66 66 LOCAL AND NATIONAL POETS OF AMERICA. That it seems as if he said, "They are gone!" The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest And the names he loved to hear My grandmamma has said Poor old lady! she is dead That he had a Roman nose, But now his nose is thin, And a crook is in his back, I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. NOTE. -Dr. Holmes has said of this poem, “If you will remember me by the Chambered Nautilus, your memory will be a monument I shall think more of than any bronze or marble." This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main.-The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl.- And every chambered cell, Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn? While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! EXTRACTS. The simple lessons which the nursery taught Where go the poet's lines? Answer, ye evening tapers! Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls, Speak from your folded papers! We count the broken lyres that rest Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, But o'er their silent sister's breast The wild flowers, who will stoop to number? A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them; Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them! Old Time, in whose bank we deposit our notes, Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats: He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them minutes and charging them years. You hear that boy laughing? You think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop at his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all. ALBERT CLYMER. BORN: FAIRFIELD CO., O., DEC. 10, 1827. IN 1890 Mr. Clymer removed from his farm in Morley to Olin, Iowa. He has issued a volume of poems entitled Echoes of the Woods, consisting of songs, ballads and lyrics which in a charming manner carry the author back to the days of boyhood and young manhood in his Ohio home. The true spirit of the muse pervades the entire volume. He has had a strong partiality for poetry from his earliest recollection. Mr. Clymer has several volumes of verse ready for publication, and devotes his time mainly to writing and doing light farm work. POETRY AS COMPARED TO PROSE. True poetry of thought, if it is well expressed, In prose, blank verse, or rhyme, as suits men best. Dull nature wakes from lethargy and sleep; It thrills the soul with beauty's vital charm; In rhyming verse, we've measured time, We here will not affirm, nor yet deny, We hope from time to time, as shall appear This fruit may, then, be cracked, and tasted too, all round, [sound. And cracked again; remaining fresh and EVOLUTION. Wonderfully long, indeed, Haeckel's chain, Which gave the moneron two legs and a brain, From the depth of the sea the moneron came: Haeckel the scientist gave it a name;--As small as a pin's head, a globular cell; After ages to crawl, snail-like, from a shell. An infusory, neither male nor female, Acquires a back-bone, and fins, and a tail. A thing without nerve, or muscle, or wish, Is changed to a polyp, a mollusk, a fish. Hatched by the sun from the spawn of the [wog. frog, Reigns queen in a mud-puddle, Miss PolliA tortoise, a monkey, four legs recollect; A man with two hands and a mind walks erect. Some millions of years requiring to span The chasm between the monkey and man. The billions betwixt his first and last state And the number of times he did transmi grate No man from such data can calculate. The existance of man, how brought about, They ne'er can explain if God is left out. So scientists fail, with all their great skill, To solve the great problem; aye fail thus they will. God says he made man;-of the ground 'tis confessed As good, when first formed, as is Haeckel's best. Those naturalists sure have been to great pains, To prove that they sprang from a race minus brains. Such teachers as they should exit the hive; By nature's great law the fittest survive." Since they from the spawn of the rena were hatched, And by them the bull-frogs as croakers are matched, From the form of the arm, and the length of the thigh," They sprang from the species the gentry would fry. They judge of the class, order and strain, the jaw, And spinal column, they inference draw. The texture of muscle, the form of the bone, The order of teeth, and the organs of tone; The size of the skull, the brain caliber, The pedigree and habits infer. Whence a class sprang, thro' which line they descend, When they went crawling, or stood upon end. The reptile, the grub, the molecule source; They draw their conclusions from data of