Cooley ever condescended to express his fancies in verse.”  Then he went on to describe the judge, at the time of writing the verse, as “a long, awkward boy, with big features, moony eyes, a shock of coarse hair, and the merest shadow of a mustache,” in proof of which description he presented a picture of the young man, declared to be from a daguerrotype in the possession of Mr. Eastman.  The first “specimen gem” was said to be a paraphrase from Theocritus, entitled “Mortality”: 

  O Nicias, not for us alone
    Was laughing Eros born,
  Nor shines for us alone the moon,
    Nor burns the ruddy morn. 
  Alas! to-morrow lies not in the ken
  Of us who are, O Nicias, mortal men.

Next followed a bit, “in lighter vein, from the Simonides of Amorgas,” entitled “A Fickle Woman”: 

Her nature is the sea’s, that smiles to-night A radiant maiden in the moon’s soft light; The unsuspecting seaman sets his sails, Forgetful of the fury of her gales; To-morrow, mad with storms, the ocean roars, And o’er his hapless wreck her flood she pours.

Field then went on to describe Judge Cooley as equally felicitous in Latin verse, presenting in proof thereof the following, “sung at the junior class supper at Ann Arbor, May 14th, 1854”: 

  Nicyllam bellis oculis—­
    (Videre est amare),
  Carminibus et poculis,
    Tra la la, tra la la,
  Me placet propinare: 
    Tra la la, tra la la,—­
  Me placet propinare!

Beside such grotesque literary horse-play as this, with a gravity startling in its unexpected daring, Field proceeded to attribute to the venerable jurist one of the simplest and purest lullabies that ever came from his own pen, opening with: 

  I hear Thy voice, dear Lord;
  I hear it by the stormy sea
    When winter nights are bleak and wild,
  And when, affright, I call to Thee;
  It calms my fears and whispers me,
    “Sleep well, my child."

Then follows “The Vision of the Holy Grail,” one of those exercises in archaic English in which Field took infinite pains as well as delight, and to which, as a production of Judge Cooley’s, he paid the passing tribute of saying that it was “a graceful imitation of old English.”  As an example of the judge’s humorous vein Field printed the conclusion of his lines “To a Blue Jay”: 

  When I had shooed the bird away
    And plucked the plums—­a quart or more—­
  I noted that the saucy jay,
  Albeit he had naught to say,
    Appeared much bluer than before.

After crediting the judge with a purposely awful parody on “Dixie,” in which “banner” is made to rhyme with “Savannah,” and “holy” with “Pensacola,” Field concluded the whimsical fabrication with the serious comment:  “It seems a pity that such poetic talent as Judge Cooley evinced was not suffered to develop.  His increasing professional duties and his political employments put a quietus to those finer intellectual indulgences with which his earlier years were fruitful.”