Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone, Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in your own.‘ Courage, comrades, this is certain, All is for the best? There are lights behind the curtain? Gentles, let us rest. As the smoke-rack veers to seaward. From ’ the ancient clay, ‘ With its moral drifting leeward, Ends the wanderer’s lay. HIPPODROMANIA; OR, WHIFFS FROM THE PIPE IN FIVE PARTS PART 1 VISIONS IN THE SMOKE1 Rest, and be thankful! On the vergo Of the tall cliff, rugged and grey, By whose granite base the breakers surge, And shiver their frothy spray, Outstretched, I gaze on the eddying wreath That gathers and flits away, With the surf beneath, and between my teeth The stem of the ’ ancient clay.‘ With the anodyne cloud on my listless eyes, With its spell on my dreamy brain, Written in 1865. As I watch the circling vapours rise From the brown bowl up to the sullen skies, My vision becomes more plain, Till a dim kaleidoscope succeeds Through the smoke-rack drifting and veering, Lake ghostly riders on phantom steeds To a shadowy goal careering. In their own generation the wise may sneer, They hold our sports in derision; Perchance to sophist, or sage, or seer Were allotted a graver vision. Yet if man, of all the Creator planned, His noblest work is reckoned, Of the works of His hand, by sea or by land, The horse may at least rank second. Did they quail, those steeds of the squadrons light, Did they flinch from the battle’s roar, When they burst on the guns of the Muscovite, By the echoing Black Sea shore ? On ! on ! to the cannon’s mouth they stride, With never a swerve nor a shy, Oh ! the minutes of yonder maddening ride, Long years of pleasure outvie !…