course; If valves or bivalves; we're told that those seers Calculate back for a billion of years; To prove evolution must have produced man, Without a creative intelligent plan. Infidels madly the Bible have spurned: 'Tis only the present in which they're con cerned: Trusting their reason they're going astray, As others will do who take the same way. "Tis clear, quite clear, very clear to my mind, Those men, as the frogs, to leap are inclined; Equally good at the game of leap-frog, They jump at conclusions and croak in a bog. WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH. Of poison drugs and watering; Of shilly shally pottering, The above jingle may be read from top to bottom, an vice versa. HENRY H. BROWNELL. BORN: PROVIDENCE, R. I., FEB. 6, 1820. AFTER receiving a collegiate education he became a school teacher, began the study of law and admitted to the bar in 1844. In 1849 he gave up the practice of law and thenceforth devoted himself to authorship; he has published several volumes of verse besides many works of prose. CHARITY. Hast thou no angel-charity, no kindness to fulfill For those on whom this winter storm beats down more naked still? THE EAGLE OF CORINTH. 'Tis many a stormy day, Since, out of the cold, bleak North, To swoop o'er battle and fray. O'er charge and storm hath he wheeled, Tramp, and volley, and rattle! - He shall soar to his Eyrie-Home- JOHN JACOB DICKSON. BORN: SCOTT Co., IND., SEPT. 8, 1826. WORKING on the farm when young at six dollars per month, Mr. Dickson afterward learned the cooper trade. In 1850 he removed to West Grove, Iowa, where he now resides, buying his farm from the government. In 1864 JOHN J. DICKSON. he was with Sherman's army on its famous march to the sea. Judge W. M. Dickson, of Cincinnati, is the only brother of the subject of this sketch. John J. Dickson has been a member of the Presbyterian church for the past thirty years, but now favors the Friends YOUTH AND AGE. In memory I recall my hopeful days So full of joy and innocent of sin; Of creeds, oppression, strife for pelf,and war, Who yields a willing soul, whose mind can scan Where Freedom feels no license or restraint, But I am under law e'er since my birth For love has no opposing foe above To mar its Eden joy from which there springs A peace that Earth's contending sects approve, Then take the sword and disobey the Lord of love. TO A BUDDING POETICAL GENIUS. The world's admiring theme. In prosy lines devoid of art, If you have genius, rare and great, No rule can be your bar, Shakespeare made his own law of verse, And Bonaparte of war. None but the great dare step aside From Custom's iron rule. The common mind must follow her, Or be esteemed a fool. No genius now upon the stage, Whose great inventions show To all the smallness of the age, In things it does not know. As Webster said, there's room above," Where lawyers great may go, And so it is in ev'ry thing; There is a crowd below. It is our wish you may succeed, And laurels crown your brow, And when you do you will not need The lines we send you now. Your feet" the measure" fit exact, 66 According to the rules, The poets of the past have made To old Parnassus' mountain shore, In language pure compose your verse, But at a sinner" hurl no curse, Nor wink at public crime. 70 LOCAL AND NATIONAL POETS OF AMERICA. Write from your heart - you'll not cater To kings or reigning wrongs- The poet's sympathies are not When woeing for the muses' grace-- Know this one line of sense is worth, THREE HUNDRED HEROES. On come the legions of the Gray- gale The fearful news has spoken. O, for ten minutes more of time To get the cannon into line, And stop by rapid shelling, The onward charge of Jackson's corps, day; They turned the tide of glory. The charging legions of the Gray, Were by three hundred held at bay Until the guns were sighted; Then on they came with louder yell, But they were stopped by shot and shell And Jackson's charge was blighted. This praying, fighting, brightest star Is where the lead is flying. It is the soldiers' hallowed ground" Among the dead or dying. *John Bright, (England's Quaker Statesman), resigned his place in Gladstone's min-. istry, because of his war in Africa, but held that our war for liberty and union was justiflable. The law is a terror to evil doers," and must have power to enforce it. Our war was a police force, to enforce the law, and prevent anarchy. .. PUT UP THY SWORD." There is a field where just men work, A high untrodden plain, Above the jostling crowd below, Where men by love of truth inspired. The doctors wrangle through the years The party men have fed the flock |