(Miranda meanwhile has succeeded in driving Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, A small flock of terrified victims, and there, With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air And a tone which, at least to my fancy, appears Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise,) For 'tis dotted as thick as a peacock's with I's.) Apropos of Miranda, I'll rest on my oars And drift through a trifling digression on bores, For, though not wearing ear-rings in more majorum, Our ears are kept bored just as if we still wore 'em. There was one feudal custom worth keeping, at least, Roasted bores made a part of each well-ordered feast, And of all quiet pleasures the very ne plus Was in hunting wild bores as the tame ones hunt us. Archæologians, I know, who have personal fears Of this wise application of hounds and of spears, Have tried to make out, with a zeal more than wonted, 'Twas a kind of wild swine that our ancestors hunted; But I'll never believe that the age which has strewn Europe o'er with cathedrals, and otherwise shown That it knew what was what, could by chance not have known, (Spending, too, its chief time with its buff on, no doubt,) Which beast 'twould improve the world most to thin out. I divide bores myself, in the manner of rifles, In the weight of cold lead they respectively carry. The smooth-bore is one in whose essence the mind Down a steep slated roof where there's nothing to grip, You slide and you slide, the blank horror in creases, You had rather by far be at once smashed to pieces, You fancy a whirlpool below white and frothing, tions For going just wrong in the tritest directions; When he's wrong he is flat, when he's right he can't show it, He'll tell you what Snooks said about the new poet,* Or how Fogrum was outraged by Tennyson's Prin cess; He has spent all his spare time and intellect since his Birth in perusing, on each art and science, Just the books in which no one puts any reliance, And to make him a sort of mosquito to be with, These sketches I made (not to be too explicit) *(If you call Snooks an owl, he will show by his looks From two honest fellows who made me a visit, And broke, like the tale of the Bear and the Fiddle, My reflections on Halleck short off by the middle; Under all sorts of boring, at all sorts of hours, frown 'Neath what Fourier nicknames the Boreal crown; Only think what that infinite bore-pow'r could do If applied with a utilitarian view; Suppose, for example, we shipped it with care They'd fill the whole waste with Artesian wells. "There comes Harry Franco, and, as he draws near, You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer; render; He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest, When he seems to be joking, be sure he's in earnest; He has common sense in a way that's uncommon, Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke, outer, Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her, Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart, "There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, In a way to make people of common-sense damn metres, Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind, Who-but hey-day! What's this? Messieurs Mathews and Poe, You mustn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so, Does it make a man worse that his character's such As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much? Why, there is not a bard at this moment alive More willing than he that his fellows should thrive; While you are abusing him thus, even now But remember that elegance also is force; As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon is, sigenes; I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, o't is That I've heard the old blind man recite his own rhapsodies, And my ear with that music impregnate may be, Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of the sea, Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature is cloven To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven; But, set that aside, and 'tis truth that I speak, In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline. That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art, "Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife As quiet and chaste as the author's own life. |