The very dullest days are come, the dullest of the year,
When all our great Assembly men are gone away from here;
Heaped up in yonder Capitol, how many bills lie dead,
They just allowed to live awhile, to knock them on the head;
Tom, Dick, and Harry all have gone and left the silent hall,
And on the now deserted square we meet no one at all--
Where are the fellows? the fine young fellows that were so lately
here
And vexed the drowsy ear of night with frolic and good cheer.
Alas! they all are at their homes--the glorious race of fellows,
And some perhaps are gone to forge, and some are at the bellows.
Old Time is passing where they are, but Time will pass in vain;
All _never_ can, though _some_ may be, _transported_ here again:
Old "_What d'ye call him_," he's been off a week, or maybe more,
And took a little negro up, behind and one before;
But _What's his name_ and _You know who_, they lingered to the last,
And neither had a dollar left and seemed to be downcast;
Bad luck had fallen on them as falls the plague on men,
And their phizzes were as blank as if they'd never smile again;
And then when comes December next, as surely it will come,
To call the future delegate from out his distant home,
When the sound of cracking nuts is heard in lobby and in hall,
And glimmer in the smoky light old Shockoe Hill and all,
An old friend searches for the fellows he knew the year before,
And sighs to find them on the Hill Capitoline, no more;
But then he thinks of one who her promise had belied,
The beautiful Virginia, who had fallen in her pride.
In that great house 'twas said she fell where stands her gallant
chief,
Who well might weep in marble, that her race had been so brief--
Yet not unmeet it was he thought--oh no, ye heavenly powers!
Since she trusted those good fellows, who kept such shocking hours.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
Audire magnos jam videor duces
Non indecoro pulvere sordidos.--_Hor. Car. L. ii. 1._
I stood upon the heights above Charlestown, and was silently
contrasting the then peaceful aspect of the scene with that which it
presented on the day of wrath and blood which had rendered the place so
memorable in story, as my fancy filled with images of the past and once
more crowded the hill--not indeed with knights and paladins of old,
Sed rusticorum mascula militum
Proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus
Versare glebas, et severae
Matris ad arbitrium recisos
Portare fustes.--_Hor. Lib. iii. Car. 6._
As the silent hosts arose in imagination before me, I thought of the
complicated feelings which on that day must have stirred their hearts;
I thought of the breasts which kindled under the insult of invasion and
were nerved with the stern determination to play out the game upon
which was staked their all of earthly hope or fear, and it struck me
that the gallant Warren, whose voice had often made the patriot's heart
to glow and nerved the warrior's arm, might perhaps have addressed them
in sentiment something as follows: