OUR OWN,

I

LEFT East Haddam by the train—a mode of torture worse
Than any Dante conjured up-the case I will rehearse:
I found the car, then, occupied (I got in rather late,
And 'twas hermetically closed) by victims fifty-eight,
Each one of whom looked headachy and parboiledy and pale,
Having less air a-piece, perhaps, than Jonah in his whale;
They seemed a troop of convict souls let out in search of bail
And, lest they might a mouthful get of unbedevilled air,
A Stygian sheriff's officer went with them every where,
Whose duty was to see that they no atmosphere should know
Cooler than that which Minos' tail had doomed them to below:
In shape he seemed a kind of stove, but by degrees my head
Was squeezed into an iron cap and screwed till I was dead
(Or thought I was), and then there came strange lights into my brain,
And 'neath his thin sheet-iron mask the tipstaff imp was plain.

At intervals another fiend-by mortals Brakeman hight

Would rouse his fellow-torturer into a fierce delight,

Punching his ribs, and feeding him with lumps of anthracite ;
The demon's single eye grew red, and with unholy glee
Exulted as it shrivelled up the very soul in me.

I would have shrieked a maniac shriek, but that I did not dare;

I thought of turning madly round, and seizing by the hair

A soul unblest that sat by me, only somehow I got

A notion that his treacherous scalp would prove to be red-hot.

I sprang to raise the window, but a female spirit of ill

Who all the space around her soured, sharp-nosed, close-lipped, and still,

(A vinegar-cruet incarnate) said, "No gentleman would place

A lady in a thorough-draught that had a swollen face!"

If you have ever chanced to bite a nice unripe persimmon,

You'll have some notion of her tone, but still a faint and dim one

No patent stove can radiate a chill more like the pole

Than such a lady, whose each act true views of grace control,

In doubt about her bonnet-box, secure about her soul.

Thenceforward all is phantasm dire; I dimly recollect

A something 'twixt a nose and voice that said "'most there, I 'xpect,'
Heavens! almost WHERE? a pang, a flash of fire through either eye shoots,
And I looked momently to see the last scene of Der Frieschutz;
The bland conductor will become that flame-clad individual
Who stamping, Earth will gape, and "Gentlemen, I bid you all,"
He'll shriek, 66
to lava tea at six," then crashing through the floor
With a strong smell of brimstone,—but all swam, I saw no more,
Only I vaguely seem to have seen the attendant fiend excite
His principal with further pokes and lumps of anthracite,
While faces featureless as dough, looked on serene and placid,
And nine and fifty pair of lungs evolved carbonic acid.
There was a scream, but whether 'twas the engine, or the last
Wild prayer for mercy of those eight and fifty as they passed
Down to their several torturings in deepest Malebolge,
As I myself am still in doubt, can't certainly be told ye;

I only know they vanished all, the silent ghastly crew,

But whither, how, why, when,-these things I never fully knew ;

I stood with carpet-bag in hand, when the strange spell unbound me.

And five score yelling cabmen danced their frenzied war-dance round me.

PROGRESSION F.

Our own, howe'er with Byron's verse
He may enchanted be,

Finds that he likes the ocean worse,
When trying it per se.

When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,

But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And built, with a roof of gold,

My beautiful castles in Spain!
Since then I have toiled day and night,

I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain !

So mused a poet, quite as wise as either you or I,

Coughing with dust. as Crassus' coach rolled smoothly-swinging by ;
And, if I understand his thought, which may be something trite,
He was (which for a poet's much) within two-thirds of right;
Foad youth, be abstinent, pull not that Hesperidean fruit,
One bite, and you repent too late, and lame your jaw to boot:
Thank God for the Unattainable, it leaves you still a boy.
The wishing for the wishing-cap is that which makes the joy;
Privation gives their charm to things, the glory and the grace,
Beckon and flee-ah, fool, that would'st their frozen zones embrace!
In winter, summer seems most fair, and what enchantment glows
In August o'er those mountain-peaks, ermined with rounding snows!
The frozen Samoiede makes his heaven a place of endless fire,
And, when kind fortune heaps the board. to glut the soul's desire,
Apicius Bufo starves and sighs, and wonders what it means,—
Nectar? Ambrosia ?-hum, so-so, but no pig's head and greens?
And thou, oh hero, who hast climbed to scarce-dreamed fame and power,
'Think'st only of a little mound which dusky yews embower,

And, sighing, musest what are all these idle sands to me

Since those blue eyes are closed with dust that should be here to see?

