There was MARIA CHAPMAN, too,
With her swift eyes of clear steel-blue, 30
The coiled-up mainspring of the Fair,
Originating everywhere
The expansive force without a sound
That whirls a hundred wheels around,
Herself meanwhile as calm and still
As the bare crown of Prospect Hill;
A noble woman, brave and apt,
Cumaean sibyl not more rapt,
Who might, with those fair tresses shorn,
The Maid of Orleans’ casque have worn, 40
Herself the Joan of our Ark,
For every shaft a shining mark.

And there, too, was ELIZA FOLLEN,
Who scatters fruit-creating pollen
Where’er a blossom she can find
Hardy enough for Truth’s north wind,
Each several point of all her face
Tremblingly bright with the inward grace,
As if all motion gave it light
Like phosphorescent seas at night.

There jokes our EDMUND, plainly son 51
Of him who bearded Jefferson,
A non-resistant by conviction,
But with a bump in contradiction,
So that whene’er it gets a chance
His pen delights to play the lance,
And—­you may doubt it, or believe it—­
Full at the head of Joshua Leavitt
The very calumet he’d launch,
And scourge him with the olive branch. 60
A master with the foils of wit,
’Tis natural he should love a hit;
A gentleman, withal, and scholar,
Only base things excite his choler,
And then his satire’s keen and thin
As the lithe blade of Saladin. 
Good letters are a gift apart,
And his are gems of Flemish art,
True offspring of the fireside Muse,
Not a rag-gathering of news 70
Like a new hopfield which is all poles,
But of one blood with Horace Walpole’s.

There, with cue hand behind his back,
Stands PHILLIPS buttoned in a sack,
Our Attic orator, our Chatham;
Old fogies, when he lightens at ’em,
Shrivel like leaves; to him ’tis granted
Always to say the word that’s wanted,
So that he seems but speaking clearer
The tiptop thought of every hearer; 80
Each flash his brooding heart lets fall
Fires what’s combustible in all,
And sends the applauses bursting in
Like an exploded magazine. 
His eloquence no frothy show,
The gutter’s street-polluted flow,
No Mississippi’s yellow flood
Whose shoalness can’t be seen for mud;—­
So simply clear, serenely deep, 89
So silent-strong its graceful sweep,
None measures its unrippling force
Who has not striven to stem its course;
How fare their barques who think to play
With smooth Niagara’s mane of spray,
Let Austin’s total shipwreck say. 
He never spoke a word too much—­
Except of Story, or some such,
Whom, though condemned by ethics strict,
The heart refuses to convict.