Wears on its bosom, as a bride might do,
The iron breast-pin which the "Rebels" threw.[1]
A steam-boat is likened to a wild nymph, now veiling her shadowy form, while through the storm sounds the beating of her restless heart—now answering,
—like a courtly dame,
The reddening surges o'er,
With flying scarf of spangled flame,
The Pharos of the shore.[2]
Gazing into a lady's eyes, he sees a matter of
Ten thousand angels spread their wings
Within those little azure rings.[3]
The Spirit of Beauty he bids
Come from the bowers where summer's life-blood flows
Through the red lips of June's half-open rose.[4]
In his summary of metrical forms:
The glittering lyric bounds elastic by,
With flashing ringlets and exulting eye,
While every image, in her airy whirl,
Gleams like a diamond on a dancing girl.[5]
We are told how
Health flows in the rills,
As their ribands of silver unwind from the hills.[6]
And again, of a
Stream whose silver-braided rills,
Fling their unclasping bracelets from the hills.[7]
In such guise moves the Ariel fancy of the poet. In its more Puck-like, tricksy, mirthful mood, it is correspondingly sportive. A comet wanders
Where darkness might be bottled up and sold for "Tyrian dye."[8]
Of itinerant musicians—the
Discords sting through Burns and Moore, like hedgehogs dressed in lace.[9]
A post-prandial orator of a prononcé facetious turn, is warned that—
All the Jack Horners of metrical buns,
Are prying and fingering to pick out the puns.[10]
A strayed rustic stares through the wedged crowd,
Where in one cake a throng of faces runs,
All stuck together like a sheet of buns.[11]
But we are getting Jack-Hornerish, and most forbear; not for lack of plums, though.
The wit and humour, the vers de société and the jeux'-d'esprit of Dr. Holmes, bespeak the gentleman. Not that he is prim or particular, by
