No matter, and no pity--
Afraid at last I'll have to die
In some far, foreign city.
It travels with me everywhere
And chirrups like a cricket;
As if it said with anxious air,
"Don't lose your tick-tick-ticket!"
Companion of my loneliness
Along my journey westward,
It never leaves me comfortless,
But has the last and best word.
I would not spoil its lovely face,
And so I go behind it,
And hold it like a china vase,
So careful when I wind it.
A clock is always excellent
That has its label on,
And proves a fine advertisement
For Waterbury, Conn.
Those Yankees--ah! they never shun
A chance to make a dime,
And counterfeit the very sun
In keeping "Standard Time."
Ah, well! the little clock has proved
The best of all bonanzas;
And thus my happy heart is moved
To these effusive stanzas.
Improvement.
Along the avenue I pass
Huge piles of wood and stone,
And glance at each amorphous mass,
Whose cumbrous weight has crushed the grass,
With half resentful groan.
Say I: "O labor, to despoil
Some lovely forest scene,
Or at the granite stratum toil,
And desecrate whole roods of soil,
Is vandal-like and mean!
"Than ever to disfigure thus
Our prairie garden-land,
Let me consort with Cerberus,
Be chained to crags precipitous,
Or seek an alien strand."
But while this pining, pouting Muse
The interval ignores,
Deft industry, no time to lose,
Contrives and carries, hoists and hews,
And symmetry restores.
Behold! of rock and pile and board
A modern miracle,
My neighbor's dwelling, roofed and floored,
That rapid grew as Jonah's gourd,
And far more beautiful.
The artisan's receding gait
Has brushed the chips away,
Where innocence shall recreate,
Or like the flowers grow, and wait
The balminess of May.
An arid spot, where careless feet
Have long been wont to roam,
Where cattle grazed, as if to eat
Were life's delicious, richest treat,
Becomes a charming home.
O man primeval! hadst thou known,
Ere rude hands scooped thy grave,
Of Homestead Act, or Building Loan,
Thou wouldst have quite disdained to own
A rugged cliff or cave.
And now I see how skill and art
May cleave fair nature through,
Disintegrate her breathing heart,
And to the tissues torn impart
A use and beauty new.
And this improvement is, to turn
The things which God has given
To their best purpose, as we learn
To make the place where we sojourn
Homelike and more like Heaven.
On Bancroft Height.
On Bancroft height Aurora's face
Shines brighter than a star,
As stepping forth in dewy grace,
The gates of day unbar;
And lo! the firmament, the hills,
And the vales that intervene--
Creation's self with gladness thrills
To greet the matin queen.
On Bancroft height the atmosphere
Is but an endless waft
Of life's elixir, pure and clear
As mortal ever quaffed;
And such the sweet salubrity
Of air and altitude,
Is banished many a malady
And suffering subdued.
On Bancroft height the sunset glow
When day departing dies
Outrivals all that tourists know
Of famed Italian skies;
And happy dwellers round about
Who view the scene aright
In admiration grow devout
And laud the Lord of light.
Round Bancroft height rich memories
Commingle earth's affairs,
Among the world's celebrities,
Of him whose name it bears;
The scholar-wise compatriot
Who left to later men
The grand achievements unforgot
Of that historic pen.
Fair Bancroft height revisited
When all the land is white,
A halo crowns its noble head
Impelling fresh delight;
The daring wish in winter-time
The blizzard to defy
Those shining slippery slopes to climb
Up nearer to the sky.
Though Boreas abrade the cheek
With buffetings of snow,
He gives a vigor that the weak
And languid never know;
And with rejuvenescent thrill,
Like children everywhere,
Bestirs the rhapsody, the will
To make a snow-man there.
On Bancroft height and Bancroft tower
Such vistas charm the eye
'Twere life's consummate, glorious hour
But to behold--and die;
Yet in the sparkle and the glow
Is earth so very fair
The spirit lingers, loath to go,
And dreams of heaven--up there.
A Reformer.
When I was young, my heart elate
With ardent notions warm,
I thirsted to inaugurate
A spirit of reform;
The universe was all awry,
Philosophy despite,
And mundane things disjointed I
Was bound to set aright.
My mind conceived a million plans,
For Hope was brave and strong,
But dared not with unaided hands
Combat a giant wrong;
So with caress I sought to coax
Those who had humored me
In infancy--the dear old folks--
And gain their sympathy.
But quarreling with extant laws
They would have deemed a shame
Who clung to error, just because
Their fathers did the same.
I sought in Pleasure's gilded halls,
Where grace and beauty stirred
At revelry's impetuous calls,
To make my projects heard.
Then turned to stately palaces
Of luxury and ease,
Where wealth's absorbing object was
The master's whim to please;
And spoke of evils unredressed,
Of danger yet to be--
They only answered, like the rest:
"But what is that to me?"
And even pious _devotées_
Whom sacred walls immure
Condemned me (as by feeble praise)--
What more could I endure?
Down by the stream, so pure and clear
That sunbeams paused to drink,
In loneliness and grief sincere
I pressed its grassy brink.
Thick darkness seemed to veil the day;
Beyond a realm of tears
Utopia's land of promise lay;
And not till later years
I learned this lesson--that to win
Results from labor sure,
"Reformers" always must begin
Among the lowly poor.
For they whose lot privation is
And whose delights are few,
Whose aggregate of miseries
Is want of something new,
The measure of whose happiness
Is but an empty cup,
For every novelty will press
Alert to fill it up.
Transcriber's Notes:
Page 27: Changed Galiee to Galilee (Printer's Error)
Page 47: Indented 1st stanza to match others
Page 173: Changed prarie to prairie (Printer's Error)