The babe became a hero in its time;
The bird, its task performed, it fled away. To the good bird I dedicate this rhyme;
The hero lives in many an antique lay. Oh could my song preserve thy nest of briar, As thou the babe Herculean for its sire!
WONDER of art and nature! ocean-born,
Like Aphrodite, Queen of Love and Life,
And those white nymphs that dwell in crystal bowers,
And oft, when ships were rare, and none had burst
Into that ocean which first Cortez view'd
From Darien's heights, beneath the summer moon,
Were wont to weave their labyrinthine dance
On the smooth surface of the sacred sea,
To minstrelsy of kindred sprites of air,——
Child of the waves! whose antique ancestry
Saw unappall'd, say rather with huge joy,
The avenging fountains of the deep broke up,
And the vast hollow globe of waters pour
Dark and continuous o'er the offending earth.
Then did the creatures of the sea rejoice!
The arrowy shark shot swift o'er cities drown'd,
But soon grew sluggish with mere gluttony;
Then herrings fearless stray'd o'er all the world,
For even the hungriest tyrants of the floods,
The finny aristocracy, o'ergorged
With flesh, for fish had no more appetite
Than pious Papist at the end of Lent.
Herrings were happy then, but were not red;
The green effulgence of their scaly suit
Rippled the sunny sea with emerald light
For many a league, what time their countless hosts
Sped from their chill septentrion nursery,
In numbers without number, numberless!
A tribe to which the whole of Adam's race,
By Leuwenhoeck seen through optic lens,
With all whom Malthus, and his sage compeers,
Extinguish'd in the breeding womb of time
By vice and misery-and, oh, ye Gods!
Moral restraint, were but a band élite,
A biped aristocracy, as few
As Protestants in Erin, as the pale
Albino monster upon Afric shore,
As gentlemen in Parliament reform'd,
As honest men-in any place you please.
NELLY, methinks, 'twixt thee and me,
There is a kind of sympathy;
And could we interchange our nature,—
If I were cat, thou human creature,—
I should, like thee, be no great mouser,
And thou, like me, no great composer;
For, like thy plaintive mews, my muse,
With villainous whine doth fate abuse,
Because it hath not made me sleek
As golden down on Cupid's cheek;
And yet thou canst upon the rug lie,
Stretch'd out like snail, or curl'd up snugly, As if thou wert not lean or ugly;
And I, who in poetic flights
Sometimes complain of sleepless nights,
Regardless of the sun in heaven,
Am apt to dose till past eleven.
The world would just the same go round
If I were hang'd and thou wert drown'd;
There is one difference, 'tis true,-
Thou dost not know it, and I do.
ANGELS have wings? Well, let them grow―
May it be long before you know
Whether they have or not.
But geese have wings, and quills as good,
Perhaps, as wings of angels could
Supply-could they be got.
But oh! dear lady, why contrive
To make the vainest man alive
Conceited more than ever :
I will not call these pens divine,
But certain they were pens of thine,
And that's enough, however.
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