(For, 'thout new funnitoor, wut good in life?), An' so ole clawfoot, from the precinks dread O' the spare chamber, slinks into the shed, Where, dim with dust, it fust or last subsides To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides; 10 But better days stick fast in heart an' husk, An' all you keep in 't gits a scent o' musk. Jes' so with poets: wut they've airly read Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' head, So 's 't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers With furrin countries or played-out ideers, This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an' things, Ez though we'd nothin' here that blows an' sings 20 1 He [Arthur Hugh Clough] often suggested that I should try my hand at some Yankee Pastorals, which would admit of more sentiment and a higher tone without foregoing the advantage offered by the dialect. I have never completed anything of the kind, but, in this Second Series, both my remembrance of his counsel and the deeper feeling called up by the great interests at stake, led me to venture some passages nearer to what is called poetical than could have been admitted without incongruity into the former series. (LOWELL, in the 'Introduction' to the Biglow Papers, 1866.) Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots. Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse Your muslin nosegays from the milliner's, Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to choose, An' dance your throats sore in morocker shoes: I've seen ye an' felt proud, thet, come wut would, Our Pilgrim stock wuz pethed with hardihood. Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch, Ez though 't wuz sunthin' paid for by the inch; But yit we du contrive to worry thru, 40 70 Softer 'n a baby's be at three days old: Thet 's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows; So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, He goes to plast'rin' his adobë house. Then seems to come a hitch,- things lag behind, Till some fine mornin' Spring makes up her mind, An' ez, when snow-swelled rivers cresh their dams Heaped-up with ice thet dovetails in an' jams, A leak comes spirtin' thru some pin-hole cleft, Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an' left, 80 Then all the waters bow themselves an' come, Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam, Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune An' gives one leap from Aperl into June: Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you think, Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods with pink; The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud; The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud; Red-cedars blossom tu, though few folks know it, An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet; 90 You half-forgit you've gut a body on. Ther''s a small school'us' there where four roads meet, The door-steps hollered out by little feet, An' side-posts carved with names whose owners grew 140 To gret men, some on 'em, an' deacons, tu; 't ain't used no longer, coz the town hez gut A high-school, where they teach the Lord knows wut: Three-story larnin' 's pop'lar now; I guess By overloadin' children's underpinnin': Thet ever fits us easy while we 're in it; Long ez 't wuz futur', 't would be perfect bliss, Soon ez it's past, thet time 's wuth ten o' this; An' yit there ain't a man thet need be told Now, gittin' gray, there's nothin' I enjoy it, Faith, Hope, an' sunthin', ef it is n't Cherrity, It's want o' guile, an' thet's ez gret a rerrity, While Fancy's cushin', free to Prince and Clown, Makes the hard bench ez soft ez milkweed-down. Now, 'fore I knowed, thet Sabbath arter noon When I sot out to tramp myself in tune, Thinkin' o' nothin', I've heerd ole folks say Is a hard kind o' dooty in its way: I thought o' the Rebellion, then o' Hell, Which some folks tell ye now is jest a metterfor (A the'ry, p'raps, it wun't feel none the better for); I thought o' Reconstruction, wut we'd win 180 To work the cow thet hez an iron tail, some, 240 An' danced the tables till their legs wuz gone, In hopes o' larnin' wut wuz goin' on,' You've some conjectures how the thing's a-goin'.' 'Gran❜ther,' sez I, 'a vane warn't never known Nor asked to hev a jedgment of its own; An' yit, ef 't ain't gut rusty in the jints, It's safe to trust its say on certin pints: 250 It knows the wind's opinions to a T, An' the wind settles wut the weather 'll be.' 'I never thought a scion of our stock Could grow the wood to make a weathercock; When I wuz younger 'n you, skurce more 'n a shaver, Now wut I want 's to hev all we gain stick, An' not to start Millennium too quick; We hain't to punish only, but to keep, An' the cure 's gut to go a cent'ry deep.' 'Wall, milk-an'-water ain't the best o' glue,' Sez he, an' so you'll find afore you're thru; Ef reshness venters sunthin', shilly-shally Loses ez often wut 's ten times the vally. Thet exe of ourn, when Charles's neck gut split, Opened a gap thet ain't bridged over yit: 300 Slav'ry's your Charles, the Lord hez gin the exe 'Our Charles,' sez I, 'hez gut eight million necks. The hardest question ain't the black man's right, The trouble is to 'mancipate the white; |