Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities Part 17

He stood forth like an Outlier; his hearers admiring In pencil each anecdote noted.

Where shall we our great professor inter, That in peace may rest his bones?

If we hew him a rocky sepulchre, He'll rise up and break the stones, And examine each Stratum that lies around, For he's quite in his element underground.

If with mattock and spade his body we lay In the common Alluvial soil; He'll start up and s.n.a.t.c.h those tools away Of his own geological toil; In a Stratum so young the professor disdains That embedded should be his Organic Remains.

Then, exposed to the drip of some case-hard'ning spring, His carcase let Stalact.i.te cover; And to Oxford the petrified sage let us bring, When he is encrusted all over, There, mid Mammoths and Crocodiles, high on a shelf, Let him stand as a Monument raised to himself."

When Professor Buckland's grave was being dug in Islip churchyard, in August 1856, the men came unexpectedly upon the solid limestone rock, which they were obliged to blast with gunpowder. The coincidence of this fact with some of the verses in the above antic.i.p.atory dirge is somewhat remarkable.

The following is by Jacob F. Henrici, and appeared originally in _Scribner' s Magazine_ for November 1879:

A MICROSCOPIC SERENADE.

"Oh come, my love, and seek with me A realm by grosser eye unseen, Where fairy forms will welcome thee, And dainty creatures hail thee queen.

In silent pools the tube I'll ply, Where green conferva-threads lie curled, And proudly bring to thy bright eye The trophies of the protist world.

We'll rouse the stentor from his lair, And gaze into the cyclops' eye; In chara and nitella hair The protoplasmic stream descry, For ever weaving to and fro With faint molecular melody; And curious rotifers I'll show, And graceful vorticellidae.

Where melicertae ply their craft We'll watch the playful water-bear, And no envenomed hydra's shaft Shall mar our peaceful pleasure there; But while we whisper love's sweet tale We'll trace, with sympathetic art, Within the embryonic snail The growing rudimental heart.

Where rolls the volvox sphere of green, And plastids move in Brownian dance-- If, wandering 'mid that gentle scene, Two fond amoebae shall perchance Be changed to one beneath our sight By process of biocrasis, We'll recognise, with rare delight, A type of our prospective bliss.

Oh dearer thou by far to me In thy sweet maidenly estate Than any seventy-fifth could be, Of aperture however great!

Come, go with me, and we will stray Through realm by grosser eye unseen, Where protophytes shall homage pay, And protozoa hail thee queen."

The epitaph following was written by the learned and witty Dr. Charles Smith, author of the histories of Cork and Waterford. It was read at a meeting of the Dublin Medico-Philosophical Society on July 1, 1756, and is a very curious specimen of the "terminology of chemistry:"

"BOYLE G.o.dFREY, CHYMIST AND DOCTOR OF MEDICINE.

EPITAPHIUM CHEMIc.u.m.

Here lieth to digest, macerate, and amalgamate with clay, In Balneo Arenae, Stratum super stratum, The Residuum, Terra d.a.m.nata, and Caput Mortuum, Of Boyle G.o.dfrey, Chimist, And M.D.

A man who in this earthly Laboratory Pursued various processes to obtain Arcanum Vitae, Or the secret to Live; Also Aurum Vitae, Or the art of getting, rather than making, Gold.

Alchemist like, All his labour and propition, As Mercury in the fire, evaporated in fumo.

When he dissolved to his first principles, He departed as poor As the last drops of an alembic; For riches are not poured On the Adepts of this world.

Thus, Not Solar in his purse, Neither Lunar in his disposition, Nor Jovial in his temperament; Being of Saturnine habit, Venereal conflicts had left him, And Martial ones he disliked.

With nothing saline in his composition, All Salts but two were his Nostrums.

The Attic he did not know, And that of the Earth he thought not Essential; But, perhaps, his had lost its savour.

Though fond of news, he carefully avoided The fermentation, effervescence, And decupilation of this life.

Full seventy years his exalted essence Was hermetically sealed in its terrene matra.s.s; But the radical moisture being exhausted, The Elixir Vitae spent, Insp.i.s.sated and exsiccated to a cuticle, He could not suspend longer in his vehicle, But precipitated gradatim Per companum To his original dust.

