tched of divers hues,
Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them.
He filled the quivering reeds with sound,
And o'er his mouth their changes shifted,
And with his goat's-eyes looked around
Where'er the passing current drifted;
And soon, as on Trinacrian hills
The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him,
Even now the tradesmen from their tills,
With clerks and porters, crowded near him.
The bulls and bears together drew
From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley,
As erst, if pastorals be true,
Came beasts from every wooded valley;
The random passers stayed to list,--
A boxer Aegon, rough and merry,
A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst
With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry.
A one-eyed Cyclops halted long
In tattered cloak of army pattern,
And Galatea joined the throng,--
A blowsy, apple-vending slattern;
While old Silenus staggered out
From some new-fangled lunch-house handy,
And bade the piper, with a shout,
To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy!
A newsboy and a peanut-girl
Like little Fauns began to caper:
His hair was all in tangled curl,
Her tawny legs were bare and taper;
And still the gathering larger grew,
And gave its pence and crowded nigher,
While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew
His pipe, and struck the gamut higher.
O heart of Nature, beating still
With throbs her vernal passion taught her,--
Even here, as on the vine-clad hill,
Or by the Arethusan water!
New forms may fold the speech, new lands
Arise within these ocean-portals,
But Music waves eternal wands,--
Enchantress of the souls of mortals!
So thought I,--but among us trod
A man in blue, with legal baton,
And scoffed the vagrant demigod,
And pushed him from the step I sat on.
Doubting I mused upon the cry,
"Great Pan is dead!"--and all the people
Went on their ways:--and clear and high
The quarter sounded from the steeple.
Edmund Clarence Stedman [1833-1908]
UPON LESBIA--ARGUING
My Lesbia, I will not deny,
Bewitches me completely;
She has the usual beaming eye,
And smiles upon me sweetly:
But she has an unseemly way
Of contradicting what I say.
And, though I am her closest friend,
And find her fascinating,
I cannot cordially commend
Her method of debating:
Her logic, though she is divine,
Is singularly feminine.
Her reasoning is full of tricks,
And butterfly suggestions,
I know no point to which she sticks,
She begs the simplest questions;
And, when her premises are strong,
She always draws her inference wrong.
Broa
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