When Cuba’s weeds have quite forgot The power of suction to resist, And claret-bottles harber not Such dimples as would hold your fist,— When publishers no longer steal, And pay for what they stole before,— When the first locomotive’s wheel Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel’s bore;— _Till_ then let Cumming a blaze away, And Miller’s saints blow up the globe; But when you see that blessed day, _Then_ order your ascension robe! The company seemed to like the verses, and I promised them to read others occasionally, if they had a mind to hear them. Of course they would not expect it every morning. Neither must the reader suppose that all these things I have reported were said at any one breakfast-time. I have not taken the trouble to date them, as Raspail, _père_, used to date every proof he sent to the printer; but they were scattered over several breakfasts; and I have said a good many more things since, which I shall very possibly print some time or other, if I am urged to do it by judicious friends. I finished off with reading some verses of my friend the Professor, of whom you may perhaps hear more by and by. The Professor read them, he told me, at a farewell meeting, where the youngest of our great Historians met a few of his many friends at their invitation. Yes, we knew we must lose him,—though friendship may claim To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame; Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, ’Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,— As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel,— As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom, While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies! In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time, Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue! Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed! Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom! * * * * * The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake On pampas, on prairie, o’er mountain and lake, To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine, With incense they stole from the rose and the pine.