And when I see the scholar pore On deeds of glorious fame of yore; Trimming his lamp, at midnight hour, To trace the wrecks of bygone power; Or stealing through sequestered groves, To sip the tale of Grecian loves; Or pond’ring on the double doom, Where fame and valor fell with Rome; And when I hear th’ enthusiast tell How Fabius foil’d, Marcellus fell, With triumph shall I quick reply, At Vernon doth a greater lie; More firm in war, more just in peace, And loved with love that ne’er can cease; But time shall seal, and rolling years Augment his fame, and swell our tears. Go! shall I say, to yon scrutoire Of shells and fossils, gems and ore, Cull’d from each clime, and marshall’d there With home-bred skill and pleasing care; Amid the glitter, thou shalt find An humble group of plainest kind, But priz’d most truly, not for dyes, But for the scene it typifies: The airy banks, the cooling groves, That mark the spot Columbia loves— A spot, which few vain marbles may, Entombs a virtuous hero’s clay. Go! and peruse!—no chemic fame, No foreign, harsh, pedantic name, With slavish, trite, empiric air, Inscribes the group enchased there. With pious hand I cull’d these stones Upon the tomb that wraps his bones: He who, while living, ever shin’d, And, dying, left no peer behind; Let no rude hand, or unadvis’d, Molest the boon so lov’d, so priz’d. THE WHITE FISH. Of ven’son let Goldsmith so wittily sing, A very fine haunch is a very fine thing; And Burns, in his tuneful and exquisite way, The charms of a smoking Scot’s haggis display, But ’tis often much harder to eat than descant, And a poet may praise what a poet may want; Less doubt there shall be ’twixt my muse and my dish, Whilst her power I invoke, in the praise of white fish. All friends to good living by tureen or dish, Concur in extolling this prince of a fish, So fine on a platter, so tempting a fry, So rich in a broil, and so sweet in a pie, That even before it the red trout must fail, And that mighty _bonne bouche_ of the land, beaver’s tail. This fish is a subject, so dainty and white, To show in a lecture, to eat or to write, That equal ’s my joy, I declare on my life, To raise up my voice, or to raise up my knife; ’Tis a morsel alike for the gourmand or faster, White—white as a tablet of pure alabaster; Its beauty and flavor no person can doubt, If seen in the water, or tasted without; And all the dispute that opinion e’er makes, Of this king of lake fishes—this deer of the lakes,[12] Regards not its choiceness, to ponder or sup, But the best mode of dressing and serving it up. [12] A literal translation of the Chippewa name for this fish—Ad dik Kum maig.