The Muse of China has not disdained to warble harmonious numbers in praise of her favorite beverage.  There is a celebrated ballad on tea-picking, in thirty stanzas, sung by a young woman who goes from home early in the day to work, and lightens her labors with song.  I give a few of the verses, distinctly informing the reader, at the same time, that for the real sparkle and beauty of the poem he must consult the Chinese original.

  “By earliest dawn I at my toilet only half-dress my hair
  And seizing my basket, pass the door, while yet the mist is thick. 
  The little maids and graver dames, hand in hand winding along,
  Ask me, ‘Which steep of Semglo do you climb to-day?’

  “In social couples, each to aid her fellow, we seize the tea twigs,
  And in low words urge one another, ‘Don’t delay!’
  Lest on the topmost bough the bud has now grown old,
  And lest with the morrow come the drizzling silky rain.

  “My curls and hair are all awry, my face is quite begrimed;
  In whose house lives the girl so ugly as your slave? 
  ’Tis only because that every day the tea I’m forced to pick;
  The soaking rains and driving winds have spoiled my former charms.

  “Each picking is with toilsome labor, but yet I shun it not;
  My maiden curls are all askew, my pearly fingers all benumbed;
  But I only wish our tea to be of a superfine kind,—­
  To have it equal his ‘Sparrow’s Tongue’ and their ‘Dragon’s Pellet.’

  “For a whole month where can I catch a single leisure day? 
  For at the earliest dawn I go to pick, and not till dusk return;
  Till the deep midnight I’m still before the firing-pan. 
  Will not labor like this my pearly complexion deface?

  “But if my face is lank, my mind is firmly fixed
  So to fire my golden buds they shall excel all beside. 
  But how know I who’ll put them into the gemmy cup? 
  Who at leisure will with her taper fingers give them to the maid to
       draw?”

Will any one say, after this, that there is no poetry connected with tea?

The theme, in truth, is replete with poetical associations, and of a kind that we look in vain for in connection with any other potable.  Unlike the Anacreontic in praise of the grape,—­song suggestive chiefly of bacchanal revels and loose jollity,—­the verse which extols “the cup that cheers, but not inebriates,” brings to mind home comforts and a happy household.  And not only have some of the “canonized bards” of England celebrated its honors,—­like Pope, in the “Rape of the Lock,” when describing Hampton Court,—­

  “There, thou great Anna, whom three realms obey,
  Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea,”—­

but, if it be true that

  “Many are poets who have never penned
  Their inspiration,”

how many an unknown bard have we among us, who, at the close of a hard day’s work, tramps cheerily home, whistling,—­