Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons, II. THE TITMOUSE. You shall not be overbold As late I found my lukewarm blood The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, 343. The Sphinx in classical mythology was a monster having ▲ human head, a lion's body, and sometimes fabled as winged. t used to propose a question to the Thebans and murder all who Bould not guess it. The riddle was,— "What goes on four feet, on two feet, and three, Edipus gave the answer that it was man, going on four feet as a child, and when old using a staff which made the third foot. But the Sphinx's riddle in the old poetry and in the serious modern acceptation is nothing .ess than the whole problem of ■uman life. 15 Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, 20 The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud. Softly, but this way fate was pointing, 'T was coming fast to such anointing, 25 When piped a tiny voice hard by, Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, Chic-chicadeedee! saucy note Out of sound heart and merry throat, This poet, though he live apart, As fits a feathered lord of land; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, 40 Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray. Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance at vast death; scrap of valor just for play 45 This Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, As if to shame my weak behavior ; I greeted loud my little saviour, "You pet! what dost here? and what for? At this pinch, wee San Salvador! 65 Is, that men are overgrown, gray, And, to be valiant, must come down 'Tis good-will makes intelligence, Of my bird's song: "Live out of doors I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea, 70 I too have a hole in a hollow tree; And I like less when Summer beats 75 For well the soul, if stout within, Made of the air that blows outside." 78. The titmouse's frame made of the outer air to his fancy o light, free, and strong as it is—can well defy polar frost. With glad remembrance of my debt, Takes hearts like thine in special charge, Now hear thee say in Roman key, Paan! Veni, vidi, vici. 104. Plutarch in his Life of Julius Cæsar, relates that, after Cæsar's victory over Pharnaces at Zela in Asia Minor, "when he gave a friend of his at Rome an account of this action, to express the promptness and rapidity of it, he used three words, I came, saw, and conquered, which in Latin having all the same cadence, carry with them a very suitable air of brevity." 5 III. MONADNOC. THOUSAND minstrels woke within me, Leopard-colored rills. "Up!- If thou knew'st who calls Above the ploughman's highest line, 10 Up! where the airy citadel O'erlooks the surging landscape's swell! Her lily and rose, her sea and land display; 15 Lo! the south answers to the north; Than the gray dreams which thee detain. 10. Any one who has stood upon the summit of Monadnoc, in Cheshire County, southern New Hampshire, would feel the significance not only of the surging landscape's swell, but of the airy citadel, since the crest of the mountain is a pinnacle of stone, built up almost like a fortress. 12. That is, let not the insensate stones be the only recipients of the splendors which the light reveals. 16. The use of urbane is a recall of the first meaning of the word which is more distinct 'n urban. As a city (urbs) gives politeness, urbanity, and the country (rus) gives rusticity, here the sloth urbane is the indolence as regards nature which clings to a person too confined within city limits of interest. |