Fitz-Greene Halleck

“ Farewell, farewell, while the spirit of evil
Has power in a creditor’s bosom, we swear
To be with thee on earth—if thou goest to the devil,
He is an old friend of ours, and will visit thee there.
Farewell, be it ours to embitter thy pillow
With thistles whose wounds are eternal and deep,
There are packets of letters afloat on the billow
That shall poison thy whiskey and torture thy sleep. ”

“ Yes, there’s much in a name, and a Hogbin’s so fit is
For that great moral purpose whose impulse divine
Bids men leave their own workshops to work in committees,
And their own wedded wives to protect yours and mine!
That we working-men prophets are sadly mistaken,
If yours is not, Hogbin, a durable fame,
As lasting as England’s philosopher Bacon,
Whom your ancestors housed, if we judge by his name. ”

“ As it bade the fond scenes of my childhood adieu.
Oh! mock not that pang, for my heart was retracing
Past visions of happiness, sparkling and clear:
My heart was still warm with a mother’s embracing,
My cheek was still wet with a fond sister’s tear.
Like an infant’s first sleep on the lap of its mother,
Were the days of my childhood—those days are no more ”

“ These gentlemen make when they’re begging for votes;
There’s John Haff, and Ben Bailly, and Christian, and Bracket,
Only think what fine music must come from their throats!
Colonel Warner calls Clinton a “star in the banner,”
Mapes swears by his sword-knot he’ll ruin us all;
While Meigs flashes out in his fine classic manner,
“The meteor Gorgon of Clinton must fall!”
In vain I endeavor to give them a hint on
Sense, reason, or temper—they laugh at it all;
For sense is nonsense when it makes against Clinton,
And reason is treason in Tammany Hall. ”

“ Was echoed by his plighted word,
And ah, how dear its song to me!
But wailed the hour will ever be
When to the air the bugle gave,
To hush love’s gentle minstrelsy,
The wild war-music of the brave. ”

“ Fine fun for firemen, but dull sport for plays;
The proudest of our whole dramatic corps
Such warm reception never met before.
It was a woeful night for us and ours,
Worse than dry weather to the fields and flowers.
The evening found us gay as summer’s lark,
Happy as sturgeons in the Tappan Sea;
The morning, like the dove from Noah’s ark,
As homeless, houseless, desolate as she. ”

“ When monkeys, monsters, whales, and Esquimaux,
Asked but a letter from his ready hand,
To be the theme and wonder of the land.
That time is past,—henceforth each showman’s doom
Must be decided in the Council Room;
And there the city’s guardians will decree
An artist’s or an author’s destiny,
Pronounce the fate of poem, song, or sonnet,
And shape the fashion of a lady’s bonnet ”

“ Who will believe? Not I—for in deceiving
Lies the dear charm of life’s delightful dream;
I cannot spare the luxury of believing
That all things beautiful are what they seem;
Who will believe that, with a smile whose blessing
Would, like the Patriarch’s, soothe a dying hour,
With voice as low, as gentle, and caressing,
As e’er won maiden’s lip in moonlit bower:
With look like patient Job’s eschewing evil ”

“ Seems sweetest-voiced and loveliest of the Nine,
The minstrel of the bowers of happiness,
She whom the Graces nurtured—at her birth,
The sea-born Goddess and the Huntress maid,
Beings whose beauty is not of the earth,
Came from their myrtle home and forest shade,
Blending immortal joy with mortal mirth
And Dian said, “Fair sister, be she mine
In her heart’s purity, in beauty thine.” ”

“ The Ellen of my heart?
For music, like Sir Walter’s, now
Rings round me, and again I bow
Before the shrine of song,
Devoutly as I bowed in youth;
For hearts that worship there, in truth
And joy, are ever young. ”

“ Communion with our country’s fame
From Bunker’s Hill to Chippewa.
All who on battle-field or wave,
Have met the death that waits the brave,
Or pealed, above their foeman’s grave,
The victor’s wild hurrah! ”

“ And their toil-bells woke up our thousand hills and dales,
XXIV.
Shamed they their fathers? Ask the village-spires
Above their Sabbath-homes of praise and prayer;
Ask of their children’s happy household-fires,
And happier harvest noons; ask summer’s air,
Made merry by young voices, when the wires
Of their school-cages are unloosed, and dare
Their slanderers’ breath to blight the memory
That o’er their graves is “growing green to see!” ”

