POETRY.
WOULD you spur your pulses quicker, Draining the divinest ichor Out of life's ambrosial liquor, Plumbing life's profoundest pleasure, Looting life's intrinsic treasure ?
—Mount your horse, and try your measure When swift hounds are keenly running Swifter fox, of keener cunning, All the vale with echo stunning!
Now's the time to test your riding, When the gabbling pack are gliding, Hound with bound as rival chiding.
They who fling the brooks behind them, Top the rails where'er they find them, Fly the fences that would bind them, Through the flooded furrows splashing, Through the blackest bullfinch crashing, Where the dappled hounds are dashing, (All the bell-mouthed chorus chiming, Merry throats and tongues a-rhyming, Puppies all their elders miming !) They who through the run have striven Wheresoe'er the pack have driven Taste delights to heroes given!
Priggish folk, and melancholic. Deem our ecstasy bucolic, Hunting but a foolish frolic : Comprehending not the tussle Quickens brain, and hardens muscle, Whilst beside the pack we bustle.
Work and duty may not bore us, Yet we love the jolly chorus Saints and warriors loved before us.
We may parse life's many tenses, Love, and learning, stir our senses, Yet we joy to face the fences!
'Tis not hearing, smelling, seeing, Touch nor taste, nor all agreeing, 'Tis a sixth sense fills our being !
Of the six this sense is master ; 'Tis a sense that spurs us faster, Makes delaying spell disaster.
Though the world esteem us meanly, We can laugh, and love life keenly, Riding straight, and living cleanly. THE SIXTH SENSE. E. L.
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