[396]
To A Poetical Trio in the City of Gotham.
[This jeu d'esprit was written by Whittier in 1832. The notes are his own. The authorship was not discovered till after his death.] Three wise men of GothamWent to sea in a bowl.
Bards of the island city!—where of old
The Dutchman smoked beneath his favorite tree,
And the wild eyes of Indian hunters rolled
On Hudson plunging in the Tappaan Zee,
Scene of Stuyvesant's might and chivalry,
And Knickerbocker's fame,—I have made bold
To come before ye, at the present time,
And reason with ye in the way of rhyme.
Time was when poets kept the quiet tenor
Of their green pathway through th' Arcadian vale,—
Chiming their music in the low sweet manner
Of song-birds warbling to the ‘Soft South’ gale;
Wooing the Muse where gentle zephyrs fan her,
I Where all is peace and earth may not assail;
Telling of lutes and flowers, of love and fear,
Of shepherds, sheep and lambs, and ‘such small deer.’
But ye! lost recreants—straying from the green
And pleasant vista of your early time,
With broken lutes and crownless skulls—are seen
Spattering your neighbors with abhorrent slime
Of the low world's pollution!1 Ye have been
So long apostates from the Heaven of rhyme,
That of the Muses, every mother's daughter
Blushes to own such graceless bards e'er sought her.
‘Hurrah for Jackson!’ is the music now
Which your cracked lutes have learned alone to utter,
As, crouching in Corruption's shadow low,
Ye daily sweep them for your bread and butter,2
