Through the rough sieve to shake the golden shower,
In boiling water stir the yellow flour:
The yellow flour, bestrew'd and stirr'd with haste,
Swells in the flood and thickens to a paste,
Then puffs and wallops, rises to the brim,
Drinks the dry knobs that on the surface swim;
The knobs at last the busy ladle breaks,
And the whole mass its true consistence takes.
Could but her sacred name, unknown so long,
Rise, like her labors, to the son of song,
To her, to them I'd consecrate my lays,
And blow her pudding with the breath of praise.
If 'twas Oella, whom I sang before,

I here ascribe her one great virtue more.
Not through the rich Peruvian realms alone
The fame of Sol's sweet daughter should be known,
But o'er the world's wide clime should live secure,
Far as his rays extend, as long as they endure.

Dear Hasty Pudding, what unpromised joy,
Expands my heart, to meet thee in Savoy!
Doom'd o'er the world through devious paths to
roam,

Each clime my country, and each house my home,
My soul is soothed, my cares have found an end:
I greet my long-lost, unforgotten friend.
For thee through Paris, that corrupted town,
How long in vain I wander'd up and down,
Where shameless Bacchus, with his drenching hoard,
Cold from his cave usurps the morning board.

London is lost in smoke and steep'd in tea;
No Yankee there can lisp the name of thee;
The uncouth word, a libel on the town,
Would call a proclamation from the crown.
For climes oblique, that fear the sun's full rays,
Chill'd in their fogs, exclude the generous maize:
A grain whose rich, luxuriant growth requires
Short, gentle showers, and bright, ethereal fires.

But here, though distant from our native shore,
With mutual glee, we meet and laugh once more.
The same! I know thee by that yellow face,
That strong complexion of true Indian race,
Which time can never change, nor soil impair,
Nor Alpine snows, nor Turkey's morbid air;
For endless years, through every mild domain,
Where grows the maize, there thou art sure to
reign.

But man, more fickle, the bold license claims,
In different realms to give thee different names.
Thee the soft nations round the warm Levant
Polanta call; the French, of course, Polante.
E'en in thy native regions, how I blush
To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush!
On Hudson's banks, while men of Belgic spawn
Insult and eat thee by the name Suppawn.
All spurious appellations, void of truth;
I've better known thee from my earliest youth;
Thy name is Hasty Pudding! thus our sires
Were wont to greet thee fuming, from their fires;
And while they argued in thy just defence
With logic clear, they thus explained the sense:
"In haste the boiling caldron, o'er the blaze,
Receives and cooks the ready powder'd maize;
In haste 'tis served, and then in equal haste
With cooling milk, we make the sweet repast.
No carving to be done, no knife to grate
The tender ear and wound the stony plate;
But the smooth spoon, just fitted to the lip,
And taught with art the yielding mass to dip,
By frequent journeys to the bowl well stored,
Such is thy name, significant and clear,
Performs the hasty honors of the board."

A name, a sound to every Yankee dear,
But most to me, whose heart and palate chaste
Preserve my pure, hereditary taste.

There are who strive to stamp with disrepute
The luscious food, because it feeds the brute;
In tropes of high-strain'd wit, while gaudy prigs
Compare thy nursling man to pamper'd pigs;
With sovereign scorn I treat the vulgar jest
Nor fear to share thy bounties with the beast.
What though the generous cow gives me to quaff
The milk nutritious; am I then a calf?
Or can the genuis of the noisy swine,
Though nursed on pudding, thence lay claim to mine?
Runs more melodious than the notes they raise.
Sure the sweet song I fashion to thy praise,

My song, resounding in its grateful glee,
No merit claims; I praise myself in thee.
My father loved thee through his length of days!
For thee his fields were shaded o'er with maize;
From thee what health, what vigor he possess'd,
Ten sturdy freemen from his loins attest;
Thy constellation ruled my natal morn,
And all my bones were made of Indian corn.
Delicious grain! whatever form it take,
To roast or boil, to smother or to bake,
In every dish 'tis welcome still to me,
But most, my Hasty Pudding, most in thee.

