No More Learning

'Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad
His slow artillery lip the Concord road,
A tale which grew in wonder, year by year,
As, every time he told it, Joe drew near
To the main fight, till, faded and grown gray,
The original scene to bolder tints gave way;
Then Joe had heard the foe's scared double-quick
Beat on stove drum with one un-captured stick,
And, ere death came the lengthening tale to lop,
Himself had fired, and seen a redcoat drop;
Had Joe lived long enough, that scrambling fight
Had squared more nearly with his sense of right,
And vanquished Percy, to complete the tale,
Had hammered stone for life in Concord jail. '

I do not know that the foregoing extracts ought not to be called my own
rather than Mr. Biglow's, as, indeed, he maintained stoutly that my file
had left nothing of his in them. I should not, perhaps, have felt
entitled to take so great liberties with them, had I not more than
suspected an hereditary vein of poetry in myself, a very near ancestor
having written a Latin poem in the Harvard _Gratulatio_ on the accession
of George the Third. Suffice it to say, that, whether not satisfied with
such limited approbation as I could conscientiously bestow, or from a
sense of natural inaptitude, certain it is that my young friend could
never be induced to any further essays in this kind. He affirmed that it
was to him like writing in a foreign tongue,--that Mr. Pope's
versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks,
in which one could fancy, after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm
or tune, but which yet was only a poverty-stricken _tick, tick_, after
all,--and that he had never seen a sweet-water on a trellis growing so
fairly, or in forms so pleasing to his eye, as a fox-grape over a
scrub-oak in a swamp. He added I know not what, to the effect that the
sweet-water would only be the more disfigured by having its leaves
starched and ironed out, and that Pegasus (so he called him) hardly
looked right with his mane and tail in curl-papers. These and other such
opinions I did not long strive to eradicate, attributing them rather to
a defective education and senses untuned by too long familiarity with
purely natural objects, than to a perverted moral sense. I was the more
inclined to this leniency since sufficient evidence was not to seek,
that his verses, wanting as they certainly were in classic polish and
point, had somehow taken hold of the public ear in a surprising manner.
So, only setting him right as to the quantity of the proper name
Pegasus, I left him to follow the bent of his natural genius.

Yet could I not surrender him wholly to the tutelage of the pagan
(which, literally interpreted, signifies village) muse without yet a
further effort for his conversion, and to this end I resolved that
whatever of poetic fire yet burned in myself, aided by the assiduous
bellows of correct models, should be put in requisition. Accordingly,
when my ingenious young parishioner brought to my study a copy of verses
which he had written touching the acquisition of territory resulting
from the Mexican war, and the folly of leaving the question of slavery
or freedom to the adjudication of chance, I did myself indite a short
fable or apologue after the manner of Gay and Prior, to the end that he
might see how easily even such subjects as he treated of were capable of
a more refined style and more elegant expression. Mr. Biglow's
production was as follows:--



THE TWO GUNNERS

A FABLE

Two fellers, Isrel named and Joe,
One Sundy mornin' 'greed to go
Agunnin' soon 'z the bells wuz done
And meetin' finally begun,
So'st no one wouldn't be about
Ther Sabbath-breakin' to spy out.
Joe didn't want to go a mite;
He felt ez though 'twarn't skeercely right,
But, when his doubts he went to speak on,
Isrel he up and called him Deacon,
An' kep' apokin' fun like sin
An' then arubbin' on it in,
Till Joe, less skeered o' doin' wrong
Than bein' laughed at, went along.

Past noontime they went trampin' round
An' nary thing to pop at found,
Till, fairly tired o' their spree,
They leaned their guns agin a tree,
An' jest ez they wuz settin' down
To take their noonin', Joe looked roun'
And see (acrost lots in a pond
That warn't mor'n twenty rod beyond)
A goose that on the water sot
Ez ef awaitin' to be shot.

Isrel he ups and grabs his gun;
Sez he, 'By ginger, here's some fun! '
'Don't fire,' sez Joe, 'it ain't no use,
Thet's Deacon Peleg's tame wil'-goose:'
Sez Isrel, 'I don't care a cent.
I've sighted an' I'll let her went;'
_Bang! _ went queen's-arm, ole gander flopped
His wings a spell, an' quorked, an' dropped.

Sez Joe, 'I wouldn't ha' been hired
At that poor critter to ha' fired,
But since it's clean gin up the ghost,
We'll hev the tallest kind o' roast;
I guess our waistbands'll be tight
'Fore it comes ten o'clock ternight. '

'I won't agree to no such bender,'
Sez Isrel; 'keep it tell it's tender;
'Tain't wuth a snap afore it's ripe. '
Sez Joe, 'I'd jest ez lives eat tripe;
You _air_ a buster ter suppose
I'd eat what makes me hol' my nose! '

So they disputed to an' fro
Till cunnin' Isrel sez to Joe,
'Don't le's stay here an' play the fool,
Le's wait till both on us git cool,
Jest for a day or two le's hide it,
An' then toss up an' so decide it. '
'Agreed! ' sez Joe, an' so they did,
An' the ole goose wuz safely hid.

Now 'twuz the hottest kind o' weather,
An' when at last they come together,
It didn't signify which won,
Fer all the mischief hed been done:
The goose wuz there, but, fer his soul,
Joe wouldn't ha' tetched it with a pole;
But Isrel kind o' liked the smell on 't
An' made _his_ dinner very well on 't.


My own humble attempt was in manner and form following, and I print it
here, I sincerely trust, out of no vainglory, but solely with the hope
of doing good.



LEAVING THE MATTER OPEN

A TALE

BY HOMER WILBUR, A. M.