Initial Studies in American Letters Part 19

It seemed impossible to us that any body ever heard this for the first time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on, still unconsciously or mechanically:

"This is my own, my native land!"

Then they all saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through, I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on:

"Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand?-- If such there breathe, go, mark him well."

By this time the men were all beside themselves, wis.h.i.+ng there was any way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on:

"For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his t.i.tles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, Despite these t.i.tles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentered all in self;"--

and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swung the book into the sea, vanished into his state-room. "And by Jove,"

said Phillips, "we did not see him for two months again. And I had to make up some beggarly story to that English surgeon why I did not return his Walter Scott to him."

[1]See page 195.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

[From _Marco Bozzaris_.]

Come to the bridal-chamber, Death!

Come to the mother's when she feels For the first time her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean-storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm, With banquet-song, and dance, and wine: And thou art terrible--the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier; And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony, are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word; And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be.

Come, when his task of fame is wrought-- Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought-- Come in her crowning hour--and then Thy sunken eye's unearthly light To him is welcome as the sight Of sky and stars to prisoned men; Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land-wind, from woods of palm, And orange-groves, and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee--there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime.

She wore no funeral weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hea.r.s.e wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said, At palace couch and cottage bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him, the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate and checks her tears.

And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will by their pilgrim-circled hearth Talk of thy doom without a sigh: For thou art Freedom's now and Fame's, One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die.

ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.

Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days!

None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise.

Tears fell, when thou wert dying, From eyes unused to weep, And long where thou art lying Will tears the cold turf steep.

When hearts, whose truth was proven Like thine, are laid in earth, There should a wreath be woven To tell the world their worth;

And I, who woke each morrow To clasp thy hand in mine, Who shared thy joy and sorrow, Whose weal and woe were thine--

It should be mine to braid it Around thy faded brow; But I've in vain essayed it, And feel I cannot now.

While memory bids me weep thee, Nor thoughts nor words are free, The grief is fixed too deeply That mourns a man like thee.

CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE.

[From _Lecture on the Mormons_.]

Brother Kimball is a gay and festive cuss, of some seventy summers, or some'er's there about. He has one thousand head of cattle and a hundred head of wives. He says they are awful eaters.

Mr. Kimball had a son, a lovely young man, who was married to ten interesting wives. But one day while he was absent from home these ten wives went out walking with a handsome young man, which so enraged Mr.

Kimball's son--which made Mr. Kimball'a son so jealous--that he shot himself with a horse-pistol.

The doctor who attended him--a very scientific man--informed me that the bullet entered the parallelogram of his diaphragmatic thorax, superinducing hemorrhage in the outer cuticle of his basilicon thaumaturgist. It killed him. I should have thought it would.

(_Soft Music_.)

I hope this sad end will be a warning to all young wives who go out walking with handsome young men. Mr. Kimball's son is now no more. He sleeps beneath the cypress, the myrtle, and the willow. The music is a dirge by the eminent pianist for Mr. Kimball's son. He died by request.

I regret to say that efforts were made to make a Mormon of me while I was in Utah.

It was leap-year when I was there, and seventeen young widows, the wives of a deceased Mormon, offered me their hearts and hands. I called on them one day, and, taking their soft white hands in mine, which made eighteen hands altogether, I found them in tears, and I said, "Why is this thus? What is the reason of this thusness?"

They hove a sigh--seventeen sighs of different size. They said:

"O, soon thou wilt be gonested away!"

I told them that when I got ready to leave a place I wentested.

They said, "Doth not like us?"

I said, "I doth--I doth."

I also said, "I hope your intentions are honorable, as I am a lone child, my parents being far--far away."

Then they said, "Wilt not marry us?"

I said, "O, no, it cannot was!"

Again they asked me to marry them, and again I declined, when they cried,

"O, cruel man! this is too much! O, too much!"

I told them that it was on account of the muchness that I declined. . . .

(_Pointing to Panorama_)

A more cheerful view of the desert.