Chapter II: Introduction: To Eleazar Parmly, Esq

MY DEAR SIR,--I take the liberty to transmit to you, herewith, the result of a few weeks’ solitary musing. It is an essay, in verse, on your favorite science:--A short didactic poem, intended to embrace some of the more general and popular views of that valuable art, in the exercise of which you have reared the superstructure of fame and fortune on the solid basis of intrinsic merit.

If, in addition to reputation and emolument, you have been cheered in your arduous labors, by the smiles of the beautiful and the encomiums of the wise, you may pass it to the credit of that urbanity, skill and kindness, with which your surgical practice is so distinctly marked.

I am well apprized that your unparalleled success in treating disorders of the teeth, is not the result of accident. The enterprising spirit that led you to seek a knowledge of your profession, in the two most enlightened capitals of Europe, and the persevering industry, which raised you to high rank in the city of London, before establishing yourself in your native country, are the proximate causes of your distinguished prosperity.

It is now more than ten years since our personal acquaintance began, and I have been long anxious to devise some method of testifying the warmth and sincerity with which I reciprocate your sentiments of friendship. The design of reducing some of the general doctrines of dental science to a poetic form, presented itself favorably to my mind, and seemed more especially proper, after the act of favor by which you invited me to return to your family, after a temporary absence, for the purpose of receiving your instruction, and that of your accomplished associate, in the practical operations of your profession.

I have reduced this plan to practice according to the very moderate measure of my poetical abilities; and, in whatever else it may be found wanting, I trust it will bear the uncounterfeited stamp of sincerity and gratitude.

The generous liberality which has marked your deportment towards every reputable member of your profession, and more especially, the elevated charity which has led you to qualify several individuals for extensive usefulness in the practice of dental surgery, will be remembered with gratitude, long after your personal exertions in the cause of human happiness shall have ceased on earth forever.

The experience of past ages has accumulated upon the existing generation, in the mighty results which we behold in the condition of the arts and sciences at the present day. To augment this inestimable treasure of useful knowledge, as it passes into other hands, must impart exalted transports to the good man’s mind.

The anguish, deformity, and tears, which result from diseases of the teeth, are among man’s real evils, and form a considerable item in the catalogue of human miseries. He, therefore, who by his public instruction, or private professional practice, mitigates or removes these evils, is a public benefactor. That such has been your happiness, is felt by a large circle of acquaintances, not only in these states, but from many and remote portions of the civilized world: and that you may long live in the peaceful bosom of your family, to indulge in the consciousness of having contributed to the positive enjoyment of so many sentient beings; and to taste with a refined and protracted relish, the sweets of friendship, fame, and fortune, is the devout wish of your friend:----

SOLYMAN BROWN.

_172 Fourth-Street,_ }
_New-York._ }
_April 20th, 1833._ }

CANTO FIRST.

ARGUMENT.

Invocation to living beauty as seen in the human
countenance.--Importance of personal charms to the female sex.--Man
a natural physiognomist.--Mental and moral qualities mirrored in the
features.--Original beauty of the human race.--Beauty of angelic
natures when purified from the stains of mortality.--Subject of
dentistry proposed.--Universal law of nature in regard to human
teeth.--Importance of good dental practitioners.

CANTO FIRST.

No goddess born in blue-eyed Juno’s reign,
Or fair-haired sister of Apollo’s train--
No coy and quivered Driad of the woods,
Or laughing Naiad of the dashing floods--
Do I invoke;--ye fabled forms--retire!
Let breathing loveliness my notes inspire:--
To thee, my cherished friend! the strains belong,
And LIVING BEAUTY animates my song.

This magic spell that mirrors every grace
Of woman’s heart, in lovely woman’s face;
This speaking index of the polished mind,
In virtue pure, by virgin truth refined;--
Is love’s own banner, gracefully unfurled,
To fix affection, and enchant the world.

Without its aid, how hard were woman’s lot!
To sigh neglected, and to die forgot;
Though nature’s genial fires unceasing burn,
To live unloved, and love without return!
For well we know that all of human kind,
Read in the face the features of the mind;
The soul’s bright forms forever fresh and fair,
Wit, worth, and modesty, are pictured there.

