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A TAILOR'S POEM ON EVENING.

445

love. About and around him we call up no dissentient and discordant and dissatisfied elements-no sectional prejudice nor bias-no party, no creed, no dogma of politics. None of these shall assail him. Yes; when the storm of battle blows darkest and rages highest, the memory of Washington shall nerve every American arm, and cheer every American heart. It shall relume that Promethean fire, that sublime flame of patriotism, that devoted love of country which his words have commended, which his example has consecrated :

"Where may the wearied eye repose,

When gazing on the great;
Where neither guilty glory glows
Nor despicable state?

Yes-one-the first, the last, the best,
The Cincinnatus of the West,

Whom envy dared not hate,

Bequeathed the name of Washington,
To make man blush there was but one."

A TAILOR'S POEM ON EVENING.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout.
Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright
As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath
Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air;
But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau,
Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences,
And growing portly in his sober garments.

Is that a swan that rides upon the water?
O no, it is that other gentle bird,
Which is the patron of our noble calling.
I well remember, in my early years,
When these young hands first closed upon a
goose;

I have a scar upon my thimble finger,
Which chronicles the hour of young ambition.
My father was a tailor, and his father,
And my sire's grandsire, all of them were
tailors;

They had an ancient goose,--it was an heir-
loom

From some remoter tailor of our race.

T early dawn I marked them in the
sky,

With terrible voracity, they plunged

Catching the morning colors on their
plumes;

Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat

A tempest on the surges with their wings, Not in voluptuous pastime reveling Till flashing clouds of foam and spray con

there,

heaven

cealed them.

Among the rosy clouds, while orient Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey,
Alive and wriggling in the elastic net;
Which Nature hung beneath their grasping

Flamed like the opening gates of Paradise,

Whence issued forth the angel of the sun,
And gladdened nature with returning day:
.-Eager for food, their searching eyes they
fixed

On ocean's unrolled volume, from a height
That brought immensity within their scope;
Yet with such power of vision looked they
down,

As though they watched the shell-fish slowly
gliding

O'er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral.
On indefatigable wing upheld,

Breath, pulse, existence, seemed suspended

in them:

They were as pictures painted on the sky;
Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot,
Like meteors changed from stars to gleams of
lightning,

And struck upon the deep, where, in wild
play,

Their quarry floundered, unsuspecting harm;

beaks,

Till, swollen with captures, the unwieldy

burden

Clogged their slow flight, as heavily to land
These mighty hunters of the deep returned.
There on the cragged cliffs they perched at

ease,

Gorging their helpless victims one by one;
Then, full and weary, side by side they slept,
Till evening roused them to the chase again.

Love found that lonely couple on their isle, And soon surrounded them with blithe companions.

The noble birds, with skill spontaneous,
framed

A nest of reeds among the giant-grass,
That waved in lights and shadows o'er the
soil.

There, in sweet thraldom, yet unweening
why,