Becalm, dear brother! whose impassioned strain Comes from an alley watered by a drain; The little Mincio, dribbling to the Po, Beats all the epics of the Hoang Ho; If loved in earnest by the tuneful maid, Don't mind their nonsense,--never be afraid! The nurse of poets feeds her winged brood By common firesides, on familiar food; In a low hamlet, by a narrow stream, Where bovine rustics used to doze and dream, She filled young William's fiery fancy full, While old John Shakespeare talked of beeves and wool! No Alpine needle, with its climbing spire, Brings down for mortals the Promethean fire, If careless nature have forgot to frame An altar worthy of the sacred flame. Unblest by any save the goatherd's lines, Mont Blanc rose soaring through his "sea of pines;" In vain the rivers from their ice-caves flash; No hymn salutes them but the Ranz des Vaches, Till lazy Coleridge, by the morning's light, Gazed for a moment on the fields of white, And lo! the glaciers found at length a tongue, Mont Blanc was vocal, and Chamouni sung! Children of wealth or want, to each is given One spot of green, and all the blue of heaven! Enough if these their outward shows impart; The rest is thine,--the scenery of the heart. If passion's hectic in thy stanzas glow, Thy heart's best life-blood ebbing as they flow; If with thy verse thy strength and bloom distil, Drained by the pulses of the fevered thrill; If sound's sweet effluence polarize thy brain, And thoughts turn crystals in thy fluid strain,-- Nor rolling ocean, nor the prairie's bloom, Nor streaming cliffs, nor rayless cavern's gloom, Need'st thou, young poet, to inform thy line; Thy own broad signet stamps thy song divine! Let others gaze where silvery streams are rolled, And chase the rainbow for its cup of gold; To thee all landscapes wear a heavenly dye, Changed in the glance of thy prismatic eye; Nature evoked thee in sublimer throes, For thee her inmost Arethusa flows,-- The mighty mother's living depths are stirred,-- Thou art the starred Osiris of the herd! A few brief lines; they touch on solemn chords, And hearts may leap to hear their honest words; Yet, ere the jarring bugle-blast is blown, The softer lyre shall breathe its soothing tone. New England! proudly may thy children claim Their honored birthright by its humblest name Cold are thy skies, but, ever fresh and clear, No rank malaria stains thine atmosphere; No fungous weeds invade thy scanty soil, Scarred by the ploughshares of unslumbering toil. Long may the doctrines by thy sages taught, Raised from the quarries where their sires have wrought, Be like the granite of thy rock-ribbed land,-- As slow to rear, as obdurate to stand; And as the ice that leaves thy crystal mine Chills the fierce alcohol in the Creole's wine, So may the doctrines of thy sober school Keep the hot theories of thy neighbors cool!