Say not--perverted taste alone descries
An intellectual light in radiant eyes;
Nor think Lavater’s favorite science vain,
That guides the choice of every rural swain,
In search of worthy love:--for well he knows,
That when the graceful meadow-lily blows,
’Tis genial spring; and when the mantling vine,
Round the gray oak its wreaths is seen to twine,
Laden with purple fruit--that summer’s showers
Have nursed to life the verdure and the flowers.
So, in the features of Myrtilla’s face,
The rustic Corydon has learned to trace
Each soft affection of her glowing mind;
With what delighted and to whom inclined.

You say, perchance, “Is woman then approved
For outward charms, and but for these beloved?
Shall form and feature for all faults atone,
And mere external beauty reign alone?
By reasoning man is mental worth despised,
And but for pageantry is woman prized?”
’Tis well inquired; but mark the just reply:--
As glittering stars adorn the cloudless sky,
And smiling rainbows, when the storm is done,
Announce the bursting splendors of the sun;
So beams of lambent light that sportive play
In woman’s face, proclaim interior day;
And modest sweetness, with that light combined,
Bespeaks her nature gentle and refined.

Thus, too, the cherub graces that adorn
The smiling babe in childhood’s sunny morn,
Reveal the pureness of that virtue given,
The charm of earth and miniature of heaven.

Nor less does manhood’s firmer brow disclose
The master passion whence his action flows.
If glory, lucre, love, his heart inspire,
See in his lineaments the raging fire;
If war impel, behold him charge the foe,
His eyes’ red lightning mingling with the blow;
In search of gold, see meanness in his air,
And Gripus’ sordid wrinkles furrowed there:--
Or, fired with love, survey his altered mien;
Fair vernal blossoms decorate the scene,
From every flower the honeyed sweet he sips,
And burning eloquence is on his lips.

In times of old, those happier golden years,
Ere man had learned to drink the orphan’s tears
And widow’s sighs, and count them richest wine,
What beauty decked the “human face divine!”
Then all was loveliness:--the ruling soul
Held o’er the world, unlimited control;
The forest knew no monster; and the grove
No voice but that of melody and love;--
While man acknowledged virtue as his guide,
The lamb and lion slumbered at his side;
’Twas then, nor thorn nor thistle cursed the soil,
But plenty crowned the gatherer’s pleasing toil,
Nor plague nor tempest in such skies appear,
But health and sunshine circle round the year.

And who can tell, when virtue soars away
To range the fields of unexpiring day,
Where Love unveils her charms to every eye,
And Truth unrobes his manly majesty;
Say, who can tell, how beautiful and fair,
Those angel-forms--those heavenly natures are?

Amid the bowers of ever pure delight,
Whence heaven’s unclouded sun excludes the night,
In fragrant groves arrayed in emerald green,
Where varying landscapes animate the scene,
Thou, sainted Mother! find’st that blest repose,
Which sweet celestial innocence bestows,--
To friendship there, thy glowing heart is given;
Thy hands, to all the charities of heaven;
Thy voice, to melody; thine eye, to see
The radiant bow that spans eternity!

If nature thus, instructive, deigns to trace
The soul in every feature of the face;
If lovely virtue there displays her charm,
And guilty passions ring the loud alarm;
Arouse, thou slumbering fair! and learn to see
That heaven commits thy destiny to thee.
Is virtuous love thy aim? Deserve the prize:
Or friendship? Know that here the secret lies:--
To be--and to appear what men approve:--
Their friendship thus is won--and thus their love.
Be mine the pride in measured verse to raise
A plain but lasting monument of praise,
To that distinguished science, known of yore,
Designed departed beauty to restore--
The Dental Art, by Greece and Rome admired,
When woman to imperial thrones aspired;--
Those mighty states were both to ruin hurled,
But lo! their art survives to bless the world.(1)

