My pictures (they are very few,

-

The heads of ancient wise men)

Smoothed down their knotted fronts, and grew As rosy as excisemen.

My antique high-backed Spanish chair

Felt thrills through wood and leather,

That had been strangers since whilere,
'Mid Andalusian heather,

The oak that made its sturdy frame
His happy arms stretched over

The ox whose fortunate hide became
The bottom's polished cover.

It came out in that famous bark

That brought our sires intrepid,

Capacious as another ark

For furniture decrepid ;

For, as that saved of bird and beast

A pair for propagation,

So has the seed of these increased

And furnished half the nation.

Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats;

But those slant precipices

Of ice the northern voyager meets
Less slippery are than this is;

To cling therein, would pass the wit
Of royal man or woman,

And whatsoe'er can stay in it

Is more or less than human.

My wonder, then, was not unmixed

With merciful suggestion,

When, as my roving eyes grew fixed
Upon the chair in question,

I saw its trembling arms inclose

A figure grim and rusty,

Whose doublet plain and plainer hose
Were something worn and dusty.

Now even such men as Nature forms

Merely to fill the street with,

Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms,

Are serious things to meet with;

Your penitent spirits are no jokes,

And, though I'm not averse to

A quiet shade, even they are folks
One cares not to speak first to.

Who knows, thought I, but he has come, By Charon kindly ferried,

To tell me of a mighty sum

Behind my wainscot buried?

There is a buccaneerish air

About that garb outlandish

Just then the ghost drew up his chair
And said, "My name is Standish.

"I come from Plymouth, deadly bored
With toasts, and songs, and speeches,

As long and flat as my old sword,
As threadbare as my breeches :

They understand us Pilgrims! they,

Smooth men with rosy faces,

Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away,

And varnish in their places!

"We had some toughness in our grain,

The eye to rightly see us is

Not just the one that lights the brain
Of drawing-room Tyrtæuses:

They talk about their Pilgrim blood,
Their birthright high and holy !-
A mountain-stream that ends in mud
Methinks is melancholy.

"He had stiff knees, the Puritan, That were not good at bending; The homespun dignity of man

He thought was worth defending; He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, His country's shame forgotten, Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, When all within was rotten.

"These loud ancestral boasts of yours, How can they else than vex us?

Where were your dinner orators

When slavery grasped at Texas?

Dumb on his knees was every one

That now is bold as Cæsar,

Mere pegs to hang an office on

Such stalwart men as these are."

"Good Sir," I said, "

you seem much stirred;

The sacred compromises"

"Now God confound the dastard word!

My gall thereat arises :

Northward it hath this sense alone,

That you, your conscience blinding,

Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone,
When slavery feels like grinding.

""T is shame to see such painted sticks
In Vane's and Winthrop's places,

To see your spirit of Seventy-six
Drag humbly in the traces,

With slavery's lash upon her back,

And herds of office-holders

To shout applause, as, with a crack,
It peels her patient shoulders.