Such are the sylvan scenes that thrill This heart! The lawns, the happy shade, Where matrons, whom the sunbeams grill, Stir with slow spoon their lemonade; And maidens flirt (no extra charge) In comfort at the fountain’s marge!
Others may praise the “grand displays” Where “fiery arch,” “cascade,” and “comet,” Set the whole garden in a “blaze”! Far, at such times, may I be from it; Though then the public may be “lost In wonder” at a trifling cost.
Fann’d by the breeze, to puff at ease My faithful pipe is all I crave: And if folks rave about the “trees Lit up by fireworks,” let them rave. Your monster fêtes, I like not these; Though they bring grist to the lessees.
HE stood, a worn-out City clerk— Who’d toil’d, and seen no holiday, For forty years from dawn to dark— Alone beside Caermarthen Bay.
He felt the salt spray on his lips; Heard children’s voices on the sands; Up the sun’s path he saw the ships Sail on and on to other lands;
And laugh’d aloud. Each sight and sound To him was joy too deep for tears; He sat him on the beach, and bound A blue bandana round his ears:
And thought how, posted near his door, His own green door on Camden Hill, Two bands at least, most likely more, Were mingling at their own sweet will
Verdi with Vance. And at the thought He laugh’d again, and softly drew That Morning Herald that he’d bought Forth from his breast, and read it through.
ON, on, my brown Arab, away, away! Thou hast trotted o’er many a mile to-day, And I trow right meagre hath been thy fare Since they roused thee at dawn from thy straw-piled lair, To tread with those echoless unshod feet Yon weltering flats in the noontide heat, Where no palmtree proffers a kindly shade And the eye never rests on a cool grass blade; And lank is thy flank, and thy frequent cough Oh! it goes to my heart—but away, friend, off!
And yet, ah! what sculptor who saw thee stand, As thou standest now, on thy Native Strand, With the wild wind ruffling thine uncomb’d hair, And thy nostril upturn’d to the od’rous air, Would not woo thee to pause till his skill might trace At leisure the lines of that eager face; The collarless neck and the coal-black paws And the bit grasp’d tight in the massive jaws; The delicate curve of the legs, that seem Too slight for their burden—and, O, the gleam Of that eye, so sombre and yet so gay! Still away, my lithe Arab, once more away!