The subject widens as we write; absurdities throng around our quill, striving to get down to the nib of our pen; and the very fulness of the argument chokes our utterance; we grow fustigatory and impatient to lay about us; but we must conclude in the words with which an ingenious cotemporary a few months since began an essay upon the same subject, namely: '_Copy-right is a humbug_.'
ON READING 'FORGET-ME-NOT,' IN THE JULY KNICKERBOCKER.
WHEN spring-time fancies haunt the brain, Or cluster round the young heart's shrine, No sadness clogs the dreamer's strain, To bid him o'er his lot repine: By Love's first fantasies oppressed, He hies him to some stream-laved spot, And sighs along the blue-flower's breast, 'Forget-me-not! forget-me-not!'
To manhood's sterner cares allied, The image lords it o'er his will; In vain the struggles of his pride, The form and features haunt him still. His pillow sought, the toils of life, Trade, strifes, defeats, all are forgot, While with one theme his dream is rife: 'Forget-me-not! forget-me-not!'
Poor dreamer! like his fleeting years, The autumn of his fond desires Pours disappointment's icy tears, To quench his youth's delusive fires. Within his heart, time and despair, To foil his hopes triumphant plot; Unmoved at his unceasing prayer, 'Forget-me-not! forget-me-not!'
Like to the flower when autumn comes To seek its folds with chilling breath, And winter's earliest whisper roams Its heart among, to tell of death; Thus on man's heart, as o'er the flower, Fall tears, with grief and anguish hot, And speeds the cry to Heaven's high POWER, 'Forget-me-not! forget-me-not!'
TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER MAGAZINE.
SIR: I can only account for your conduct by this one supposition: you must be a _drinking-man_. Nothing but the repeated, though perhaps unconscious, inebriation arising from an excessive use of stimulating drinks, could produce that torpidity of the moral sentiments which is manifested by your editorial career. Your late allusion to the cordwainers of Xeres, or in vulgar tap-room slang, '_sherry cobblers_,' is very strong against you. Your ill-timed merriment--the jocose levity of your 'Editor's Table'--all go to confirm my theory. You indulge--I know you do.