No More Learning

What passes
without challenge in the fervour of oral delivery, cannot always stand
the colder criticism of the closet. I am not so great an enemy of
Eloquence as my friend Mr. Biglow would appear to be from some passages
in his contribution for the current month. I would not, indeed, hastily
suspect him of covertly glancing at myself in his somewhat caustick
animadversions, albeit some of the phrases he girds at are not entire
strangers to my lips. I am a more hearty admirer of the Puritans than
seems now to be the fashion, and believe, that, if they Hebraized a
little too much in their speech, they showed remarkable practical
sagacity as statesmen and founders. But such phenomena as Puritanism are
the results rather of great religious than of merely social convulsions,
and do not long survive them. So soon as an earnest conviction has
cooled into a phrase, its work is over, and the best that can be done
with it is to bury it. _Ite, missa est_. I am inclined to agree with Mr.
Biglow that we cannot settle the great political questions which are now
presenting themselves to the nation by the opinions of Jeremiah or
Ezekiel as to the wants and duties of the Jews in their time, nor do I
believe that an entire community with their feelings and views would be
practicable or even agreeable at the present day. At the same time I
could wish that their habit of subordinating the actual to the moral,
the flesh to the spirit, and this world to the other, were more common.
They had found out, at least, the great military secret that soul weighs
more than body. --But I am suddenly called to a sick-bed in the household
of a valued parishioner.

With esteem and respect,

Your obedient servant,

HOMER WILBUR.


Once git a smell o' musk into a draw,
An' it clings hold like precerdents in law:
Your gra'ma'am put it there,--when, goodness knows,--
To jes' this-worldify her Sunday-clo'es;
But the old chist wun't sarve her gran'son's wife,
(For, 'thout new funnitoor, wut good in life?
)
An' so ole clawfoot, from the precinks dread
O' the spare chamber, slinks into the shed,
Where, dim with dust, it fust or last subsides
To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides; 10
But better days stick fast in heart an' husk,
An' all you keep in 't gits a scent o' musk.

Jes' so with poets: wut they've airly read
Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' head,
So's't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers
With furrin countries or played-out ideers,
Nor hev a feelin', ef it doosn't smack
O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back:
This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an' things,
Ez though we'd nothin' here that blows an' sings,-- 20
(Why, I'd give more for one live bobolink
Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink,)--
This makes 'em think our fust o' May is May,
Which 'tain't, for all the almanicks can say.

O little city-gals, don't never go it
Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet!
They're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom looks
Up in the country ez it doos in books;
They're no more like than hornets'-nests an' hives,
Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. 30
I, with my trouses perched on cowhide boots,
Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots,
Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse
Your muslin nosegays from the milliner's,
Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to choose,
An' dance your throats sore in morocker shoes:
I've seen ye an' felt proud, thet, come wut would,
Our Pilgrim stock wuz pethed with hardihood.
Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch,
Ez though 'twuz sunthin' paid for by the inch; 40
But yit we du contrive to worry thru,
Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du,
An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out,
Ez stiddily ez though 'twuz a redoubt.

I, country-born an' bred, know where to find
Some blooms thet make the season suit the mind,
An' seem to metch the doubtin' bluebird's notes,--
Half-vent'rin' liverworts in furry coats,
Bloodroots, whose rolled-up leaves ef you oncurl,
Each on 'em's cradle to a baby-pearl,-- 50
But these are jes' Spring's pickets; sure ez sin,
The rebble frosts'll try to drive 'em in;
For half our May's so awfully like Mayn't,
'twould rile a Shaker or an evrige saint;
Though I own up I like our back'ard springs
Thet kind o' haggle with their greens an' things,
An' when you 'most give up, 'uthout more words
Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' birds;
Thet's Northun natur', slow an' apt to doubt,
But when it _doos_ git stirred, ther' 's no gin-out! 60

Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees,
An' settlin' things in windy Congresses,--
Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned
Ef all on 'em don't head aginst the wind,
'fore long the trees begin to show belief,--
The maple crimsons to a coral-reef.
Then saffern swarms swing off from all the willers
So plump they look like yaller caterpillars,
Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold
Softer 'n a baby's be at three days old: 70
Thet's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows
Thet arter this ther's only blossom-snows;
So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse,
He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house.

Then seems to come a hitch,--things lag behind.
Till some fine mornin' Spring makes up her mind,
An' ez, when snow-swelled rivers cresh their dams
Heaped-up with ice thet dovetails in an' jams,
A leak comes spirtin' thru some pin-hole cleft,
Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an' left, 80
Then all the waters bow themselves an' come,
Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam,
Jes' so our Spring gits eyerythin' in tune
An' gives one leap from Aperl into June;
Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you think,
Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods with pink;
The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud;
The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud;
Red--cedars blossom tu, though few folks know it,
An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet; 90
The lime-trees pile their solid stacks o'shade
An' drows'ly simmer with the bees' sweet trade;
In ellum-shrouds the flashin' hangbird clings
An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock slings;
All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers
The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers,
Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love to try,
With pins,--they'll worry yourn so, boys, bimeby!
But I don't love your cat'logue style,--do you? --
Ez ef to sell off Natur' by vendoo; 100
One word with blood in 't's twice ez good ez two:
'nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year,
Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here;
Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings,
Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings,
Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair,
Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air.

I ollus feel the sap start in my veins
In Spring, with curus heats an' prickly pains
Thet drive me, when I git a chance to walk 110
Off by myself to hev a privit talk
With a queer critter thet can't seem to 'gree
Along o' me like most folks,--Mister Me.
Ther' 's times when I'm unsoshle ez a stone,
An' sort o' suffercate to be alone,--
I'm crowded jes' to think thet folks are nigh,
An' can't bear nothin' closer than the sky;
Now the wind's full ez shifty in the mind
Ez wut it is ou'-doors, ef I ain't blind,
An' sometimes, in the fairest sou'west weather, 120
My innard vane pints east for weeks together,
My natur' gits all goose-flesh, an' my sins
Come drizzlin' on my conscience sharp ez pins:
Wal, et sech times I jes' slip out o' sight
An' take it out in a fair stan'-up fight
With the one cuss I can't lay on the shelf,
The crook'dest stick in all the heap,--Myself.

'Twuz so las' Sabbath arter meetin'-time:
Findin' my feelin's wouldn't noways rhyme
With nobody's, but off the hendle flew 130
An' took things from an east-wind pint o' view,
I started off to lose me in the hills
Where the pines be, up back o' 'Siah's Mills:
Pines, ef you're blue, are the best friends I know,
They mope an' sigh an' sheer your feelin's so,--
They hesh the ground beneath so, tu, I swan,
You half-forgit you've gut a body on.