And hail the coming of the noblest
guest
The Old World's wrong has given the
New World of the West!

TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER.

AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER OF HORACE.

OLD friend, kind friend! lightly down
Drop time'ssnow-flakes on thy crown!
Never be thy shadow less,
Never fail thy cheerfulness;
Care, that kills the cat, may plough
Wrinkles in the miser's brow,
Deepen envy's spiteful frown,
Draw the mouths of bigots down,
Plague ambition's dream, and sit
Heavy on the hypocrite,

Haunt the rich man's door, and ride
In the gilded coach of pride; -
Let the fiend pass!-what can he
Find to do with such as thee?
Seldom comes that evil guest
Where the conscience lies at rest,
And brown health and quiet wit
Smiling on the threshold sit.

I, the urchin unto whom,
In that smoked and dingy room,
Where the district gave thee rule
O'er its ragged winter school,
Thou didst teach the mysteries
Of those weary A B C's, -
Where, to fill the every pause
Of thy wise and learned saws,
Through the cracked and crazy wall
Came the cradle-rock and squall,
And the goodman's voice, at strife
With his shrill and tipsy wife,
Luring us by stories old,
With a comic unction told,
More than by the eloquence
Of terse birchen arguments
(Doubtful gain, I fear), to look
With complacence on a book!-
Where the genial pedagogue
Half forgot his rogues to flog,
Citing tale or apologue,
Wise and merry in its drift
As old Phædrus' twofold gift,

211

Had the little rebels known it,
Risum et prudentiam monet!
I, --the man of middle years,
In whose sable locks appears
Many a warning fleck of gray, —
Looking back to that far day,
And thy primal lessons, feel
Grateful smiles my lips unseal,
As, remembering thee, I blend
Olden teacher, present friend,
Wise with antiquarian search,
In the scrolls of State and Church;
Named on history's title-page,
Parish-clerk and justice sage;
For the ferule's wholesome awe
Wielding now the sword of law.

Questioning the stranded years, Waking smiles, by turns, and tears, As thou callest up again

Shapes the dust has long o'erlain,
Fair-haired woman, bearded man,
Cavalier and Puritan ;

In an age whose eager view
Seeks but present things, and new,
Mad for party, sect, and gold,
Teaching reverence for the old.

On that shore, with fowler's tact,
Coolly bagging fact on fact,
Naught amiss to thee can float,
Tale, or song, or anecdote;
Village gossip, centuries old,
Scandals by our grandams told,
What the pilgrim's table spread,
Where he lived, and whom he wed,
Long-drawn bill of wine and beer
For his ordination cheer,

Or the flip that wellnigh made
Glad his funeral cavalcade;
Weary prose, and poet's lines,
Flavored by their age, like wines,
Eulogistic of some quaint,
Doubtful, puritanic saint;
Lays that quickened husking jigs,
Jests that shook grave periwigs,
When the parson had his jokes
And his glass, like other folks;
Sermons that, for mortal hours,
Taxed our fathers' vital powers,
As the long nineteenthlies poured
Downward from the sounding-board,
And, for fire of Pentecost,

Touched their beards December's frost.

Time is hastening on, and we
What our fathers are shall be,-
Shadow-shapes of memory!
Joined to that vast multitude
Where the great are but the good,
And the mind of strength shall prove
Weaker than the heart of love;
Pride of graybeard wisdom less
Than the infant's guilelessness,
And his song of sorrow more
Than the crown the Psalmist wore !
Who shall then, with pious zeal,
At our moss-grown thresholds kneel,
From a stained and stony page
Reading to a careless age,

With a patient eye like thine,
Prosing tale and limping line,
Names and words the hoary rime
Of the Past has made sublime?
Who shall work for us as well
The antiquarian's miracle?
Who to seeming life recall
Teacher grave and pupil small?
Who shall give to thee and me
Freeholds in futurity?

Well, whatever lot be mine,
Long and happy days be thine,
Ere thy full and honored age
Dates of time its latest page!
Squire for master, State for school,
Wisely lenient, live and rule;
Over grown-up knave and rogue
Play the watchful pédagogue;
Or, while pleasure smiles on duty,
At the call of youth and beauty,
Speak for them the spell of law
Which shall bar and bolt withdraw,
And the flaming sword remove
From the Paradise of Love.
Still, with undimmed eyesight, pore
Ancient tome and record o'er;
Still thy week-day lyrics croon,
Pitch in church the Sunday tune,
Showing something, in thy part,
Of the old Puritanic art,
Singer after Sternhold's heart!
In thy pew, for many a year,
Homilies from Oldbug hear,60
Who to wit like that of South,
And the Syrian's golden mouth,
Doth the homely pathos add
Which the pilgrim preachers had;
Breaking, like a child at play,
Gilded idols of the day,
Cant of knave and pomp of fool
Tossing with his ridicule,
Yet, in earnest or in jest,
Ever keeping truth abreast.
And, when thou art called, at last,
To thy townsmen of the past,
Not as stranger shalt thou come;
Thou shalt find thyself at home!
With the little and the big,
Woollen cap and periwig,
Madam in her high-laced ruff,
Goody in her home-made stuff,-
Wise and simple, rich and poor,
Thou hast known them all before !

The hieroglyphics of that facial page; Half sad, half scornful, listening to the bruit

Of restless cane-tap and impatient foot, And the shrill call, across the general din,

"Roll up your curtain! Let the show begin!"

Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely windowed hall,

And long escarpment of half-crumbled wall,

Huger than those which, from steep hills of vine,

Stare through their loopholes on the travelled Rhine;

Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's mind
A fancy, idle as the prairie wind,
Of the land's dwellers in an age un-
guessed,

The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West.

Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells

surpass

The Tartar's marvels of his Land of

Grass,

Vast as the sky against whose sunset shores

Wave after wave the billowy greenness pours;

And, onward still, like islands in that main

Loom the rough peaks of many a mountain chain,

Whence east and west a thousand waters run

From winter lingering under summer's sun.

And, still beyond, long lines of foam and sand

Tell where Pacific rolls his waves a-land,

From many a wide-lapped port and land-locked bay,

Opening with thunderous pomp the world's highway

To Indian isles of spice, and marts of far Cathay.