Ponkapog Papers [20]
the less diverting. The stanza containing the distich ends with a striking piece of realism:
If a storm should come and awake the deep, What matter? I shall ride and sleep.
This is the course of action usually pursued by sailors during a gale. The first or second mate goes around and tucks them up comfort- ably, each in his hammock, and serves them out an extra ration of grog after the storm is over. Barry Cornwall must have had an exception- ally winning personality, for he drew to him the friendship of men as differently constituted as Thackeray, Carlyle, Browning, and Forster. He was liked by the best of his time, from Charles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne, who caught a glimpse of the aged poet in his vanishing. The personal magnetism of an au- thor does not extend far beyond the orbit of his contemporaries. It is of the lyrist and not of the man I am speaking here. One could wish he had written more prose like his admirable "Recollections of Elia." Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note, but when he does it is extremely sweet. That little ballad in the minor key beginning,
Touch us gently, Time! Let us glide adown thy stream,
was written in one of his rare moments. Leigh Hunt, though not without questionable manner- isms, was rich in the inspiration that came but infrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is full of natural felicities. He also was a bookman, but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew how to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the coinage with his own head. In "Hero and Lean- der" there is one line which, at my valuing, is worth any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall has written:
So might they now have lived, and so have died; The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side.
Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane Carlyle gave him lingers on everybody's lip. That and the rhyme of "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel" are spice enough to embalm a man's memory. After all, it takes only a handful.
DECORATION DAY
HOW quickly Nature takes possession of a deserted battlefield, and goes to work repairing the ravages of man! With invisible magic hand she smooths the rough earthworks, fills the rifle-pits with delicate flowers, and wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent drapery of tendrils. Soon the whole sharp out- line of the spot is lost in unremembering grass. Where the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the foliage, the robin or the thrush pipes its tremu- lous note; and where the menacing shell de- scribed its curve through the air, a harmless crow flies in circles. Season after season the gentle work goes on, healing the wounds and rents made by the merciless enginery of war, until at last the once hotly contested battle- ground differs from none of its quiet surround- ings, except, perhaps, that here the flowers take a richer tint and the grasses a deeper emerald. It is thus the battle lines may be obliterated by Time, but there are left other and more last- ing relics of the struggle. That dinted army sabre, with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its hilt, which hangs over the mantel-piece of the "best room" of many a town and country house in these States, is one; and the graven headstone of the fallen hero is another. The old swords will be treasured and handed down from gener- ation to generation as priceless heirlooms, and with them, let us trust, will be cherished the custom of dressing with annual flowers the rest- ing-places of those who fell during the Civil War.
With the tears a Land hath shed Their graves should ever be green.
Ever their fair, true glory Fondly should fame rehearse-- Light of legend and story, Flower of marble and verse.
The impulse which led us to set apart a day for decorating the graves of our soldiers sprung from the grieved heart of the nation, and in our own time there is little chance of the rite being neglected. But the generations that come after us should not allow the observance to fall into
If a storm should come and awake the deep, What matter? I shall ride and sleep.
This is the course of action usually pursued by sailors during a gale. The first or second mate goes around and tucks them up comfort- ably, each in his hammock, and serves them out an extra ration of grog after the storm is over. Barry Cornwall must have had an exception- ally winning personality, for he drew to him the friendship of men as differently constituted as Thackeray, Carlyle, Browning, and Forster. He was liked by the best of his time, from Charles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne, who caught a glimpse of the aged poet in his vanishing. The personal magnetism of an au- thor does not extend far beyond the orbit of his contemporaries. It is of the lyrist and not of the man I am speaking here. One could wish he had written more prose like his admirable "Recollections of Elia." Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note, but when he does it is extremely sweet. That little ballad in the minor key beginning,
Touch us gently, Time! Let us glide adown thy stream,
was written in one of his rare moments. Leigh Hunt, though not without questionable manner- isms, was rich in the inspiration that came but infrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is full of natural felicities. He also was a bookman, but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew how to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the coinage with his own head. In "Hero and Lean- der" there is one line which, at my valuing, is worth any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall has written:
So might they now have lived, and so have died; The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side.
Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane Carlyle gave him lingers on everybody's lip. That and the rhyme of "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel" are spice enough to embalm a man's memory. After all, it takes only a handful.
DECORATION DAY
HOW quickly Nature takes possession of a deserted battlefield, and goes to work repairing the ravages of man! With invisible magic hand she smooths the rough earthworks, fills the rifle-pits with delicate flowers, and wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent drapery of tendrils. Soon the whole sharp out- line of the spot is lost in unremembering grass. Where the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the foliage, the robin or the thrush pipes its tremu- lous note; and where the menacing shell de- scribed its curve through the air, a harmless crow flies in circles. Season after season the gentle work goes on, healing the wounds and rents made by the merciless enginery of war, until at last the once hotly contested battle- ground differs from none of its quiet surround- ings, except, perhaps, that here the flowers take a richer tint and the grasses a deeper emerald. It is thus the battle lines may be obliterated by Time, but there are left other and more last- ing relics of the struggle. That dinted army sabre, with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its hilt, which hangs over the mantel-piece of the "best room" of many a town and country house in these States, is one; and the graven headstone of the fallen hero is another. The old swords will be treasured and handed down from gener- ation to generation as priceless heirlooms, and with them, let us trust, will be cherished the custom of dressing with annual flowers the rest- ing-places of those who fell during the Civil War.
With the tears a Land hath shed Their graves should ever be green.
Ever their fair, true glory Fondly should fame rehearse-- Light of legend and story, Flower of marble and verse.
The impulse which led us to set apart a day for decorating the graves of our soldiers sprung from the grieved heart of the nation, and in our own time there is little chance of the rite being neglected. But the generations that come after us should not allow the observance to fall into