EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR.

Dear Knick: Were’t not for reverence due From such as I to such as you, I really could not choose but swear To think that e’en a millionaire, With piles enough of brick and stone To make a city of his own, And broad domains in simple fee, Or held in pledge as mortgagee, And scrip whose outspread folds would cover His native Hesse-Darmstadt over; Should have withal the hard assurance To hold a Son of Song in durance. Why, as I lately sauntered out To see what Gotham was about, Just below Niblo’s, west southwest, In a prosaic street at best, I chanced upon a lodge so small, So Lilliputian-like in all, That Argus, hundred-eyed albeit, Might pass a hundred times, nor see it. Agog to see what manikin Had shrined his household gods therein, With step as light as tip-toe fairy’s I stole right in among the Lares. There in the cosiest of nooks, Up to his very eyes in books, Sat a lone wight, nor stout nor lean, Nor old nor young, but just between, Poring along the figured columns Of those most unmelodious volumes, Intently as if there and then He conned the fate of gods and men. Methought that brow so full and fair Was formed the poet’s wreath to wear; And as those eyes of azure hue, One moment lifted, met my view, Gay worlds of starry thoughts appeared In their blue depths serenely sphered. Just then the voice of one unseen, All redolent of Hippocrene, Stole forth so sweetly on the air, I felt the Muse indeed was there, And feel how much her words divine Must lose, interpreted by mine. For shame, it said, Fitz-Greene, for shame! To yield thee to inglorious thrall, And leave the trophy of thy fame Without its crowning capital! The sculptor, bard, as well may trust To shape a form for glory’s shrine, If, ceasing with the breathing bust. He leave unwrought the brow divine. How oft the lavish Muse has grieved. O’er hopes thy early years inspired, And sighed that he who much received, Forgot that much would be required. But not too late, if heeded yet, The voice that chides thy mute repose, And bids thee pay at last the debt Thy genius to Parnassus owes. ’Tis not enough that pride may urge Thy claims to memory’s grateful lore, And boast, as rapt from Lethe’s surge, The Suliote and the Tuscarore. Nay, bard, thy own land’s mighty dead Deserve a nobler hymn from thee, Than bravest of the brave that bled At Laspi or Thermopylæ. Remember, then, thy young renown, Thy country’s dead, thy muse’s sigh; And bid thy vigorous manhood crown What youthful genius reared so high! Still to his task the bard applied, Unrecked, unheeded all beside; And as he closed his balance-sheet, I heard his murmuring lips repeat: ‘Three hundred thousand, city rents, Item a hundred, seven per cents, Add cash, another hundred, say From bonds and notes paid off this day, And eke from drafts at sight for dues Just credited to land accrues, Whose rental stretches on and on From Aroostook to Oregon; Total, a semi-million clear Income received for one short year!’ Aladdin’s wealth scarce mounted faster At its spring-tide than thine, Herr Astor.