Happy Birthday Washington Irving !

Washington Irving

Today is the birthday of an American author and essayist Washington Irving. Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) is best known for his short stories 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' and 'Rip Van Winkle'. Presenting a couple of poems : Being Poet

A Certain Young Lady

THERE'S a certain young lady,

Who's just in her heyday,

And full of all mischief, I ween;

So teasing! so pleasing!

Capricious! delicious!

And you know very well whom I mean.

With an eye dark as night,

Yet than noonday more bright,

Was ever a black eye so keen?

It can thrill with a glance,

With a beam can entrance,
And you know very well whom I mean.

With a stately step -- such as

You'd expect in a duchess --

And a brow might distinguish a queen,

With a mighty proud air,

That says "touch me who dare,"

And you know very well whom I mean.

With a toss of the head

That strikes one quite dead,
But a smile to revive one again;

That toss so appalling!

That smile so enthralling!

And you know very well whom I mean.

Confound her! devil take her! --

A cruel heart-breaker --

But hold! see that smile so serene.

God love her! God bless her!

May nothing distress her!

You know very well whom I mean.

Heaven help the adorer

Who happens to bore her,

The lover who wakens her spleen;

But too blest for a sinner

Is he who shall win her,

And you know very well whom I mean.

The Falls of the Passaic

IN A WILD, tranquil vale, fringed with forests of green,

Where nature had fashion'd a soft, sylvan scene,

The retreat of the ring-dove, the haunt of the deer,

Passaic in silence roll'd gentle and clear. 

No grandeur of prospect astonish'd the sight,

No abruptness sublime mingled awe with delight;

Here the wild flow'ret blossom'd, the elm proudly waved,

And pure was the current the green bank that laved. 

But the spirit that ruled o'er the thick tangled wood,

And deep in its gloom fix'd his murky abode,

Who loved the wild scene that the whirlwinds deform,

And gloried in thunder, and lightning and storm; 

All flush'd from the tumult of battle he came,

Where the red men encounter'd the children of flame,

While the noise of the war-whoop still rang in his ears,

And the fresh bleeding scalp as a trophy he bears: 

With a glance of disgust he the landscape survey'd,

With its fragrant wild flowers, its wide-waving shade;--

Where Passaic meanders through margins of green,

So transparent its waters, its surface serene. 

He rived the green hills, the wild woods he laid low;

He taught the pure stream in rough channels to flow;

He rent the rude rock, the steep precipice gave,

And hurl'd down the chasm the thundering wave. 

Countless moons have since rolled in the long lapse of time--

Cultivation has softened those features sublime;

The axe of the white man has lighten'd the shade,

And dispell'd the deep gloom of the thicketed glade. 

But the stranger still gazes with wondering eye,

On the rocks rudely torn, and groves mounted on high;

Still loves on the cliff's dizzy borders to roam,

Where the torrent leaps headlong embosom'd in foam.