Ah, happy eyes that shut so soon, ye only have the might

To keep undimmed the olden spell, for ever warm and bright!

Had village Alice lived, poor fool, thou would'st without remorse

Be sighing for a bride of State, and planning a divorce.

This train of thought I've fallen on, far out here on the sea,
Coiled up, half-frozen underneath the weather-bulwark's lee.

And (faith that last wave soused me through)—and writing on my knee ;
The application of it is, that when you're on the land

The sea is every thing that's bright, and broad, and blue, and grand,
And that you'd change what Wordsworth calls your glorious second berth
(Now that you've tried it) for a grave, because 'twould be firm earth;
Perhaps in some October night, when the roused south o'erwhelms,
With surge on surge rolled gathering down the night, the shuddering elms,
You have lain fancying what wild joy there must be in the motion
Of a brave vessel plunging through the broken coils of ocean;
Your mind ran forth and back again, like a fly-watching spider,
Upon that line in Byron of the steed that knows its rider,
And, in your bath next morning, you splash with double glee,
Humming, dear Barry Cornwall's song-the sea! the o-pen sea!
I wish that Barry and Byron both were only here with me!
All well enough this sentiment and stuff upon the shore,
But, when the sea is smoothest, 'tis an Erymanthian bore,
And when 'tis rough, my brace of bards, you'd neither of you sing
Of hands on manes, or blue and fresh, but quite another thing,—

Flat on your backs in jerking berths you scarce could keep your place in,
You'd moan an Amboean sad-quick, steward! quick! "a basin!
(Queen's counsel most delectable, I still seem hearing thee
Sing Cameriere through the rain along the Bieler sea.)
How easy 'tis to tyrannize over Taste's hapless lieges!
The poor Achivi still are plucked quidquid delirant reges;
If Hamlet says he sees a whale, Polonius must follow,
And what A swears is beautiful, all down to Z will swallow;
None dares confess he cannot see what great Flapdoddle spies,
And, like potatoes, fools are bred from one another's eyes;

Dear Nyncombe, what sharp agonies I've seen you going through with
Before a statue which your soul had naught on earth to do with,
And what could e'er be finer than your awed, assenting "Oh!"
When I suggested that deep thought in the Apollo's toe?

Don't come to Rome for nothing, man, with some likeminded crony,
Go valiantly and eat a steak down at the Gabione;

'Tis in this way that men are made to say they like the sea,

Flam says he does, and all the rest will be as good as he.

I heard a great man once declare that he had never found

A sailor, yet, who loved the fate to which his life was bound,

And when I asked our brown first-mate, a seaman good and brave,

On shore as helpless as a fish, a viking on the wave,

What life would please him most? he sighed, looked at his tattooed arm,
Studied its hieroglyphs awhile, and said—an inland farm.

And he was right; I cannot, for example, see the least
Pleasure in walking on a deck that's drunk as any beast,

A wet plank, scarcely larger than a white bear's sloppy pen,
That tips you here and slips you there, and trips you back again;
That cheats you with a moment's lull, and, when you think you feel
Quite sure of the companionway, half breaks you on the wheel,
Then slants until you need both hands to keep your hold on that,
And pins you helpless while the wind blows off your second hat.
The steed that throws his rider would be nearer to the fact:
To me it gives no pleasure to be swashed and washed and racked ;
To have a three weeks' tipsiness on cold saltwater merely,
With legs that seem like some one's else, they bother you so queerly
Taking you here when you mean there, no, no, it has no charm,
Although the loveliest cousin may be hanging on your arm.
Of course, I am not seasick, for although that epidemic
(Hic) prostrates all my friends, yet (hic) I only pity them (hic).
Indeed, in this life's pilgrimage, I found this maxim true:
There are four common weaknesses no mortal ever knew,
A headache that was caused by wine, drowsiness late at night,
Seasickness, and a corn that came from wearing boots too tight.
A seasick man I never saw; Our Own leans o'er the rail,
Muses awhile, and then comes back with features doughy pale;
But he had only wandered aft, a Parthian glance to take
At those strange coils of moony fire that mark the writhing wake.
With ghastly calm he takes a pipe; in minutes five (or less) hence,
He'll feel again that ecstasy produced by phosphorescence.

