I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend
  Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude
To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend,—­
(Oh, stew him, Ann, as ’twere your friend,
  With amorous solicitude!)

I see him step with caution due,
  Soft as if shod with moccasins,
Grave as in church, for who plies you,
Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew
  From all our common stock o’ sins.

The unerring fly I see him cast,
  That as a rose-leaf falls as soft,
A flash! a whirl! he has him fast! 
We tyros, how that struggle last
  Confuses and appalls us oft.

Unfluttered he:  calm as the sky
  Looks on our tragi-comedies,
This way and that he lets him fly,
A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die
  Lands him, with cool aplomb, at ease.

The friend who gave our board such gust,
  Life’s care may he o’erstep it half,
And, when Death hooks him, as he must,
He’ll do it handsomely, I trust,
  And John H——­ write his epitaph!

Oh, born beneath the Fishes’ sign,
  Of constellations happiest,
May he somewhere with Walton dine,
May Horace send him Massic wine,
  And Burns Scotch drink, the nappiest!

And when they come his deeds to weigh,
  And how he used the talents his,
One trout-scale in the scales he’ll lay
(If trout had scales), and ’twill outsway
  The wrong side of the balances.

ODE TO HAPPINESS

Spirit, that rarely comest now
  And only to contrast my gloom,
  Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom
A moment on some autumn bough
That, with the spurn of their farewell
Sheds its last leaves,—­thou once didst dwell
  With me year-long, and make intense
To boyhood’s wisely vacant days
Their fleet but all-sufficing grace
  Of trustful inexperience, 10
  While soul could still transfigure sense,
And thrill, as with love’s first caress,
At life’s mere unexpectedness. 
  Days when my blood would leap and run
    As full of sunshine as a breeze,
    Or spray tossed up by Summer seas
  That doubts if it be sea or sun! 
Days that flew swiftly like the band
  That played in Grecian games at strife,
And passed from eager hand to hand 20
  The onward-dancing torch of life!

Wing-footed! thou abid’st with him
  Who asks it not; but he who hath
  Watched o’er the waves thy waning path,
Shall nevermore behold returning
Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning! 
Thou first reveal’st to us thy face
Turned o’er the shoulder’s parting grace,
  A moment glimpsed, then seen no more,—­
Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace 30
  Away from every mortal door.