Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!—­
      Come while the rose is red,—­
      While blue-eyed Summer smiles
  O’er the green ripples round yon sunken piles
  Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles,
      And on the sultry air
  The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer!

  Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain
      With thrills of wild sweet pain!—­
      On life’s autumnal blast,
  Like shrivelled leaves, youth’s passion-flowers are cast,—­
  Once loving thee, we love thee to the last!—­
      Behold thy new-decked shrine,
  And hear once more the voice that breathed “Forever thine!”

THE TRUSTEE’S LAMENT.

Per aspera ad astra.

(SCENE.—­Outside the gate of the Astronomical Observatory at Albany.)

  There was a time when I was blest;
  The stars might rise in East or West
      With all their sines and wonders;
  I cared for neither great nor small,
  As pointedly unmoved by all
  As, on the top of steeple tall,
      A lightning-rod at thunders.

  What did I care for Science then? 
  I was a man with fellow-men,
      And called the Bear the Dipper;
  Segment meant piece of pie,—­no more;
  Cosine, the parallelogram that bore
  JOHN SMITH & CO. above a door;
      Arc, what called Noah skipper.

  No axes weighed upon my mind,
  (Unless I had a few to grind.)
      And as for my astronomy,
  Had Hedgecock’s quadrant then been known,
  I might a lamp-post’s height have shown
  By gas-tronomic skill,—­if none
      Find fault with the metonymy.

  O hours of innocence!  O ways
  How far from these unhappy days
      When all is vicy-versy! 
  No flower more peaceful took its due
  Than I, who then no difference knew
  ’Twixt Ursy Major and my true
      Old crony, Major Hersey.

  Now in long broils and feuds we roast,
  Like Strasburg geese that living toast
      To make a liver-pate,—­
  And all because we fondly strove
  To set the city of our love
  In scientific fame above
      Her sister Cincinnati!

  We built our tower and furnished it
  With everything folks said was fit,
      From coping-stone to grounsel;
  And then, to give a knowing air,
  Just nominally assigned its care
  To that unmanageable affair,
      A Scientific Council.

  We built it, not that one or two
  Astronomers the stars might view
      And count the comets’ hair-roots,
  But that it might by all be said
  How very freely we had bled,—­
  We were not laying out a bed
      To force their early square-roots.

  The observations we wished made
  Were on the spirit we’d displayed,
      Worthy of Athens’ high days;
  But they’ve put in a man who thinks
  Only of planets’ nodes and winks,
  So full of astronomic kinks
      He eats star-fish on Fridays.