“ That, as a nation, we are thriving;
Settled in excellent condition,
Bargaining, building, and beehiving;
That each one fearlessly reclines
Beneath his “fig-tree and his vines”
(The dream of philosophic man) ,
And all is quiet as a Sunday,
From Orleans to the Bay of Fundy,
From Beersheba to Dan.
I’ve climbed my country’s loftiest tree,
And reached its highest bough, save one.
Why not the highest?—blame not me;
“What man dare” do, I’ve done. ”

“ If on the grief-worn cheek the hues of bliss,
Which fade when all we love is in the tomb,
Could ever know on earth a second bloom,
The memory of a gallant death like his
Would call them into being ”

“ Is strength a monarch’s merit, like a whaler’s?
Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong
As earth’s first kings—the Argo’s gallant sailors,
Heroes in history and gods in song.
Is beauty?—Thine has with thy youth departed ”

“ Is the true pathos and sublime,”
And green and gold of Life.
From long-neglected garden-bowers
Come these, my songs’ memorial flowers,
With greetings from my heart, they come
To seek the shelter of thy home;
Though faint their hues, and brief their bloom,
And all unmeet for gorgeous room
Of “honor, love, obedience,
And troops of friends,” like thine. ”

“ Are covered in vain with false tresses.
The autumn is on thee—fell Scandal prepares
To hasten the wane of thy glory;
Too soon Disappointment will hand thee down-stairs,
And old maidenhood end the sad story:
For me—long escaped from your trammels—I choose
To enlist in the new corps of jokers;
Abandoning Chloe, I kneel to the Muse,
And, instead of love-ditties, write Croakers. ”

“ Of other beings pure as thou,
Who breathe, on winds of Paradise,
Music as thine is now.
And know the only emblem meet
Of that pure Faith the heart adores,
To be a child like thee, whose feet
Are strangers on Life’s shores. ”

“ Would it could soothe a mother’s griefs but they
Are graven deep, and will not pass away!
Blest spirit! long as at the name alone
Of their Eliza, tears are seen to start,
And sighs are breathed, whose birthplace is the heart. ”

“ To point out here, unless in yon scare-crow,
That stands full-uniformed upon the plain,
To frighten flocks of crows and blackbirds from the grain.
VI.
For he would look particularly droll
In his “Iberian boot” and “Spanish plume,”
And be the wonder of each Christian soul
As of the birds that scare-crow and his broom.
But Gertrude, in her loveliness and bloom,
Hath many a model here; for woman’s eye,
In court or cottage, wheresoe’er her home,
Hath a heart-spell too holy and too high
To be o’erpraised even by her worshipper—Poesy. ”

“ To bear me where, or lost or won
Her battle, in its frown or smile,
Men live with those of Marathon,
Or die with those of Scio’s isle;
And find in Valor’s tent or tomb,
In life or death, a glorious home. ”

“ His facts the fictions of a minstrel’s song,
The myths and marvels of a poet’s dream.
And are they not such? Suddenly among
My mind’s dark thoughts its boyhood’s sunrise beam
Breathes in spring balm and beauty o’er my page—
Joy! joy! my patriot wrath hath wronged the reverend sage.
XXVII.
Welcome! young boyhood, welcome! Of thy lore,
Thy morning-gathered wealth of prose and rhyme,
Of fruit the flower, of gold the infant ore,
The roughest shuns not manhood’s stormy clime,
But loves wild ocean’s winds and breakers’ roar ”

“ But is wealthier far than Miss Flounce,
She “entertains” also to-night with cold tongue,
Smoked herring, and cherry-bounce.
In praise of cold water the Theban bard spoke,
He of Teos sang sweetly of wine;
Miss Flounce is a Pindar in cashmere and cloak,
Miss Fleece an Anacreon divine.
The Montagues carry the day in Swamp Place;
In Pike Street the Capulets reign;
A limonadière is the badge of one race,
Of the other a flask of champagne. ”

“ When, like a sunbeam from the cloud,
That dims awhile an April sky,
Our champions shall again return,
Their pockets with new honors crowded,
That every heart may cease to mourn,
And hats no more in crape be shrouded. ”

“ When belles that long have frowned on all,
Greet thee with smiles, and bend the knee,
To beg you’ll help them “give a ball!”
Though it is ungenteel to think,
For thought affects the nerves and brain! ”

“ And says to thee from far—
⁠“Forget-me-not!”
Each dew-drop on its morning leaves
Is eloquent as tears,
That whisper, when young passion grieves,
For one beloved afar, and weaves
His dream of hopes and fears—
⁠“Forget-me-not!” ”