Full well I know ’tis difficult to chime
The laws of science with the rules of rhyme;
Plain vulgar prose, my subject seems to claim,
Did not ambition prompt the higher aim,
The nobler pride, by more laborious care,
To speak in numbers that shall please the fair.
To woman, love’s first melodies were sung,
In nature’s prime, when earth and time were young,
And every bard, in each succeeding year,
Has framed his lays for woman’s listening ear:--
Nor let the grovelling soul that cleaves to earth
Dare to pretend to comprehend her worth;
When pure--she’s purer than the virgin snow,
On Andes’ top, when summer smiles below;
And more delight o’er life her sweetness breathes,
Than all besides that heaven to man bequeathes.

Since beauty thus bestows the kind caress,
And oft audacity secures success,
Be mine the task to join the tuneful throng,
And blend instruction with the charms of song.

When man was fashioned by the Power Supreme,
Strange and mysterious as the fact may seem,
And cause of wonder; to his frame was given
Peculiar structure by the hand of heaven:--
Imperious laws distinctively his own,
To other animated forms unknown.

Among these laws which science learns to trace,
Through every varying tribe of human race;
From arctic regions, clad in endless snows,
To where the tropical sirocco blows,
As well where elegant refinement smiles,
As far remote, among the ocean isles,
One common destiny awaits our kind;--
’Tis this, that long before the infant mind
Attains maturity--and ere the sun
Has through the first septennial circle run,
The teeth, deciduous, totter and decay,
And prompt successors hurry them away.(2)
This every mother knows, though not aware,
How precious then the kind maternal care
That holds incessant watch, lest nature’s course
Should meet obstruction from some counter force.
For oft the predecessors, lingering, claim
Undue connexion with the vital frame,
And, like a monarch, vindicate alone,
The questioned title to their ivory throne.
So mothers, proud of each surviving charm,
Regard their daughters’ beauty with alarm,
Lest these to admiration should aspire,
Before themselves are ready to retire.

But nature’s course is fixed, and man must yield,
For ’tis but madness to contest the field
With conquering fate: and holy heaven withdraws
Its smile from all who violate its laws.

Be watchful, ye--whose fond maternal arm,
Would shield defenceless infancy from harm,(3)
Mark well the hour when nature’s rights demand,
The skilful practice of the dentist’s hand.
But use discretion:--oft imposture wears
The same external guise that merit bears;
And bold pretenders show consummate wit,
By duping others to abandon it.

Beware of those whom science never taught
The hard but useful drudgery of thought,
For while in indolence their years have run,
They ask the wealth that industry has won:--
Can charity for such desire success?
No, let them eat the bread of idleness.
On just desert let all success attend,
And patient merit never want a friend.(4)

To thee, companion of my happiest days,
The general voice awards superior praise;
’Twas nobly won, by sacrifice of ease,
’Mid raging tempests and through stormy seas.

END OF CANTO FIRST.

CANTO SECOND.

ARGUMENT.

The first dentition, or the growth and progress of the milk
teeth.--Operation of lancing the gums; fatal consequences of neglect,
or of inefficient remedies.--The second dentition, or the formation
and arrangement of the permanent teeth.--Extraction in case of
interference, or mal-arrangement.--Distortion and deformity resulting
from negligence.--Perfection of the material of which the teeth are
composed.

CANTO SECOND.

The first dentition asks our earliest care,
For oft, obstructed nature, laboring there,
Demands assistance of experienced art,
And seeks from science her appointed part.(5)
Perhaps ere yet the infant tongue can tell
The seat of anguish that it knows too well,
Some struggling tooth, just bursting into day,
Obtuse and vigorous, urges on its way,
While inflammation, pain, and bitter cries,
And flooding tears, in sad succession rise.(6)

The lancet, then, alone can give relief,
And mitigate the helpless sufferer’s grief;
But no unpractised hand should guide the steel
Whose polished point must carry wo or weal:--
With nicest skill the dentist’s hand can touch,
And neither wound too little nor too much.(7)

