No bearer of burdens like Caliban, A stout old man with a greasy hat Slouched heavily down to his dark, red nose, And two gray eyes enveloped in fat, Looking through glasses with iron bows. He comes with a careless "how d'ye do," And then he reads from paper and book, The price of stocks, the auction sales, Oh! sweet as the lapse of water at noon O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree, The sigh of the wind in the woods of June, Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea, THE DEMON OF THE STUDY. Or the low soft music, perchance which seems So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone Of her in whose features I sometimes look, As I sit at eve by her side alone, 48 And we read by turns from the self-same bookSome tale perhaps of the olden time, Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme. Then when the story is one of woe,— Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar, And when she reads some merrier song, Oh, pity me then, when, day by day, The stout fiend darkens my parlour door; And reads me perchance the self-same lay Which melted in music the night before, From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet, And moved like twin roses which zephyrs meet! I cross my floor with a nervous tread, And stir up the fire to roast him out; I've studied Glanville and James the wise, Of demons of every name and size, Which a Christian man is presumed to meet, But never a hint and never a line Can I find of a reading fiend like mine. I've crossed the Psalter with Brady and Tate, "Conjuro te, scleratissime, Abire ad tuum locum!"—still And I hear again in my haunted room Ah!-commend me to Mary Magdalen With her seven-fold plagues-to the wandering To the terrors which haunted Orestes when THE PUMPKIN. OH! greenly and fair in the lands of the sun, Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew, THE PUMPKIN. 45 And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain. On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden: And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold; Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North, On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth, Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines, And the sun of September melts down on his vines. Ah!-on Thanksgiving Day, when from East and from West, From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest, When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored, When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before, What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie ? Oh !--fruit loved of boyhood!-the old days recalling, When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling! When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, Glaring out through the dark with a candle within When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune, Our chair a broad pumpkin-our lantern the moon Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam, In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team! Then thanks for thy present!-none sweeter or better E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter! Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking than thine! And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express, Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow, And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin Pie ! EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND.” How has New England's romance fled, Waking the veriest urchin's scorning !— And fire-dance round the magic rock, At moonrise by his holy oak! Startling the traveller, late and lone. |