And who's willing to worship the stars and the sun, A convert to-nothing but Emerson. So perfect a balance there is in his head, That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead; Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort, As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, in it; Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion, With the quiet precision of science he'll sort 'em, But you can't help suspecting the whole a posi mortem. "There are persons, mole-blind to the soul's make and style, Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and Carlyle; That he's more of a man you might say of the one, C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb,- Greek, Where the one's most abounding, the other 's to seek; C.'s generals require to be seer in the mass, E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass; E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, And looks coolly around him with sharp common sense; C. shows you how every-day matters unite illy, But he paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews; E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe, Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men; E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted, "He has imitators in scores, who omit No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,~~ As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for a minute, While a cloud that floats o'er is reflected within it. for instance; to see him 's "There comes rare sport, Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short; How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face, To keep step with the mystagogue's natural pace ! He follows as close as a stick to a rocket, His fingers exploring the prophet's each pocket. Fie, for shame, brother bard; with good fruit of your own, Can't you let neighbor Emerson's orchards alone? Besides, 'tis no use, you'll not find e'en a core,— has picked up all the windfalls before. They might strip every tree, and E. never would catch 'em, His Hesperides have no rude dragon to watch 'em; When they send him a dishfull, and ask him to try 'em, He never suspects how the sly rogues came by 'em ; He wonders why 'tis there are none such his trees on, And thinks 'em the best he has tasted this season. "Yonder, calm as a cloud, Alcott stalks in a dream, And fancies himself in thy groves, Academe, him, And never a fact to perplex him or bore him, With a snug room at Plato's, when night comes, to walk to, And people from morning till midnight to talk to, And from midnight till morning, nor snore in their listening; So he muses, his face with the joy of it glistening, For his highest conceit of a happiest state is Where they'd live upon acorns, and hear him talk gratis; And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked better-Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to a letter; He seems piling words, but there's royal dust hid In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid. While he talks he is great, but goes out like a taper, If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, and paper; Yet his fingers itch for 'em from morning till night, And he thinks he does wrong if he don't always write; In this, as in all things, a lamb among men, He goes to sure death when he goes to his pen. "Close behind him is Brownson, his mouth very full With attempting to gulp a Gregorian bull; goes A stream of transparent and forcible prose; He shifts quite about, then proceeds to expound That 'tis merely the earth, not himself, that turns round, And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind, That the weather-cock rules and not follows the wind; Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side, With no doctrine pleased that's not somewhere denied, He lays the denier away on the shelf, And then--down beside him lies gravely himself. He's the Salt River boatman, who always stands willing To convey friend or foe without charging a shilling, And so fond of the trip that, when leisure's to spare, He'll row himself up, if he can't get a fare. The worst of it is, that his logic's so strong, That white's white needs no proof, but it takes a deep fellow To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow. He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve,When it reaches your lips there's naught left to believe But a few silly-(syllo-, I mean,) -gisms that squat 'em Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud at the bot tom. "There is Willis, so natty and jaunty and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em, That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em; Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose, Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced, |