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Still, as she hastes, her careful fingers hold
The unfailing hymn-book in its cambric fold:
Six days at Drudgery's heavy wheel she stands,
The seventh sweet morning folds her weary hands.
Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure
He who ordained the Sabbath loved the poor.
This is but one of many passages, showing that the author is capable of moving the heart as well as of tickling the fancy.
There is no straining for effect; simple, natural thoughts are expressed in simple and perfectly transparent language.
Terpsichore, read at an annual dinner of the
Phi Beta Kappa Society at
Cambridge, sparkles throughout with keen wit, quaint conceits, and satire so good-natured that the subjects of it can enjoy it as heartily as their neighbors.
Witness this thrust at our
German-English writers:—
Essays so dark, Champollion might despair
To guess what mummy of a thought was there,
Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase,
Looks like a zebra in a parson's chaise.
Or this at our transcendental friends:—
Deluded infants will they never know
Some doubts must darken o'er the world below
Though all the Platos of the nursery trail
Their clouds of glory at the go-cart's tail
The lines
On Lending a Punch-Bowl are highly characteristic.
Nobody but
Holmes could have conjured up so many rare fancies in connection with such a matter.
Hear him:—
This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,
Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes;
They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,
That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.
