BOUGHTON, had you bid me chant
Hymns to Peter Stuyvesant!
Had you bid me sing of Wouter,
(He! the Onion-head! the Doubter!)
But to rhyme of this one,-Mocker!
Who shall rhyme to Knickerbocker?

Nay, but where my hand must fail
There the more shall yours avail;
You shall take your brush and paint
All that ring of figures quaint,—
All those Rip-van-Winkle jokers,—
All those solid-looking smokers,
Pulling at their pipes of amber
In the dark-beamed Council-Chamber.

Only art like yours can touch
Shapes so dignified. . and Dutch;

Only art like yours can show
How the pine-logs gleam and glow,

Till the fire-light laughs and passes
"Twixt the tankards and the glasses,
Touching with responsive graces
All those grave Batavian faces,—
Making bland and beatific
All that session soporific.

Then I come and write beneath, BOUGHTON, he deserves the wreath; He can give us form and hue— This the Muse can never do!

TO A PASTORAL POET

(H. E. B.)

AMONG my best I put your Book,

O Poet of the breeze and brook! (That breeze and brook which blows and falls More soft to those in city walls)

Among my best: and keep it still
Till down the fair grass-girdled hill,
Where slopes my garden-slip, there goes
The wandering wind that wakes the rose,
And scares the cohort that explore
The broad-faced sun-flower o'er and o'er,
Or starts the restless bees that fret
The bindweed and the mignonette.

Then I shall take your Book, and dream
I lie beside some haunted stream;
And watch the crisping waves that pass,
And watch the flicker in the grass;
And wait-and wait-and wait to see
The Nymph . . . that never comes to me!

TO ONE WHO BIDS ME SING

"The straw is too old to make pipes of."

You

-DON QUIXOTE,

YOU ask a "many-winter'd" Bard
Where hides his old vocation?

I'll give the answer is not hard—
A classic explanation.

"Immortal" though he be, he still,

Tithonus-like, grows older,
While she, his Muse of Pindus Hill,
Still bares a youthful shoulder.

Could that too-sprightly Nymph but leave Her ageless grace and beauty,

They might, betwixt them both, achieve A hymn de Senectute;

But She She can't grow gray; and so, Her slave, whose hairs are falling,

Must e'en his Doric flute forego,

And seek some graver calling,

Not ill-content to stand aside,
To yield to minstrels fitter
His singing-robes, his singing-pride,
His fancies sweet-and bitter!

"SAT EST SCRIPSISSE"

(TO E. G., WITH A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS)

WHEN

HEN You and I have wandered beyond the reach of call,

And all our Works immortal lie scattered on the

Stall,

It may be some new Reader, in that remoter

age,

Will find the present Volume and listless turn the page.

For him I speak these verses. And, Sir (I say to him),

This Book you see before you,—this masterpiece of Whim,

Of Wisdom, Learning, Fancy (if you will, please, attend),

Was written by its Author, who gave it to his Friend.

For they had worked together,-been Comrades of the Pen;

They had their points at issue, they differed now

and then ;