rudimentary attempts of the half-fledged poet. If the boy or youth had
anything in him, there will probably be some sign of it in the midst of
his imitative mediocrities and ambitious failures. These "first verses"
of mine, written before I was sixteen, have little beyond a common
academy boy's ordinary performance. Yet a kindly critic said there was
one line which showed a poetical quality:--

"The boiling ocean trembled into calm."

One of these poems--the reader may guess which--won fair words from
Thackeray. The Spectre Pig was a wicked suggestion which came into my
head after reading Dana's Buccaneer. Nobody seemed to find it out, and
I never mentioned it to the venerable poet, who might not have been
pleased with the parody. This is enough to say of these unvalued copies
of verses.


FIRST VERSES

PHILLIPS ACADEMY, ANDOVER, MASS., 1824 OR 1825


TRANSLATION FROM THE ENEID, BOOK I.

THE god looked out upon the troubled deep
Waked into tumult from its placid sleep;
The flame of anger kindles in his eye
As the wild waves ascend the lowering sky;
He lifts his head above their awful height
And to the distant fleet directs his sight,