Be prompt to act:--’tis dangerous to delay,
Since life awaits the issue of a day:--
Reject the gentler means:--employ the best:--
Let unobstructed nature do the rest.(8)
This rule neglected, many a smiling form,
With beauty bright, and life blood glowing warm,
Its parents’ pride, a floweret in its bloom,
Descends lamented to an early tomb.(9)

Nor less the danger when the first array--
The infant teeth--alternately decay,
Or yield succession to a hardier race
With marked reluctance; for, in either case,
Neglect will bring repentance in its train;
In one, deformity;--the other, pain(10)
Or fell disease;--but timely care may still
Avoid the danger, or repair the ill.(11)
If pain ensue, and neighboring parts inflame,
Extraction is the cure; and ’tis the same
If nature’s law, obstructed in its course,
Should meet resistance from opposing force:(12)
For this resisting force howe’er remote,
Meets in the dental art its antidote;
Pain flies its presence; anguish wipes her tear;
To hope’s fond vision rainbow-hues appear;
Pale, trembling beauty hushes her alarms,
And beaux, admiring, own her added charms.

Now mark the contrast in some hideous face,
Robbed by neglect, of symmetry and grace:--
Behold those organs, formed on nature’s plan,
To serve important purposes to man;
To form the sounds in which his thoughts are drest,
His wishes uttered, and his love confest;
To fit his solid food of every name,
For healthy action on the general frame;(13)
Behold these organs, wrested by abuse,
From wisest purpose, and from noblest use,
Deranged, displaced, distorted, set awry,
Disgusting objects of deformity!(14)
Such mal-formations hardier man perplex,
But, with more grief, afflict the softer sex:--
For when with grace, deformity is joined,
As one base passion desolates the mind,
So one contrasted fault alone disarms
All conquering beauty of a thousand charms.

Let azure eyes with coral lips unite,
And health’s vermilion blend with snowy white;
Let auburn tresses float upon the gale,
And flowery garlands all their sweets exhale;
If once the lips in parting, should display
The teeth discolored or in disarray,
The spell dissolves, and beauty in despair
Beholds her fond pretensions melt in air.

But learn the remedy:--the dentist’s skill
Subjects disordered nature to his will:--
As great commanders hear without alarms,
The shouts of battle and the shock of arms,
And, when their troops, in broken ranks, incline
To wild confusion, bring them into line;
So he--the master of the dental art,
Can order, grace, and symmetry impart,
Where anarchy had else sustained alone
The undisputed title to his throne.

Such benefits this useful science lends
To earliest youth;--and yet its aid extends
To following years, assuaging mortal pain,
And oft restoring beauty’s flowery reign.

The human frame, offspring of heaven’s high will,
Displays throughout inimitable skill;
No part defective: none that perfect love
Could prompt unbounded wisdom to improve.
The eye, the ear, how wondrously designed
To serve as useful allies to the mind.
The heaving lungs, that drink th’ aerial flood,
Imparting vigor to the vital blood;--
The heart, that like a virtuous monarch, reigns,
And spreads delight through all its wide domains:(15)
How wondrous these!--yet see the hand divine
By equal skill displayed in every line,
In every feature of the perfect whole,
That acts in concert with the moving soul.

To this great law, that governs every part,
And rules “as perfect in a hair as heart,”
The teeth conform; and hence it stands confest,
Their substance, form, and structure, are the best
That wisdom could devise for such a use,
And hence, defective, only from abuse.(16)

Not polished pearl from Ceylon’s coral caves,
Or California’s or Cumana’s waves;
From Indian hills, Golconda’s lucid gem
That shines a star in Brama’s diadem;
Nor gold of Ophir, wrought by Aaron’s skill,
To form the idol calf, and worshipped still,
Could act the part in nature’s general plan,
Assigned these organs in the frame of man.(17)

END OF CANTO SECOND.

CANTO THIRD.

ARGUMENT.

Apostrophe to Luxury;--its effects on general health.--Intemperance
in eating and drinking.--Use of animal food.--Effects of luxury and
intemperance on the teeth.--Cleanliness; neglect of it punished by
gangrene of the teeth, and other diseases.--Fate of Urilla occasioned
by her carelessness.--Caries, or decay of teeth.--The tooth-ache.

