HE for whose sake the glittering show appears Has sown the world with laughter and with tears, And they whose welcome wets the bumper's brim Have wit and wisdom--for they all quote him. So, many a tongue the evening hour prolongs With spangled speeches, let alone the songs; Statesmen grow merry, young attorneys laugh, And weak teetotals warm to half-and-half, And beardless Tullys, new to festive scenes, Cut their first crop of youth's precocious greens; And wits stand ready for impromptu claps, With loaded barrels and percussion-caps; And Pathos, cantering through the minor keys, Waves all her onions to the trembling breeze; While the great Feasted views with silent glee His scattered limbs in Yankee fricassee.
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise; Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart, Is ever pliant to the master's art; Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdraws And sheaths in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light tremor of her gentle pur.
But what sad music fills the quiet hall If on her back a feline rival fall! And oh! what noises shake the tranquil house, If old SELF-INTEREST cheats her of a mouse!
Thou, O my country! hast thy foolish ways, Too apt to pur at every stranger's praise: But if the stranger touch thy modes or laws, Off goes the velvet and out come the claws!
And thou, Illustrious! but too poorly paid In toasts from Pickwick for thy great crusade, Though while the echoes labored with thy name The public trap denied thy little game, Let other lips our jealous laws revile-- The marble TALFOURD or the rude CARLYLE; But on thy lids, that Heaven forbids to close Where'er the light of kindly nature glows, Let not the dollars that a churl denies Weigh like the shillings on a dead man's eyes! Or, if thou wilt, be more discreetly blind, Nor ask to see all wide extremes combined; Not in our wastes the dainty blossoms smile That crowd the gardens of thy scanty isle; There white-cheek'd Luxury weaves a thousand charms, Here sun-browned Labor swings his Cyclop arms; Long are the furrows he must trace between The ocean's azure and the prairies' green; Full many a blank his destined realm displays, Yet see the promise of his riper days: Far through yon depths the panting engine moves, His chariots ringing in their steel-shod groves, And Erie's naiad flings her diamond wave O'er the wild sea-nymph in her distant cave: While tasks like these employ his anxious hours, What if his corn-fields are not edged with flowers? Though bright as silver the meridian beams Shine through the crystal of thine English streams, Turbid and dark the mighty wave is whirled That drains our Andes and divides a world.