The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1867-03-07
Sob grintiug,
1.-THE Tent on the Beach"

pieces nave DeeH puDllsncu III INC uttSALlus
and newspapers; but the beautiful openin
passage, the interludes and the songs are Ell
tirely new.
The poem opens with picture of salisbur
Beach, near Eewbury, and the tenants of tn
tent:
When heats as of tropic cline
Burned all our inland valleys through,
Three friends, the guests OF summer time,
Pitched their white tents where ses-winds blew
Behind them, marshes scanned and crossed
With narrow creeks, and fower-embossed
Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms
Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inlan
farms.
At full Of tide their holder shore
OF sun. bleachcd sand the waters beat
At ebb, smooth and glstenng floor
They touched with light, receding feet.
Northward green bluff broke the chain
OF sand-hills southwark stretcheda plain
Ofsaltgrass, with river winding down,
Sail-whitened and beyond the steeples of the town
Whence sometimes, when the wind was light
And dull the thunder of the beach,
They heard the bells of morn and night
Swing, miles away, their silver speech.
Above low scarp the turf-grown wall
They saw the fort flag rise and fall;
And the first star to signal twilights hour,
The amp-fre glimmers down from the tall light
house tower
They rested there, escaped while
From cares that wear the life away,
To eat the lotus of the Nile
And drink the peoples of Cathay-
To fling their loads Of custom down,
Like drift-weed, on the sand slopes brown
And in the sea-waves drown the restless pack
OF duties, claims and needs that barked upon their
track.
The poem then proceeds to describe the
three friends-the first of whom is the pub
Usher:
One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore
ready credence in his looks,
Alettered magnate, lording DER
An ever widening realm of books
In him brain currents near and far,
Converged as in Leyden jar,
The old, dead authors thronged him round about,
And Elzevir's gray ghosts from heaven graves
looked out.
He knew each living pundit we'll,
Could weigh the gifts of him or her,
And well the market value tell
Ofpoet and and philosopher
But ifhe lost the scenes behind,
Somewhat Of reverence vague and blind,
Finding the actors human at the best,
No reader lips ths4lhs the good saw
His boyhood fancies not outgrown,
He loved himself the singers art;
Tenderly, gently, by his own
He knew and judged an authors heart
No Rhadamantine brow of doom
Bowed the dazed pedant from his room;
And bards whose name is legion, If denied
Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride.
Pleasant it was to roam about
The lettered world as he had done,
And see the lords Of song without
Their singing robes and garlands on.
With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere,
Taste rugged Elliot's home-brewed beer,
And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore,
Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Waipole's wit
once more.
poet himself:
JOHN G. WHITTIER.
And one there was, dreamer born,
Who, with a mission to fulfill
Had left the Muses. haunts to turn
Inc crank Oh an OplnlOn-Inlu,
Making his rustic reed of song
A weapon in the war of wrong,
Yoking his fancy to the breaking plough
That beamdeep turned the soil for truth to spri
and grow.
Too quiet seemed the man to ride
The winged Hippogrif Reform;
Was his a voice from side to side
To pierce the tumult of the storm?
A silent, shy, peace-loving man,
He seemed no fiery partisan
To hold his way against the public frown,
The ban of church and state, the fierce mobs
bounding down.
For while he wrought with strenuous will
The work his hands had found to do,
He heard the fitful music still
Ofwinds that out of dream land blew.
The din about him could not drown
What the strange voices whispered down:
Along his task-feld weird professions swept,
The visionary pomp Of stately phantoms stepped,
The common air was thick with dreams
He told them TO the toiling crowd;
Such music as the woods and streams
Sang in his ear he sang aloud;
In still shut bays, or windy capes,
He heard the call of reckoning shapes,
And as the gray old shadows prompted him,
To homely moulds ofrhyme he shaped their legends
grim.
He rested now his weary hands,
And lightly moralized and laughed,
As, tracing on the shifting sands
burlesuue of his paper craft,
He saw the careless waves oerrun
His words, as time before had done,
Each days tide-wster washing clean away,
Like letters from the sand, the work of yesterday
W /. l. Al,