For aught I know or care; 'tis enough that I look On the author of 'Margaret,' the first Yankee book With the soul of Down East in't, and things farther East,

As far as the threshold of morning, at least,

Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true, Of the day that comes slowly to make all things

new.

'T has a smack of pine woods; of bare field and bleak hill

Such as only the breed of the Mayflower could till; The Puritan's shown in it, tough to the core,

Such as prayed, smiting Agag on red Marston
Moor;

With an unwilling humor, half-choked by the drouth
In brown hollows about the inhospitable mouth;
With a soul full of poetry, though it has qualms
About finding a happiness out of the Psalms;
Full of tenderness, too, though it shrinks in the
dark,

Hamadryad-like, under the coarse, shaggy bark; That sees visions, knows wrestlings of God with the Will,

And has its own Sinais and thunderings still."

Here," Forgive me, Apollo,” I cried, “ while I

pour

My heart out to my birthplace: O, loved more and more

Dear Baystate, from whose rocky bosom thy sons Should suck milk, strong-will-giving, brave, such as

runs

In the veins of old Graylock,-who is it that dares Call thee peddler, a soul wrapt in bank-books and shares ?

It is false! She's a Poet! I see, as I write,

Along the far railroad the steam-snake glide white,

The cataract-throb of her mill-hearts I hear,
The swift strokes of trip-hammers weary my ear,
Sledges ring upon anvils, through logs the saw
screams,

Blocks swing to their place, beetles drive home the beams:

It is songs such as these that she croons to the din Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and year in, While from earth's farthest corner there comes not a breeze

But wafts her the buzz of her gold-gleaning bees: What though those horn hands have as yet found small time

For painting and sculpture and music and rhyme? These will come in due order, the need that pressed

sorest

Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest, To bridle and harness the rivers, the steam, Making that whirl her mill-wheels, this tug in her team,

To vassalize old tyrant Winter, and make

Him delve surlily for her on river and lake ;When this New World was parted, she strove not to shirk

Her lot in the heirdom, the tough, silent Work,
The hero-share ever, from Herakles down
To Odin, the Earth's iron sceptre and crown;
Yes, thou dear, noble Mother! if ever men's praise
Could be claimed for creating heroical lays,
Thou hast won it; if ever the laurel divine

Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory is thine !

Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this rude Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and sub

dued;

Thou hast written them plain on the face of the

planet

In brave, deathless letters of iron and granite; Thou hast printed them deep for all time; they

are set

From the same runic type-fount and alphabet
With thy stout Berkshire hills and the arms of thy
Bay,-

They are staves from the burly old Mayflower lay.
If the drones of the Old World, in querulous ease,
Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly to
these,

Or, if they deny these are Letters and Art,

Toil on with the same old invincible heart; Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based and grand

Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand, And creating, through labors undaunted and long, The theme for all Sculpture and Painting and Song!

"But my good mother Baystate wants no praise of mine,

She learned from her mother a precept divine About something that butters no parsnips, her forte In another direction lies, work is her sport, (Though she'll curtsey and set her cap straight, that she will,

If you talk about Plymouth and one Bunker's hill.)

Dear, notable goodwife! by this time of night,
Her hearth is swept clean, and her fire burning

bright,

And she sits in a chair (of home plan and make)

rocking,

Musing much, all the while, as she darns on a

stocking,

་

Whether turkeys will come pretty high next Thanksgiving,

Whether flour 'll be so dear, for, as sure as she's living,

She will use rye-and-injun then, whether the pig By this time ain't got pretty tolerable big,

And whether to sell it outright will be best,

Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt down the

rest,- ་

At this minute, she'd swop all my verses, ah, cruel!

For the last patent stove that is saving of fuel;
So I'll just let Apollo go on, for his phiz

Shows I've kept him awaiting too long as it is."

"If our friend, there, who seems a reporter, is done

With his burst of emotion, why, I will go on,"
Said Apollo; some smiled, and, indeed, I must own
There was something sarcastic, perhaps, in his
tone;-

"There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit;

A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit
The electrical tingles of hit after hit;

In long poems 'tis painful sometimes and invites
A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes,
Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spite-
fully

As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully, And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning

Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning.

He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre,
But many admire it, the English pentameter,
And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly

With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse,

Nor e'er achieved aught in't so worthy of praise
As the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseil-

laise.

You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon ;

Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme.

on,

Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of

Holmes.

His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a

lyric

Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes

That are trodden upon are your own or your foes'.

"There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb

With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme,

He might get on alone, spite of brambles and

boulders,

But he can't with that bundle he has on his

shoulders,

The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reach

ing

Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching;

His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,

But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,

At the head of a march to the last new Jerusa

lem.

.