William Cullen Bryant

The Mosquito

FAIR insect! that with threadlike legs spread out, And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing, Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about,

In pitiless ears, full many a plaintive thing, And tell how little our large veins should bleed, Would we but yield them to thy bitter need?

Unwillingly, I own, and, what is worse,

Full angrily men hearken to thy plaint;

Thou gettest many a brush and many a curse,
For saying thou art gaunt and starved and faint.
Even the old beggar, while he asks for food,
Would kill thee, hapless stranger, if he could.

I call thee stranger, for the town, I ween,
Has not the honor of so proud a birth—
Thou com'st from Jersey meadows, fresh and green,
The offspring of the gods, though born on earth;
For Titan was thy sire, and fair was she,
The ocean nymph that nursed thy infancy.

Beneath the rushes was thy cradle swung,

And when at length thy gauzy wings grew strong, Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung,

Rose in the sky, and bore thee soft along;
The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy way,
And danced and shone beneath the billowy bay.

Calm rose afar the city spires, and thence
Came the deep murmur of its throng of men,
And as its grateful odors met thy sense,

They seemed the perfumes of thy native fen.
Fair lay its crowded streets, and at the sight
Thy tiny song grew shriller with delight.

At length thy pinion fluttered in Broadway—
Ah, there were fairy steps, and white necks kissed
By wanton airs, and eyes whose killing ray

Shone through the snowy veils like stars through mist; And fresh as morn, on many a cheek and chin, Bloomed the bright blood through the transparent skin.

Sure these were sights to tempt an anchorite!
What! do I hear thy slender voice complain?
Thou wailest when I talk of beauty's light,
As if it brought the memory of pain.
Thou art a wayward being-well-come near,
And pour thy tale of sorrow in mine ear.

What say'st thou, slanderer! rouge makes thee sick?
And China Bloom at best is sorry food?
And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick,
Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for blood.
Go! 'Twas a just reward that met thy crime-
But shun the sacrilege another time.

That bloom was made to look at-not to touch;
To worship-not approach-that radiant white;
And well might sudden vengeance light on such
As dared, like thee, most impiously to bite.

Thou shouldst have gazed at distance and admired— Murmur'd thy admiration and retired.

Thou'rt welcome to the town-but why come here
To bleed a brother poet, gaunt like thee?
Alas! the little blood I have is dear,

And thin will be the banquet drawn from me.
Look round-the pale-eyed sisters in my cell,
Thy old acquaintance, Song and Famine, dwell.

Try some plump alderman, and suck the blood
Enrich'd by gen'rous wine and costly meat;
On well-filled skins, sleek as thy native mud,

Fix thy light pump, and press thy freckled feet.
Go to the men for whom, in ocean's halls,
The oyster breeds and the green turtle sprawls.

There corks are drawn, and the red vintage flows,
To fill the swelling veins for thee, and now
The ruddy cheek, and now the ruddier nose
Shall tempt thee, as thou flittest round the brow;
And when the hour of sleep its quiet brings,
No angry hand shall rise to brush thy wings.

Robert C. Sands

A Monody

Made on the Late Mr. Samuel Patch, by an Admirer of the Bathos

"By water shall he die and take his end."-SHakespeare.

TOLL for Sam Patch! Sam Patch, who jumps no more,
This or the world to come. Sam Patch is dead!
The vulgar pathway to the unknown shore

Of dark futurity, he would not tread.

No friends stood sorrowing round his dying bed; Nor with decorous woe, sedately stepp'd

Behind his corpse, and tears by retail shed

The mighty river, as it onward swept,

In one great wholesale sob, his body drowned and kept.

Toll for Sam Patch! he scorned the common way
That leads to fame, up heights of rough ascent,
And having heard Pope and Longinus say

That some great men had risen by falls, he went
And jumped, where wild Passaic's waves had rent
The antique rocks-the air free passage gave-
And graciously the liquid element

Upbore him, like some sea-god on its wave;
And all the people said that Sam was very brave.

Fame, the clear spirit that doth to heaven upraise,
Let Sam to dive into what Byron calls

The hell of waters. For the sake of praise,
He wooed the bathos down great waterfalls;
The dizzy precipice, which the eye appals
Of travelers for pleasure, Samuel found

Pleasant, as are to women lighted halls,
Crammed full of fools and fiddles; to the sound
Of the eternal roar, he timed his desperate bound.

Sam was a fool. But the large world of such,

Has thousands-better taught, alike absurd, And less sublime. Of fame he soon got much, Where distant cataracts spout, of him men heard Alas for Sam! Had he aright preferred

The kindly element, to which he gave himself so fearlessly, We had not heard

That it was now his winding-sheet and grave,

Nor sung, 'twixt tears and smiles, our requiem for the brave.

He soon got drunk with rum and with renown,
As many others in high places do-

Whose fall is like Sam's last-for down and down,
By one mad impulse driven, they flounder through
The gulf that keeps the future from our view,

And then are found not.

May they rest in peace!
We heave the sigh to human frailty due-

And shall not Sam have his? The muse shall cease
To keep the heroic roll, which she began in Greece-

With demigods who went to the Black Sea

For wool (and if the best accounts be straight,

Came back, in Negro phraseology,

With the same wool each upon his pate),