She combed it, and washed it, and clothed it, and fed it,`
And as if 'twere her own child most tenderly bred it,
Laid the scene (of the legend, I mean) far away a
-mong the green vales underneath Himalaya.
And by artist-like touches, laid on here and there,
Made the whole thing so touching, I frankly declare
I have read it all thrice, and, perhaps I am weak,
But I found every time there were tears on my cheek.

The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls,
But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles,

And folks with a mission that nobody knows,
Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose;
She can fill up the carets in such, make their scope
Converge to some focus of rational hope,

And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall
Can transmute into honey-but this is not all;
Not only for those she has solace, oh, say,
Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway,

Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human,

To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman,

Hast thou not found one shore where those tired drooping feet
Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat
The soothed head in silence reposing could hear
The chimes of far childhood throb back on the ear?
Ah, there's many a beam from the fountain of day
That to reach us unclouded, must pass, on its way,
Through the soul of a woman, and hers is wide ope
To the influence of Heaven as the blue eyes of Hope;
Yes, a great soul is Hers, one that dares to go in
To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin,
And to bring into each, or to find there some line
Of the never completely out-trampled divine;

If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then, "Tis but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen,

As, after old Nile has subsided, his plain
Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain;

What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and sour
Could they be as a Child but for one little hour!

'What! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain,
You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain,
And the gravest sweet humour, that ever were there
Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair;
Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching-
I shan't run directly against my own preaching,
And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes
Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes;

But allow me to speak what I honestly feel-
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele,
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill,

With the whole of that partnership's stock and goodwill,
Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell,
The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well,
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain,
That only the finest and clearest remain,

Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives

From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving

A name either English or Yankee-just Irving.

'There goes-but stet nominis umbra-his name You'll be glad enough, some day or other, to claim,

And will all crowd about him and swear that you knew him If some English hack-critic should chance to review him The old porcos ante ne projiciatis

MARGARITAS, for him you have verified gratis;

What matters his name? Why, it may be Sylvester,
Judd, Junior, or Junius, Ulysses, or Nestor,

For aught I know or care; 'tis enough that I look

On the author of "Margaret," the first Yankee book
With the soul of Down East in't, and things farther East,
As far as the threshold of morning, at least,
Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true,
Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new.
'T has a smack of pine woods, of bare field and bleak hill
Such as only the breed of the Mayflower could till;
The Puritan's shown in it, tough to the core,
Such as prayed, smiting Agag on red Marston Moor;
With an unwilling humour, half-choked by the drouth
In brown hollows about the inhospitable mouth;
With a soul full of poetry, though it has qualms
About finding a happiness out of the Psalms;
Full of tenderness, too, though it shrinks in the dark,
Hamadryad-like, under the coarse, shaggy bark;
That sees visions, knows wrestlings of God with the Will,
And has its own Sinais and thunderings still.'

Here-'Forgive me, Apollo,' I cried, while I pour
My heart out to my birthplace: O, loved more and more
Dear Baystate, from whose rocky bosom thy sons
Should suck milk, strongwill-giving, brave, such as runs
In the veins of old Graylock-who is it that dares
Call thee pedler, a soul wrapt in bank-books and shares?
It is false! She's a poet! I see, as I write.
Along the far railroad the steam-snake glide white,

The cataract-throb of her mill-hearts I hear,

The swift strokes of trip-hammers weary my ear,

Sledges ring upon anvils, through logs the saw screams, Blocks swing to their place, beetles drive home the beams:It is songs such as these that she croons to the din

Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and year in,

While from earth's farthest corner there comes not a breeze
But wafts her the buzz of her gold-gleaning bees:

What though those horn hands have as yet found small time
For painting and sculpture and music and rhyme?
These will come in due order, the need that pressed sorest
Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest,

To bridle and harness the rivers, the steam,

Making that whirl her mill-wheels, this tug in her team,
To vassalise old tyrant Winter, and make

Him delve surlily for her on river and lake ;

When this New World was parted, she strove not to shirk Her lot in the heirloom, the tough, silent Work,

