No More Learning

He might have been a poet--many worse--
But that he had, or feigned, contempt of verse;
Called it tattooing language, and held rhymes
The young world's lullaby of ruder times. 60
Bitter in words, too indolent for gall,
He satirized himself the first of all,
In men and their affairs could find no law,
And was the ill logic that he thought he saw.

Scratching a match to light his pipe anew,
With eyes half shut some musing whiffs he drew
And thus began: 'I give you all my word,
I think this mock-Decameron absurd;
Boccaccio's garden! how bring that to pass
In our bleak clime save under double glass? 70
The moral east-wind of New England life
Would snip its gay luxuriance like a knife;
Mile-deep the glaciers brooded here, they say,
Through aeons numb; we feel their chill to-day.
These foreign plants are but half-hardy still,
Die on a south, and on a north wall chill.
Had we stayed Puritans! _They_ had some heat,
(Though whence derived I have my own conceit,)
But you have long ago raked up their fires;
Where they had faith, you've ten sham-Gothic spires. 80
Why more exotics? Try your native vines,
And in some thousand years you _may_ have wines;
Your present grapes are harsh, all pulps and skins,
And want traditions of ancestral bins
That saved for evenings round the polished board
Old lava fires, the sun-steeped hillside's hoard.
Without a Past, you lack that southern wall
O'er which the vines of Poesy should crawl;
Still they're your only hope: no midnight oil
Makes up for virtue wanting in the soil; 90
Manure them well and prune them; 'twon't be France,
Nor Spain, nor Italy, but there's your chance.
You have one story-teller worth a score
Of dead Boccaccios,--nay, add twenty more,--
A hawthorn asking spring's most dainty breath,
And him you're freezing pretty well to death.
However, since you say so, I will tease
My memory to a story by degrees,
Though you will cry, "Enough! " I'm wellnigh sure,
Ere I have dreamed through half my overture. 100
Stories were good for men who had no books,
(Fortunate race!
) and built their nests like rooks
In lonely towers, to which the Jongleur brought
His pedler's-box of cheap and tawdry thought,
With here and there a fancy fit to see
Wrought in quaint grace in golden filigree,--
Some ring that with the Muse's finger yet
Is warm, like Aucassin and Nicolete;
The morning newspaper has spoilt his trade,
(For better or for worse, I leave unsaid,) 110
And stories now, to suit a public nice,
Must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.

'All tourists know Shebagog County: there
The summer idlers take their yearly stare,
Dress to see Nature In a well-bred way,
As 'twere Italian opera, or play,
Encore the sunrise (if they're out of bed).
And pat the Mighty Mother on the head:
These have I seen,--all things are good to see. --
And wondered much at their complacency. 120
This world's great show, that took in getting-up
Millions of years, they finish ere they sup;
Sights that God gleams through with soul-tingling force
They glance approvingly as things of course.
Say, "That's a grand rock," "This a pretty fall. "
Not thinking, "Are we worthy? " What if all
The scornful landscape should turn round and say,
"This is a fool, and that a popinjay"?
I often wonder what the Mountain thinks
Of French boots creaking o'er his breathless brinks, 130
Or how the Sun would scare the chattering crowd,
If some fine day he chanced to think aloud.
I, who love Nature much as sinners can,
Love her where she most grandeur shows,--in man:
Here find I mountain, forest, cloud, and sun,
River and sea, and glows when day is done;
Nay, where she makes grotesques, and moulds in jest
The clown's cheap clay, I find unfading zest.
The natural instincts year by year retire,
As deer shrink northward from the settler's fire, 140
And he who loves the wild game-flavor more
Than city-feasts, where every man's a bore
To every other man, must seek it where
The steamer's throb and railway's iron blare
Have not yet startled with their punctual stir
The shy, wood-wandering brood of Character.

'There is a village, once the county town,
Through which the weekly mail rolled dustily down,
Where the courts sat, it may be, twice a year,
And the one tavern reeked with rustic cheer; 150
Cheeshogquesumscot erst, now Jethro hight,
Red-man and pale-face bore it equal spite.
The railway ruined it, the natives say,
That passed unwisely fifteen miles away,
And made a drain to which, with steady ooze,
Filtered away law, stage-coach, trade, and news.
The railway saved it: so at least think those
Who love old ways, old houses, old repose.
Of course the Tavern stayed: its genial host
Thought not of flitting more than did the post 160
On which high-hung the fading signboard creaks,
Inscribed, "The Eagle Inn, by Ezra Weeks. "

'If in life's journey you should ever find
An inn medicinal for body and mind,
'Tis sure to be some drowsy-looking house
Whose easy landlord has a bustling spouse:
He, if he like you, will not long forego
Some bottle deep in cobwebbed dust laid low,
That, since the War we used to call the "Last,"
Has dozed and held its lang-syne memories fast: 170
From him exhales that Indian-summer air
Of hazy, lazy welcome everywhere,
While with her toil the napery is white,
The china dustless, the keen knife-blades bright,
Salt dry as sand, and bread that seems as though
'Twere rather sea-foam baked than vulgar dough.