May that light, brighter than Bolognian Phosphorus, Preserve him from the Incineration and Concremation Of the Athanor, Empyreuma, and Reverberatory Furnace of the other world, Depurate him, like Tartarus Regeneratus, From the Foeces and Scoria of this; Highly rectify and volatilize His Etherial Spirit, Bring it over the helm of the Retort of this Globe, Place in a proper Recipient, Or Crystalline Orb, Among the elect of the Flowers of Benjamin, Never to be saturated Till the general Resuscitation, Deflagration, and Calcination of all Things, When all the reguline parts Of his comminuted substance Shall be again concentrated, Revivified, alcoholized, And imbibe its pristine Archeses; Undergo a new trans.m.u.tation, Eternal fixation, And combination of its former Aura; Be coated over and decorated in robes more fair Than the majestie of Bis.m.u.th, More sparkling than Cinnabar, Or Aurum Mosaic.u.m.

And being found Proof Spirit, Then to be exalted and sublimed together Into the Concave Dome Of the highest Aludel in Paradise."

TO CLARA MORCh.e.l.lA DELICIOSA.

(A MYCOLOGICAL SERENADE.)

By Mr. A. Stephen Wilson, North Kinmundy, Aberdeenshire, and read at a meeting of the Cryptogamic Society at Glasgow in 1880.

"Oh, lovely Clara, hie with me Where Cryptogams in beauty spore, Corticiums creep on trunk and tree, And fairy rings their curves restore; Mycelia there pervade the ground, And many a painted pileus rear, Agarics rend their veils around The ra.n.a.l overture to hear.

Where gay Pezizae flaunt their hues, A microscopic store we'll glean, To sketch with camera the views In which the ascus may be seen.

Beneath our millemetric gaze Sporidia's length will stand revealed, And eyes like thine will trace the maze In each hymenium concealed.

aestivum tubers we shall dig, Like Suidae in f.a.gian shade, And many a Sphaeria-sheltering twig Will in our vascula be laid.

For hard Sclerotia we shall peer, In barks and bra.s.sicaceous leaves, And trace their progress through the year, Like Bobbies on the track of thieves.

While sages deem Solanum sent To succour h.o.m.o's hungry maw, We'll prize it for development Of swelling Peronospora.

We'll mount the Myxogastre's threads To watch Plasmodium's vital flow, While Capillitia lift their heads Generic mysteries to show.

I'll bring thee where the Chantarelles Inspire a mycologic theme, Where Phallus in the shadow smells, And scarlet Amanita gleam; And lead thee where M'Moorlan's rye Is waving black with ergot spurs, And many a Trichobasian dye Gives worth to corn and p.r.i.c.kly burs.

And when the beetle calls us home, We'll gather on our lingering way The violaceous Inolome And russet Alutacea, The brown Boletus edulis Our fishing baskets soon will fill-- We'll dine on fungi fried in bliss, Nor dread the peck of butcher's bill."

TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL.

(A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS.)

"'Speak, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil!

Primal pioneer of pliocene formation, Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum Of volcanic tufa!

'Older than the beasts, the oldest Palaeotherium; Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami; Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions Of earth's epidermis!

'Eo--Mio--Plio--whatso'er the "cene" was That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,-- Whether sh.o.r.es Devonian or Silurian beaches,-- Tell us thy strange story!

'Or has the professor slightly antedated By some thousand years thy advent on this planet, Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted For cold-blooded creatures?

'Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest When above thy head the stately Sigillaria Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant Carboniferous epoch?

'Tell us of that scene,--the dim and watery woodland, Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect, Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club-mosses, Lycopodiacea,--

'When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus, And around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus, While from time to time above thee flew and circled Cheerful Pterodactyls.

'Tell us of thy food,--those half-marine refections, Crinoids on the sh.e.l.l and Brachiopods _au naturel_,-- Cuttlefish to which the _pieuvre_ of Victor Hugo Seems a periwinkle.

'Speak, thou awful vestige of the earth's creation,-- Solitary fragment of remains organic!

Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence,-- Speak! thou oldest primate!'

Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla, And a lateral movement of the condyloid process, With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication, Ground the teeth together.

And, from that imperfect dental exhibition, Stained with express juices of the weed Nicotian, Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs Of expectoration:

'Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted Falling down a shaft in Calaveras County, But I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces Home to old Missouri!'"

--_Bret Harte._

The following verses are from "Notes and Queries," and evidently refer to a case of "breach of promise":

KNOX WARD, KING-AT-ARMS, DISARMED AT LAW.