I say the muse shall quite forget to sound The chord whose music is undying, if She do not strike it when Sam Patch is drowned. Leander dived for love. Leucadia's cliff The Lesbian Sappho leapt from in a miff, To punish Phaon; Icarus went dead Because the wax did not continue stiff; And, had he minded what his father said, He had not given a name unto his watery bed. And Helle's case was all an accident, As everybody knows. Why sing of these? Nor would I rank with Sam that man who went Down into Aetna's womb--Empedocles, I think he called himself. Themselves to please, Or else unwillingly, they made their springs; For glory in the abstract, Sam made his, To prove to all men, commons, lords, and kings, That "some things may be done, as well as other things." I will not be fatigued, by citing more Who jump'd of old, by hazard or design, Nor plague the weary ghosts of boyish lore, Vulcan, Apollo, Phaeton--in fine All Tooke's Pantheon. Yet they grew divine By their long tumbles; and if we can match Their hierarchy, shall we not entwine One wreath? Who ever came "up to the scratch," And for so little, jumped so bravely as Sam Patch? To long conclusions many men have jumped In logic, and the safer course they took; By any other they would have been stumped, Unable to argue, or to quote a book, And quite dumbfounded, which they cannot brook; They break no bones, and suffer no contusion, Hiding their woful fall, by hook and crook, In slang and gibberish, sputtering and confusion; But that was not the way Sam came to _his_ conclusion. He jumped in person. Death or victory Was his device, "and there was no mistake," Except his last; and then he did but die, A blunder which the wisest men will make. Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break, To stand, the target of the thousand eyes, And down into the coil and water-quake, To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skies-- For this all vulgar flights he ventured to despise. And while Niagara prolongs its thunder, Though still the rock primeval disappears And nations change their bounds--the theme of wonder Shall Sam go down the cataract of long years: And if there be sublimity in tears, Those shall be precious which the adventurer shed When his frail star gave way, and waked his fears, Lest, by the ungenerous crowd it might be said, That he was all a hoax, or that his pluck had fled. Who would compare the maudlin Alexander, Blubbering because he had no job in hand, Acting the hypocrite, or else the gander, With Sam, whose grief we all can understand? His crying was not womanish, nor plann'd For exhibition; but his heart o'erswelled With its own agony, when he the grand, Natural arrangements for a jump beheld. And measuring the cascade, found not his courage quelled.