“ Though puffing is, certainly, not my vocation,
I always shall praise them, whenever I’ve room.
With manners so formed to persuade and to win you,
With faces one need but to look on to love,
They’re like Jefferson’s “Natural Bridge” in Virginia—
“Worth a voyage across the Atlantic,” by Jove! ”

“ Where smiles the hearth she blesses
With voice and eye, with voice and eye?
Where binds the night her tresses,
When sleep is nigh, when sleep is nigh!
Is Fashion’s bleak cold mountain
Her bosom’s throne, her bosom’s throne? ”

“ 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 ”

“ When the firm earth beneath their footsteps burst.
Quelled is big Haff who oft has fire and flood stood,
More pallid grows the snowy cheek of Rose,
Cold sweats bedew the leathern hide of Bloodgood,
Deep sinks the concave of pug Edwards’ nose. ”

“ Beside its winter hearth.
And must I deem her beckoning smile
But pleasant mockery, to beguile
Some lonely hour of care?
And will this Ellen prove to be
But like her namesake o’er the sea,
A being of the air? ”

“ One thing, at least, whate’er you do,
For Heaven’s sake give us something new!
For though your actors have not lost
One lightning-flash of Thespian fire,
Yet beauties that delight us most,
The wearied eye, in time, will tire. ”

“ Far distant yet is England’s host,
Unheard her cannon’s roar.
Yet not in vain they flew to arms;
It made the foeman know
That many a gallant heart must bleed
Ere freedom’s star be low.
Guards of a nation’s destiny! ”

“ Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start,
Or the smile light the cheek;
And his that music, to whose tone
The common pulse of man keeps time,
In cot or castle’s mirth or moan,
In cold or sunny clime. ”

“ The birds of fame have flown.
Praise to the man! a nation stood
Beside his coffin with wet eyes,
Her brave, her beautiful, her good,
As when a loved one dies.
And still, as on his funeral-day,
Men stand his cold earth-couch around,
With the mute homage that we pay
To consecrated ground. ”

“ Appear, although with fear and trembling,
At Beauty’s call, as Beauty’s bard.
Yet why despair if winds can summon
Minstrels and music when they please?
For who but deems the lips of woman
More potent than an evening breeze? ”

“ Her name nor pain nor pleasure
To me should bring, to me should bring.
Love must not grieve or gladden
My thoughts of snow, my thoughts of snow,
Nor woman soothe or sadden
My path below, my path below. ”

“ A mineral spring to refine the metropolis.
The day we discovered it was, by-the-way,
In the life of the Cockneys, a glorious day.
For we all had been taught, by tradition and reading,
That to gain what admits us to levees of kings,
The gentleness, courtesy, grace of high breeding,
The only sure way was to “visit the Springs.” ”

“ And know, however low his lot,
A Poet’s pride and power:
The pride that lifted Burns from earth,
The power that gave a child of song
Ascendency o’er rank and birth,
The rich, the brave, the strong ”

“ Flushed with the cool breeze and the dews of morn,
With dancing heart we gazed on the pure sky,
And mocked the passing clouds that dimmed its blue,
Like our own sorrows then—as fleeting and as few. ”

“ Than hers, smiled rose and orange-flower
Through green leaves glad and gay,
When bridesmaids, grouped around her room,
In youth’s, in truth’s, in beauty’s bloom,
Entwined, with merry fingers fair,
Their garlands in her sunny hair ”

“ We are far from the mount of battle, [1]
Where the wreck first met mine eye,
And now where twin forts [2] in the olden time rose,
Through the Race, like a swift steed, our little bark goes,
And our bugle's notes echo through Anthony’s Nose,
So wrecks and rhymes—good-by. ”

“ And some are peering in the Park
To try if they can see him coming;
And some are half asleep—when, hark!
A triumph on the warlike drum,
A heart-uplifting bugle-strain,
A fife’s far flourish—and “They come!” ”

“ I cursed the hour when love betrayed thee;
’Twas mine, in death, thine eyes to close,
And watch till on the bier they laid thee.
No gloomy cypress-boughs shall shade thee,
No marble thy sad story tell;
The cruel world shall ne’er upbraid thee
With having loved—and loved too well. ”

“ What poet among us is worthy to sit in
The chair whose fair cushion was hallowed by thee?
In vain the wild clouds o’er our mountain-tops hover,
Our rivers flow sadly, our groves are bereft;
They have lost, and forever, their poet, their lover!
And Woodworth and Paulding are all we have left. ”