Fair was he not, the primitive Prophet, nor he who succeeded, Hardly for poetry fit, though using the Urim and Thummin. Had he but borrowed Levitical trappings, the girdle and ephod, Fine twined linen, and ouches of gold, and bells and pomegranates, That, indeed, might have kindled the weird necromancy of fancy. Had he but set up mystical forms, like Astarte or Peor, Balder, or Freya, Quetzalcoatl, Perun, Manabozho, Verily, though to the sense theologic it might be offensive, Great were the gain to the pictured, flashing speech of the poet. Yet the Muse that delights in Mesopotamian numbers, Vague and vast as the roar of the wind in a forest of pine-trees, Now must tune her strings to the names of Joseph and Brigham. Hebrew, the first; and a Smith before the Deluge was Tubal, Thor of the East, who first made iron ring to the hammer; So on the iron heads of the people about him, the latter, Striking the sparks of belief and forging their faith in the Good Time Coming, the Latter Day, as he called it,--the Kingdom of Zion. Then, in the words of Philip the Eunuch unto Belshazzar, Came to him multitudes wan, diseased and decrepit of spirit, Came and heard and believed, and builded the temple of Nauvoo. All is past; for Joseph was smitten with lead from a pistol, Brigham went with the others over the prairies to Salt Lake. Answers now to the long, disconsolate wail of the steamer, Hoarse, inarticulate, shrill, the rolling and bounding of ten-pins,-- Answers the voice of the bar-tender, mixing the smash and the julep, Answers, precocious, the boy, and bites a chew of tobacco. Lone as the towers of Afrasiab now is the seat of the Prophet, Mournful, inspiring to verse, though seeming utterly vulgar: Also--for each thing now is expected to furnish a moral-- Teaching innumerable lessons for who so believes and is patient. Thou, that readest, be resolute, learn to be strong and to suffer! Let the dead Past bury its dead and act in the Present! Bear a banner of strange devices, "Forever" and "Never!" Build in the walls of time the fame of a permanent Nauvoo, So that thy brethren may see it and say, "Go thou and do likewise!" This poem does not altogether meet with his comrades' approval; Zoïlus retorts that "it is no easy thing to be funny in hexameters; the Sapphic verse is much more practicable." _The Gannet_ hereupon asserts that he could write an imitation of Longfellow's higher strains--not of those which are so well known and so much quoted--which would be fairer to the poet, and after a short interval produces-- THE SEWING-MACHINE. A strange vibration from the cottage window My vagrant steps delayed, And half abstracted, like the ancient Hindoo, I paused beneath the shade.