t-a-pourri_
With the scents I love and keep;
Some of them so very precious
That remembrance makes me weep.

While I dream I hear the music
That of happiness foretells,
Like the flourishing of trumpets
And the sound of marriage bells.

There's a rose upon the prairie,
Chosen his by happy fate,
He shall gather when he cometh
Sailing through the Golden Gate.

Mine, a public posy, growing
Somewhere by the garden wall,
Might have gone to any stranger,
May have been admired by all.

But the rose in beauty blushing,
Tenderly and sweetly grown
In the home and its affections,
Blooms for him, and him alone.

Speed the voyager returning;
His shall be a welcome warm,
With the Rose of Minnesota
Gently resting on his arm.

Love embraces in his kingdom
Earth and sea and sky and air.
Hail, Columbia! hail, Hawaii!
It is Heaven everywhere.

The Taxidermist.

From other men he stands apart,
Wrapped in sublimity of thought
Where futile fancies enter not;
With starlike purpose pressing on
Where Agassiz and Audubon
Labored, and sped that noble art
Yet in its pristine dawn.

Something to conquer, to achieve,
Makes life well worth the struggle hard;
Its petty ills to disregard,
In high endeavor day by day
With this incentive--that he may
Somehow mankind the richer leave
When he has passed away.

Forest and field he treads alone,
Finding companionship in birds,
In reptiles, rodents, yea, in herds
Of drowsy cattle fat and sleek;
For these to him a language speak
To common multitudes unknown
As tones of classic Greek.

Unthinking creatures and untaught,
They to his nature answer back
Something his fellow mortals lack;
And oft educe from him the sigh
That they unnoticed soon must die,
Leaving of their existence naught
To be remembered by.

Man may aspire though in the slough;
May dream of glory, strive for fame,
Thirst for the prestige of a name.
And shall these friends, that so invite
The study of the erudite,
Ever as he beholds them now
Perish like sparks of light?

Nay, 'tis his purpose and design
To keep them: not like mummies old
Papyrus-mantled fold on fold