Conceive of an existence in which the great events

Are breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, in which, when Fate relents,
She sends a string of porpoises, perhaps a grampus, too,
Who blunders up beneath the stern, and gives a poo-oo-ooh!
While we immortal souls crowd aft and crush each other's toes

To see this stupid creature blow what he esteems a nose;
Why, I blew thrice my moral and accountable proboscis,
But found no fish so blasé that it ever came across his

Waterlogged brain that it was worth his while to turn and come anon,
Lest he should miss the witnessing of that sublime phenomenon;

Nor would it, though your nose were like fray John's, or even had you a Verissimo fazzoletto of Saint Antony of Padua,

The Apostle who in Finland had a cure of souls, and sent Conviction to his hearers that 'twas good to fry in Lent. VOL I.-44

There are some goodish things at sea; for instance, one can feel
A grandeur in the silent man for ever at the wheel,
That bit of two-legged intellect, that particle of drill,

Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with reason, brain and will,
And makes the ship, though skies are black and headwinds whistle loud,
Obey her conscience there which feels the loadstar through the cloud;
And when by lusty western gales the full-sailed barque is hurled
Toward the great moon which, sitting on the silent underworld,
Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and shoots a broadening line,
Of palpitant light from crest to crest across the ridgy brine,
Then from the bows look back and feel a thrill that never stales
In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of onward-yearning sails;
Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that you can't make a poem,
Take him aboard a clipper-ship, young Jonathan, and show him
A work of art that in its grace and grandeur may compare
With any thing that any race has fashioned any where;
'Tis not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if you come to that,
We think of Hyde Park corner, and concede you beat us flat
With your equestrian statue to a Nose and a Cocked-hat;
But 'tis not a cathedral; well, e'en that we will allow,
Both statues and cathedrals are anachronistic now;
Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men who conquered you,
You'd sell a bargain, if we'd take the deans and chapters too;
No; mortal men build now-a-days, as always heretofore,
Good temples to the gods which they in very truth adore;
The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all their willing flocks,
Although they bow to stones no more, do bend the knee to stocks,
And churches can't be beautiful though crowded, floor and gallery,
If people worship preacher, and if preacher worship salary;
Tis well to look things in the face, the god o' the modern universe,
Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and libraries of puny verse,
If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon his ledger—say, per
Contra to loss of so much stone, best Russia duck and paper;
And, after all, about this Art men talk a deal of fudge,

Each nation has its path marked out, from which it must not budge;
The Romans had as little art as Noah in his ark,

Yet somehow on this globe contrived to make an epic mark;
Religion, painting, sculpture, song-for these they ran up jolly ticks
With Greece and Egypt, but they were great artists in their politics.
And if we make no minsters, John, nor epics, yet the Fates
Are not entirely deaf to men who can build ships and states;
(I waive the literary point, contented with observing
That I like Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Bryant, Irving,)
The arts are never pioneers, but men have strength and health
Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a commonwealth,
Nay, can more easily go on and frame them by the dozen,
Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear sympathizing cousin :
And, though our restless Jonathan have not your graver bent, sure he
Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, rapid, nineteenth century;
This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did
When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid,
Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire-tamed lightning now
Replaces Delphos-men don't leave the steamer for the scow;
What hero, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read
The Iliad, the Shanameh, or the Nibelungenlied?

Their public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah, the hairy Graf-
Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; we weary o'er a paragraph;

The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles ;
From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles,
As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused jars
Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars;
Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking,
The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking,
The newspapers take in the Age, and Stocks do all the thinking.

To be Continued.

EDITORIAL NOTES.