Let the green succotash with thee contend;
Let beans and corn their sweetest juices blend;

Let butter drench them in its yellow tide,
And a long slice of bacon grace their side;
Not all the plate, how famed soe'er it be,
Can please my palate like a bowl of thee.
Some talk of Hoe-Cake, fair Virginia's pride!
Rich Johnny-Cake this mouth hath often tried;
Both please me well, their virtues much the same,
Alike their fabric, as allied their fame,
Except in dear New England, where the last
Receives a dish of pumpkin in the paste,
To give it sweetness and improve the taste.
But place them all before me, smoking hot,
The big, round dumpling, rolling from the pot;
The pudding of the bag, whose quivering breast,
With suet lined, leads on the Yankee feast;
The Charlotte brown, within whose crusty sides
A belly soft the pulpy apple hides;
The yellow bread, whose face like amber glows,
And all of Indian that the bakepan knows-
You tempt me not; my favorite greets my eyes,
To that loved bowl my spoon by instinct flies.

CANTO II.

To mix the food by vicious rules of art,
To kill the stomach and to sink the heart,
To make mankind to social virtue sour,
Cram o'er each dish, and be what they devour;
For this the kitchen muse first framed her book,
Commanding sweat to steam from every cook;
Children no more their antic gambols tried,
And friends of physic wonder'd why they died.
Not so the Yankee: his abundant feast,
With simples furnish'd and with plainness dress'd,
A numerous offspring gathers round the board,
And cheers alike the servant and the lord;

Whose well-bought hunger prompts the joyous taste,

And health attends them from the short repast.
While the full pail rewards the milk-maid's toil,
The mother sees the morning caldron boil;
To stir the pudding next demands their care;
To spread the table and the bowls prepare:
To feed the children as their portions cool,
And comb their heads, and send them off to school.
Yet may the simplest dish some rules impart,
For Nature scorns not all the aids of art.
E'en Hasty Pudding, purest of all food,
May still be bad, indifferent, or good,
As sage experience the short process guides,
Or want of skill, or want of care presides.
Whoe'er would form it on the surest plan,
To rear the child and long sustain the man;
To shield the morals while it mends the size,
And all the powers of every food supplies-
Attend the lesson that the muse shall bring;
Suspend your spoons, and listen while I sing.
But since, O man! thy life and health demand
Not food alone, but labor from thy hand,
First, in the field, beneath the sun's strong rays,
Ask of thy mother earth the needful maize;
She loves the race that courts her yielding soil,
And gives her bounties to the sons of toil.
When now the ox, obedient to thy call,
Repays the loan that fill'd the winter stall,
Pursue his traces o'er the furrow'd plain,
And plant in measured hills the golden grain.
But when the tender germ begins to shoot,
And the green spire declares the sprouting root,
Then guard your nursling from each greedy foe,
The insidious worm, the all-devouring crow.
A little ashes sprinkled round the spire,
Soon steep'd in rain, will bid the worm retire;

The feather'd robber, with his hungry maw, Swift flies the field before your man of straw; A frightful image, such as schoolboys bring, When met to burn the pope or hang the king.

Thrice in the season, through each verdant row, Wield the strong ploughshare and the faithful hoe; The faithful hoe, a double task that takes,

To till the summer corn and roast the winter cakes.
Slow springs the blade, while check'd by chilling rains,
Ere yet the sun the seat of Cancer gains;
But when his fiercest fires emblaze the land,
Then start the juices, then the roots expand;
Then, like a column of Corinthian mould,
The stalk struts upward and the leaves unfold;
The bushy branches all the ridges fill,
Entwine their arms, and kiss from hill to hill.
Here cease to vex them; all your cares are done;
Leave the last labors to the parent sun;
Beneath his genial smiles, the well-dress'd field,
When autumn calls, a plenteous crop shall yield.
Now the strong foliage bears the standards high,
And shoots the tall top-gallants to the sky;
The suckling ears the silken fringes bend,
And, pregnant grown, their swelling coats distend;
The loaded stalk, while still the burden grows,
O'erhangs the space that runs between the rows;
High as a hop-field waves the silent grove.
A safe retreat for little thefts of love,
When the pledged roasting-ears invite the maid,
To meet her swain beneath the new-form'd shade
His generous hand unloads the cumbrous hill,
And the green spoils her ready basket fill;
Small compensation for the twofold bliss,
The promised wedding, and the present kiss.
Slight depredations these; but now the moon
And while by night he bears his prize away,
Calls from his hollow tree the sly raccoon;
The bolder squirrel labors through the day.
Both thieves alike, but provident of time,
A virtue rare, that almost hides their crime.
Then let them steal the little stores they can,
And fill their granaries from the toils of man;
We've one advantage where they take no part-
With all their wiles, they ne'er have found the art
To boil the Hasty Pudding; here we shine
Superior far to tenants of the pine;
This envied boon to man shall still belong,
Unshared by them in substance or in song.
At last the closing season browns the plain,
And ripe October gathers in the grain;
Deep-loaded carts the spacious corn-house fill;
The sack distended marches to the mill;
The laboring mill beneath the burden groans,
And showers the future pudding from the stones;
Till the glad housewife greets the powder'd gold,
And the new crop exterminates the old.

