ON THE FIRST OF JANUARY, WITH A JAR OF HONEY.
FOLLOWING the example of the olden time, *
To inaugurate with sweetest sweets the year,
I send thee of my store of virgin honey:
Be the whole year to thee a honied year!
TO OVID DEPARTING FOR TOMI.
LAMENT not, poet, though thou leav'st behind thee
Thy dear-loved Roman hills and Tiber brown,
And house and home and family and friends,
Thou leav'st behind thee, too, the implacable,
Jealous, vindictive, iron-hearted tyrant,
With all his meanness, greatness, pomp and pride.
Lament not, poet, though thou takest with thee
Sad comrades! - exile, loneliness, and want,
Thou takest with thee, too, the laurel crown
And all men's sympathy except thy foe's.
Still thou lamentest ah! I will not bláme thee,'
Apollo never but on one condition
Bestows the never-fading laurel crown:
That it be kept perpetual wet with tears.
EDENVILLE, Sept. 9, 1858.
THEY call her Morning Red. She is a damsel
Who, every twenty-four hours, in the sky
Makes her appearance ere the rising sun,
To disappear the moment the sun's risen.
Buoyant and fresh and fair and ever young,
See where she hovers between Night and Day
Óne cheek in shadow, óne cheek bright and glowing
Hope's image, to the life, and prototype.
EDENVILLE, Sept. 14, 1858.
THEY call her Evening Gray. She is a matron,
Who, every twenty-four hours, in the sky
Makes her appearance after the sun 's set,
To disappear as soon as stars are risen.
Half in reflected light and half in shadow,
See where she sits, disconsolate and lone,
With drooping lids, wet cheeks, and folded hands
Grief's image, to the life, and prototype.
EDENVILLE, Sept. 15, 1858.
"Odi profanum vulgus et arceo."
BEGONE, come near me not, O most profane,
Abominable Vulgar! What know'st thou
Of Spondee, or of Dactyl, or of Trochee,
Or great Hexameter rolling like a sea?
What's to thee Strophe? Antistrophe, what?
Or Epode? or ill-natured, smart Iambus
With curled-up nose, and óne leg long, one short?
Thou 'st never roved on Helicon; foot never
Set on Parnassus; never quenched thy thirst
At Hippocrene's delicious, bubbling spring.
Phoebus to thee 's the sun; to thee Diana 's
The moon, indicative of change of weather;
Ánd the nine goddesses of the Aonian Mount
Are well off if for nothing worse thou count'st them
Than nursery maids or National-school teachers,
Who have forgot the best half of their toilette.
Óff! I'll not touch thee, know thee, or to do
Have with thee; and if ill-advised, officious,
Well meaning friends thy name so much as whisper,
I'll stop mine ears with both my hands, and roar,
And furious on the ground stamp with both feet,
Till nothing in the whole world 's heard but mé.
And if thou 'rt thrust upon me still, I'll leap
From a rock's top into the sea and drown,
That, if I mayn't live separate, I at least
May separate die and separate cross the Styx,
And separate set my tent up, in Elysium,
Ón the far bank of Lethe rolling ever
Its flood impassable 'twixt thee and me.
Walking from EDENVILLE to DUBLIN, Octob. 21, 1858.
"FOOL!" said the sensualist to the laborious,
"Who without pleasure passest thine whole life,
Thou diest tomorrow and thy labor 's lost."
"I set against thy pleasure," answered mild
And pausing from his labor, the laborious,
"The pleasure I 've in labor, and I find
The balance in my favor; to this balance,
Adding the pleasure which my labor's products
Buy me, I find the balance more than doubled:
And if my labor and my labor's pleasure
Die with me, so do not my labor's products;
While by thy pleasure nothing 's left behind,
Not even a stone whereon to write HIC JACET.
Walking from DALKEY to EDENVILLE, Oct. 20, 1858.
ALL the whole world loves twaddle: "How do
All the whole world reads Harriet Beecher Stowe.
IN Error's wood there are a thousand paths
Through which thou mayst for ever wander on,
Stumbling, perplexed, benighted, torn with thorns,
With growling wild beasts on all sides beset;
Happy, that find'st thyself, at long and last,
Ín the one, only path which leads to Truth's
Enchanted castle, hid, in the wood's thickest,
Deep as in Dodonean forest, Jove's,
Or in Castalian, Phoebus' shrine lay buried,
Or in Albuna's grove prophetic Faun,
Only to be approached through pestilential
Miasms, and sulphurous exhalations dire,
And sights appalling and unearthly sounds,
And bloody sacrifice and gifts of price.
EDENVILLE, Nov. 15, 1858.
"JUDGE me not, father!" said the ingenuous youth, "A man must only by his peers be judged; By his un-peers why should a hapless boy? Impannel a boy jury, I submit."
Walking from EDENVILLE to DALKEY, Oct. 24, 1858.
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