Shade of Herrick, Muse of Locker, Help me sing of Knickerbocker! BOUGHTON, had you bid me chant Hymns to Peter Stuyvesant! Had you bid me sing of Wouter, (He! the Onion-head! the Doubter!) But to rhyme of this one,--Mocker! Who shall rhyme to Knickerbocker? Nay, but where my hand must fail There the more shall yours avail; You shall take your brush and paint All that ring of figures quaint,-- All those Rip-van-Winkle jokers,-- All those solid-looking smokers, Pulling at their pipes of amber In the dark-beamed Council-Chamber. Only art like yours can touch Shapes so dignified ... and Dutch; Only art like yours can show How the pine-logs gleam and glow, Till the fire-light laughs and passes 'Twixt the tankards and the glasses, Touching with responsive graces All those grave Batavian faces,-- Making bland and beatific All that session soporific. Then I come and write beneath, BOUGHTON, he deserves the wreath; He can give us form and hue-- This the Muse can never do! TO A PASTORAL POET. (H. E. B.) Among my best I put your Book, O Poet of the breeze and brook! (That breeze and brook which blows and falls More soft to those in city walls) Among my best: and keep it still Till down the fair grass-girdled hill, Where slopes my garden-slip, there goes The wandering wind that wakes the rose, And scares the cohort that explore The broad-faced sun-flower o'er and o'er, Or starts the restless bees that fret The bindweed and the mignonette. Then I shall take your Book, and dream I lie beside some haunted stream; And watch the crisping waves that pass, And watch the flicker in the grass; And wait--and wait--and wait to see The Nymph ... that never comes to me! "SAT EST SCRIPSISSE." (TO E. G., WITH A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS.) When You and I have wandered beyond the reach of call, And all our Works immortal lie scattered on the Stall, It may be some new Reader, in that remoter age, Will find the present volume and listless turn the page. For him I speak these verses. And, Sir (I say to him), This Book you see before you,--this masterpiece of Whim Of Wisdom, Learning, Fancy (if you will, please, attend),-- Was written by its Author, who gave it to his Friend. For they had worked together, been Comrades of the Pen; They had their points at issue, they differed now and then; But both loved Song and Letters, and each had close at heart The hopes, the aspirations, the "dear delays" of Art. And much they talked of Measures, and more they talked of Style, Of Form and "lucid Order," of "labour of the File;" And he who wrote the writing, as sheet by sheet was penned (This all was long ago, Sir!), would read it to his Friend.