wakes;
The planning Reason's sober gaze,
And Fancy's meteoric blaze.
And stronger, as he grew to man,
The contradicting natures ran,--
As mingled streams from Etna flow,
One born of fire, and one of snow.
And one impelled, and one withheld,
And one obeyed, and one rebelled.
One gave him force, the other fire;
This self-control, and that desire.
One filled his heart with fierce unrest;
With peace serene the other blessed.
He knew the depth and knew the height,
The bounds of darkness and of light;
And who these far extremes has seen
Must needs know all that lies between.
So, with untaught, instinctive art,
He read the myriad-natured heart.
He met the men of many a land;
They gave their souls into his hand;
And none of them was long unknown:
The hardest lesson was his own.
But how he lived, and where, and when,
It matters not to other men;
For, as a fountain disappears,
To gush again in later years,
So natures lost again may rise
After the lapse of centuries,--
May track the hidden course of blood
Through many a generation's flood,
Till, on some unsuspected field,
The latent lineage is revealed.
The hearts that met in Palestine,
And mingled 'neath the Norland pine.
Still beat with double pulse in mine.
THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.
Back again!--A turtle--which means a tortoise--is fond of his shell; but
if you put a live coal on his back, he crawls out of it. So the boys
say.
It is a libel on the turtle. He grows to his shell, and his shell is in
his body as much as his body is in his shell.--I don't think there
is one of our boarders quite so testudinous as I am. Nothing but a
combination of motives, more peremptory than the coal on the turtle's
back, could have got me to leave the shelter of my carapace; and after
memorable interviews, and kindest hospitalities, and grand sights, and
huge influx of patriotic pride,--for every American owns all America,--
"Creation's heir,--the world, the world is"
his, if anybody's,--I come back with the feeling which a boned turkey
might experience, if, retaining his consciousness, he were allowed to
resume his skeleton.
Welcome, O Fighting Gladiator, and Recumbent Cleopatra, and Dying
Warrior, whose classic outlines (reproduced in the calcined mineral of
Lutetia) crown my loaded shelves! We
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