Read Ebook: The Motor Boys Over the Ocean; Or A Marvelous Rescue in Mid-Air by Young Clarence

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Ebook has 272 lines and 21428 words, and 6 pages

My little Suckling in the grave Is sunk to swell the ravage; And what 'twas Crusoe's fate to save 'Twas mine to lose--a Savage.

Even Glover's works I cannot put My frozen hands upon; Though ever since I lost my Foote My Bunyan has been gone.

My Hoyle with Cotton went; oppressed, My Taylor too must sail; To save my Goldsmith from arrest, In vain I offered Bayle.

I Prior sought, but could not see The Hood so late in front; And when I turned to hunt for Lee, Oh! where was my Leigh Hunt.

I tried to laugh, old Care to tickle, Yet could not Tickell touch; And then, alas! I missed my Mickle, And surely mickle's much.

'Tis quite enough my griefs to feed, My sorrows to excuse, To think I cannot read my Reid, Nor even use my Hughes.

To West, to South, I turn my head, Exposed alike to odd jeers; For since my Roger Ascham's fled, I ask 'em for my Rogers.

They took my Horne--and Horne Tooke, too, And thus my treasures flit; I feel, when I would Hazlitt view, The flames that it has lit.

My word's worth little, Wordsworth gone, If I survive its doom; How many a bard I doated on Was swept off--with my Broome.

My classics would not quiet lie, A thing so fondly hoped; Like Dr. Primrose, I may cry, "My Livy has eloped!"

My life is wasting fast away-- I suffer from these shocks; And though I've fixed a lock on Gray, There's gray upon my locks.

They still have made me slight returns, And thus my griefs divide; For oh! they've cured me of my Burns, And eased my Akenside.

But all I think I shall not say, Nor let my anger burn; For as they never found me Gay, They have not left me Sterne.

IN THE LIBRARY.

Speak low--tread softly through these halls; Here genius lives enshrined,-- Here reign, in silent majesty, The monarchs of the mind.

A mighty spirit-host, they come From every age and clime; Above the buried wrecks of years They breast the tide of time.

And in their presence-chamber here They hold their regal state, And round them throng a noble train, The gifted and the great.

O child of earth, when round thy path The storms of life arise, And when thy brothers pass thee by With stern, unloving eyes,--

Here shall the Poets chant for thee Their sweetest, loftiest lays; And Prophets wait to guide thy steps In wisdom's pleasant ways.

Come, with these God-anointed kings Be thou companion here, And in the mighty realm of mind Thou shalt go forth a peer.

MY SHAKSPERE.

With bevelled binding, with uncut edge, With broad white margin and gilded top, Fit for my library's choicest ledge, Fresh from the bindery, smelling of shop, In tinted cloth, with a strange design-- Buskin and scroll-work and mask and crown, And an arabesque legend tumbling down-- "The Works of Shakspere" were never so fine. Fresh from the shop! I turn the page-- Its "ample margin" is wide and fair-- Its type is chosen with daintiest care; There's a "New French Elzevir" strutting there That would shame its prototypic age. Fresh from the shop! O Shakspere mine, I've half a notion you're much too fine!

There's an ancient volume that I recall, In foxy leather much chafed and worn; Its back is broken by many a fall, The stitches are loose and the leaves are torn; And gone is the bastard-title, next To the title-page scribbled with owners' names, That in straggling old-style type proclaims That the work is from the corrected text Left by the late Geo. Steevens, Esquire.

The broad sky burns like a great blue fire, And the Lake shines blue as shimmering steel, And it cuts the horizon like a blade-- But behind the poplar's a strip of shade-- The great tall Lombardy on the lawn. And lying there in the grass, I feel The wind that blows from the Canada shore, And in cool, sweet puffs comes stealing o'er, Fresh as any October dawn.

I lie on my breast in the grass, my feet Lifted boy-fashion, and swinging free, The old brown Shakspere in front of me. And big are my eyes, and my heart's a-beat; And my whole soul's lost--in what?--who knows? Perdita's charms or Perdita's woes-- Perdita fairy-like, fair and sweet. Is any one jealous, I wonder, now, Of my love for Perdita? For I vow I loved her well. And who can say That life would be quite the same life to-day-- That Love would mean so much, if she Had not taught me its A B C?

The Grandmother, thin and bent and old, But her hair still dark and her eyes still bright, Totters around among her flowers-- Old-fashioned flowers of pink and white; And turns with a trowel the dark rich mould That feeds the blooms of her heart's delight. Ah me! for her and for me the hours Go by, and for her the smell of earth-- And for me the breeze and a far love's birth, And the sun and the sky and all the things That a boy's heart hopes and a poet sings.

Fresh from the shop! O Shakspere mine, It wasn't the binding made you divine! I knew you first in a foxy brown, In the old, old home, where I laid me down, In the idle summer afternoons, With you alone in the odorous grass, And set your thoughts to the wind's low tunes, And saw your children rise up and pass-- And dreamed and dreamed of the things to be, Known only, I think, to you and me.

I've hardly a heart for you dressed so fine-- Fresh from the shop, O Shakspere mine!

THE BOOKWORMS.

Through and through the inspired leaves, Ye maggots, make your windings; But oh, respect his lordship's taste, And spare the golden bindings.

CATULLUS TO HIS BOOK.

QVOI DONO LEPIDVM NOVVM LIBELLVM.

So take, whate'er its worth may be, My Book,--but Lady and Queen of Song, This one kind gift I crave of thee, That it may live for ages long!

OLD BOOKS ARE BEST.

TO J. H. P.

Old Books are best! With what delight Does "Faithorne fecit" greet our sight On frontispiece or title-page Of that old time, when on the stage "Sweet Nell" set "Rowley's" heart alight!

And you, O Friend, to whom I write, Must not deny, e'en though you might, Through fear of modern pirate's rage, Old Books are best.

What though the prints be not so bright, The paper dark, the binding slight? Our author, be he dull or sage, Returning from that distant age So lives again, we say of right: Old Books are best.

THE FORGOTTEN BOOKS.

Hid by the garret's dust, and lost Amid the cobwebs wreathed above, They lie, these volumes that have cost Such weeks of hope and waste of love.

The Theologian's garnered lore Of Scripture text, and words divine; And verse, that to some fair one bore Thoughts that like fadeless stars would shine;

The grand wrought epics, that were born From mighty throes of heart and brain,-- Here rest, their covers all unworn, And all their pages free from stain.

Here lie the chronicles that told Of man, and his heroic deeds-- Alas! the words once "writ in gold" Are tarnished so that no one reads.

And tracts that smote each other hard, While loud the friendly plaudits rang, All animosities discard, Where old, moth-eaten garments hang.

The heroes that were made to strut In tinsel on "life's mimic stage" Found, all too soon, the deepening rut Which kept them silent in the page;

And heroines, whose loveless plight Should wake the sympathetic tear, In volumes sombre as the night Sleep on through each succeeding year.

Here Phyllis languishes forlorn, And Strephon waits beside his flocks, And early huntsmen wind the horn, Within the boundaries of a box.

Here, by the irony of fate, Beside the "peasant's humble board," The monarch "flaunts his robes of state," And spendthrifts find the miser's hoard.

Days come and go, and still we write, And hope for some far happier lot Than that our work should meet this blight-- And yet--some books must be forgot.

AN INVOCATION IN A LIBRARY.

O brotherhood, with bay-crowned brows undaunted, Who passed serene along our crowded ways, Speak with us still! For we, like Saul, are haunted: Harp sullen spirits from these later days!

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