CANTO III.

The days grow short; but though the fallen sun
To the glad swain proclaims his day's work done;
Night's pleasant shades his various tasks prolong,
And yield new subjects to my various song.
For now, the corn-house fill'd, the harvest home,
The invited neighbors to the husking come;
A frolic scene, where work, and mirth, and play,
Unite their charms to chase the hours away.
Where the huge heap lies centred in the hall,
The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall,
Brown, corn-fed nymphs, and strong, hard-handed

beaux,

Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows,

OUR worthy knight, and his aspiring bog-trotter, had now been some days, perhaps weeks, in a large village, not necessary to be named; but which, not more than a score of years ago, had been on the frontier. It is not necessary to speak of the reason for this delay; perhaps it was a part of the plan of observation adopted; perhaps something of a personal nature was the cause. Certain it is, that while here, the captain heard a good deal said about a certain Miss Vapor, who was the belle of the place. Her father had made a fortune by the purchase of public securities. A garrison having been at this place, and troops quartered here, he had been employed as an issuing commissary. When the commissioners sat to adjust unliquidated claims, he had a good deal in his power, by vouching for the accounts of the butcher and baker, and woodcutter and water-drawer, and wagoner, and others of all occupations whatsoever, whose claims were purchased by himself in the mean time; and when the certificates issued in their names, they were to his use. The butcher and baker, no doubt, long before, had been paid out of the flesh killed, or bread baked; because it is a good maxim, and a scriptural expression, "Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out the corn." But the public has a broad back, and a little vouching, by a person interested, is not greatly felt. These certificates, though at first of little value, and issued by the commissioners with the liberality of those who give what is of little worth, yet, by the funding acts of the government having become in value equal to gold and silver, the commissary had a great estate thrown upon him; so that, from low beginnings, he had become a man of fortune and consequence. His family, and especially the eldest daughter, shared the advantage; for she had become the object of almost all wooers. The captain, though an old bachelor, as we have said, had not wholly lost the idea of matrimony. Happening to be in a circle, one evening, where Miss Vapor was, he took a liking to her in all respects save one, which was, that she seemed, on her part, to have taken a liking to a certain Mr. Jacko, who was there present. The captain behaved as if he did not observe the preference; but the following day, waiting on the young lady at her father's house, he drew her into conversation, and began to reason with her in the following manner: "Miss Vapor," said he, "you are a young lady of great beauty, great sense, and fortune still greater than either."

This was a sad blunder in a man of gallantry, but the lady not being of the greatest sensibility of nerve, did not perceive it.

"On my part," said he, "I am a man of years, but a man of some reflection; and it would be much more advisable in you to trust my experience, and the mellowness of my disposition in a state of matrimony, than the vanity and petulance of this young fop Jacko, for whom you show a partiality."

The color coming into the young lady's face at this expression, she withdrew and left him by himself. The captain, struck with the rudeness, withdrew also; and after a few, but very long strides, found himself seated in his lodgings.

The next morning, shortly after he had got out of

bed, and had just come down stairs, and was but-. toning the knees of his breeches, a light airy-looking young man, with much bowing and civility, entered the hall of the public-house, inquiring "if this was not Captain Farrago, to whom he had the honor to address himself," delivered him a paper. On the perusal, it was found to be a challenge from Major Jacko.

The fact was, that Miss Vapor, in order the more to recommend herself to her suitor, had informed him of the language of the captain. The young man, though he had no great stomach for the matter, yet, according to the custom of these times, could do no less than challenge. The bearer was what is called his second.

The captain, having read the paper, and pausing a while, said, "Mr. Second, for that I take to be your style and character, is it consistent with reason or common sense, to be the aider or abettor of another man's folly; perhaps the prompter? For it is no uncommon thing with persons to inflame the passions of their friends, rather than allay them. This young woman, for I shall not call her lady, from vanity, or ill nature, or both, has become a tale-bearer to her lover, who, I will venture to say, thanks her but little for it; as she has thereby rendered it necessary for him to take this step. You, in the mean time, are not blameless, as it became you to have declined the office, and thereby furnished an excuse to your friend for not complying with the custom. For it would have been a sufficient apology with the lady to have said, although he was disposed to fight, yet he could get no one to be his armor-bearer or assistant. It could have been put upon the footing, that all had such regard for his life, that no one would countenance him in risking it. You would have saved him, by this