joys withheld to come again
With golden fleeces trailed behind 'em!
SOLOMON GRUNDY
"Solomon Grundy
Born on Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Sick on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Dead on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday:
This was the end
Of Solomon Grundy."
So sings the unpretentious Muse
That guides the quill of Mother Goose,
And in one week of mortal strife
Presents the epitome of Life:
But down sits Billy Shakspeare next,
And, coolly taking up the text,
His thought pursues the trail of mine,
And, lo! the "Seven Ages" shine!
O world! O critics! can't you see
How Shakspeare plagiarizes me?
And other bards will after come,
To echo in a later age,
"He lived,—he died: behold the sum,
The abstract of the historian's page"
Yet once for all the thing was done,
Complete in Grundy's pilgrimage.
For not a child upon the knee
But hath the moral learned of me;
And measured, in a seven days' span,
The whole experience of man.
BOWLS
"Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl:
If the bowl had been stronger,
My song had been longer."
Mysteriously suggestive! A vague hint,
Yet a rare touch of most effective art,
That of the bowl, and all the voyagers in't,
Tells nothing, save the fact that they did
start.
There ending suddenly, with subtle craft,
The story stands—as 'twere a broken
shafts—'
More eloquent in mute signification,
Than lengthened detail, or precise relation.
So perfect in its very non-achieving,
That, of a truth, I cannot help believing
A rash attempt at paraphrasing it
May prove a blunder, rather than a hit.
Still, I must wish the venerable soul
Had been explicit as regards the bowl
Was it, perhaps, a railroad speculation?
Or a big ship to carry all creation,
That, by some kink of its machinery,
Failed, in the end, to carry even three?
Or other fond, erroneous calculation
Of splendid schemes that died disastrously?
It must have been of Gotham manufacture;
Though strangely weak, and liable to frac-
ture.
Yet—pause a moment—strangely, did I
say?
Scarcely, since, after all, it was but clay;—
The stuff Hope takes to build her brittle
boat,
And therein sets the wisest men afloat.
Truly, a bark would need be somewhat
stronger,
To make the halting history much longer.
Doubtless, the good Dame did but gener-
alize,—
Took a broad glance at human enterprise,
And earthly expectation, and so drew,
In pithy lines, a parable most true,—
Kindly to warn us ere we sail away,
With life's great venture, in an ark of
clay,
Where shivered fragments all around be-
token,
How even the "golden bowl" at last lies
broken!
CRADLED IN GREEN
"Rockaby, baby,
Your cradle is green;
Father's a nobleman,
Mother's a queen;
And Betty's a lady,
And wears a gold ring,
And Johnny's a drummer,
And drums for the king!"
O golden gift of childhood!
That, with its kingly touch,
Transforms to more than royalty
The thing it loveth much!
O second sight, bestowed alone
Upon the baby seer,
That the glory held in Heaven's reserve
Discerneth even here!
Though he be the humblest craftsman,
No silk nor ermine piled
Could make the father seem a whit
More noble to the child;
And the mother,—ah, what queenlier crown
Could rest upon her brow,
Than the fair and gentle dignity
It weareth to him now?
E'en the gilded ring that Michael
For a penny fairing bought,
Is the seal of Betty's ladyhood
To his untutored thought;
And the darling drum about his neck,—
His very newest toy,—
A bandsman unto Majesty
Hath straightway made the boy!
O golden gift of childhood!
If the talisman might last,
How the dull Present still should gleam
With the glory of the Past!
But the things of earth about us
Fade and dwindle as we go,
And the long perspective of our life
Is truth, and not a show!
"SIMILIA SIMILIBUS."
"There was a man in our town,
And