The hero-share ever, from Herakles down

To Odin, the Earth's iron sceptre and crown;
Yes, thou dear, noble Mother! if ever men's praise
Could be claimed for creating heroical lays,
Thou hast won it; if ever the laurel divine
Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory is thine!
Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this rude
Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and subdued;
Thou hast written them plain on the face of the planet
In brave, deathless letters of iron and granite;
Thou hast printed them deep for all time; they are set
From the same runic type-fount and alphabet

With thy stout Berkshire hills and the arms of thy Bay-
They are staves from the burly old Mayflower lay.
If the drones of the Old World, in querulous ease,
Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly to these,
Or, if they deny these are Letters and Art,
Toil on with the same old invincible heart;
Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based and grand
Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand,
And creating, through labours undaunted and long,
The theme for all Sculpture and Painting and Song!

'But my good mother Baystate wants no praise of mine, She learned from her mother a precept divine

About something that butters no parsnips, her forte

In another direction lies, work is her sport

(Though she'll curtsey and set her cap straight, that she will, If you talk about Plymouth and one Bunker's hill).

Dear, notable goodwife! by this time of night,
Her hearth is swept clean, and her fire burning bright,
And she sits in a chair (of home plan and make) rocking,
Musing much, all the while, as she darns on a stocking,
Whether turkeys will come pretty high next Thanksgiving,
Whether flour'll be so dear, for, as sure as she's living,
She will use rye-and-injun then, whether the pig

By this time ain't got pretty tolerable big,

And whether to sell it outright will be best,

Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt down the rest

At this minute, she'd swop all my verses, ah, cruel!

For the last patent stove that is saving of fuel;

So I'll just let Apollo go on, for his phiz

Shows I've kept him awaiting too long as it is.'

'If our friend, there, who seems a reporter, is done
With his burst of emotion, why, I will go on,'
Said Apollo; some smiled, and, indeed, I must own
There was something sarcastic, perhaps, in his tone:-

'There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit, A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit The electrical tingles of hit after hit;

In long poems 'tis painful sometimes and invites
A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes,
Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully
As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully,
And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning
Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning.
He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre,
But many admire it, the English pentameter,
And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse,
With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse,
Nor e'er achieved aught in't so worthy of praise

As the tribute of Holmes to the Grand Marseillaise.
You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon ;-
Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on,
Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes,
He could ne'er reach the best point and vigour of Holmes.
His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric
Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes
That are trodden upon are your own or your foes.

'There's Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme,
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders,

The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching;
His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,
But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell,
And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,

At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.

'There goes Halleck, whose Fanny's a pseudo Don Juan,
With the wickedness out that gave salt to the true one,
He's a wit, though, I hear, of the very first order,
And once made a pun on the words soft Recorder;
More than this, he's a very great poet, I'm told,
And has had his works published in crimson and gold,
With something they call "Illustrations," to wit,
Like those with which Chapman obscured Holy Writ,*
Which are said to illustrate, because, as I view it,
Like lucus a non, they precisely don't do it;

Let a man who can write what himself understands
Keep clear, if he can, of designing men's hands,
Who bury the sense, if there's any worth having,
And then very honestly call it engraving.

But, to quit badinage, which there isn't much wit in,
Halleck's better, I doubt not, than all he has written;
In his verse a clear glimpse you will frequently find,
If not of a great, of a fortunate mind,

Which contrives to be true to its natural loves

In a world of back-offices, ledgers, and stoves.

When his heart breaks away from the brokers and banks,
And kneels in its own private shrine to give thanks,
There's a genial manliness in him that earns

Our sincerest respect (read, for instance, his "Burns"),
And we can't but regret (seek excuse where we may)

That so much of a man has been peddled away.

'But what's that? a mass-meeting? No, there come in lots The American Disraelis, Bulwers, and Scotts,

And in short the American everything-elses,

Each charging the others with envies and jealousies;

By the way, 'tis a fact that displays what profusions

Of all kinds of greatness bless free institutions,

That while the Old World has produced barely eight
Of such poets as all men agree to call great,
And of other great characters hardly a score

(One might safely say less than that rather than more),
With you every year a whole crop is begotten,
They're as much of a staple as corn is, or cotton;

(Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.)