CANTO THIRD.

Oh Luxury! the eldest born of wealth,
Thou foe to virtue, and thou bane of health;
Insidious nursling in the lap of ease,
Whose breath is pestilence, whose smile disease;
May suffering man yet see thee as thou art,
A greedy vampyre, feasting on his heart!(18)

Of all the ills that ante-date the doom
Of erring mortals, and erect the tomb
So near the cradle, shortening to a span
The fleeting life of transitory man,
The worst is luxury:--Infrequent flies
The lightning’s fatal bolt; the lowering skies
Are seldom darkened by the whirlwind’s wrath,
Or loud tornado’s devastating path.
Beneath the ocean wave though some expire,
And others by the fierce volcano’s fire;
Though savage war can boast his thousands slain,
On tented field, or bosom of the main;
Yet few the victims of these fates malign,
Compared, intemperate luxury! with thine.(19)

Wherever wealth and false refinement reign,
The pampered appetites compose their train;
Remotest climes supply the varied feast,
But wisdom never comes a welcome guest;
The gormand, folly, bids the poison pass,
And drains destruction from the circling glass.(20)
The harmless flock, to cruel slaughter led,
Crowns high the board; for this the herd has bled,(21)
For this, the gay musicians of the grove,
Suspend forever all their songs of love!(22)
Earth, air, and ocean, each its part supplies
Of sentient life, to swell the sacrifice;
As though some fiend had sketched the darkest plan
Of bloody banquet for the monster--man!(23)

Though teeming earth bestows on honest toil,
In every climate and in every soil,
Their proper fruits, by nature’s law designed,
The safe and luscious diet of mankind,(24)
Yet, see the race from flowery Eden stray,
To roam the mightiest of the beasts of prey!
See sensual man still smiling with delight,
While bleeding life is quivering in his sight!

But nature, sure to vindicate her cause,
Avenges each transgression of her laws;
Beware, rash man!--for every nice offence
Shall meet, in time, a dreadful recompence;
Nor flight can save--nor necromantic art,
Nor dext’rous stratagems elude the smart:--
For, lo, in fearful shapes, a haggard band
Of fell diseases, wait at her command.

’Tis thus derangement, pain, and swift decay,
Obtain in man their desolating sway,
Corrupt his blood, infect his vital breath,
And urge him headlong to the shades of death.
No more his cheeks with flushing crimson glow;
No more he feels the sanguine current flow;
But quenched and dim his sightless eyeballs roll,
Nor meet one star that gilds the glowing pole!(25)

Amid this general wreck of health and ease,
Where every folly generates disease,
The teeth, in spite of nature’s guardian care,
In all disorders of the system share,
Besides those ills peculiarly their own,
To other portions of the frame unknown.

If sloth or negligence the task forbear
Of making cleanliness a daily care;
If fresh ablution, with the morning sun,
Be quite forborne or negligently done;
In dark disguise insidious tartar comes
Incrusts the teeth and irritates the gums,
Till vile deformity usurps the seat
Where smiles should play and winning graces meet,
And foul disease pollutes the fair domain,
Where health and purity should ever reign.(26)

Behold Urilla, nature’s favored child;--
Bright on her birth indulgent fortune smiled;--
Her honored grandsire, when the field was won,
By warring freeman, led by Washington,
Nobly sustained, on many a glorious day,
The fiercest fervors of the battle-fray;
Survived the strife, and saw at length unfurled
Our union-banner floating round the world;
Then found a grave, as every patriot can,
Inscribed “Defender of the rights of man.”

Her sire, whose freighted ships from every shore
Returned with wealth in unexhausted store,
Was doubly rich:--his gold was less refined
Than the bright treasures of his noble mind.

And she herself is fair in form and face;--
Her glance is modesty, her motion grace,
Her smile, a moonbeam on the garden bower,
Her blush, a rainbow on the summer shower,
And she is gentler than the fearful fawn
That drinks the glittering dew-drops of the lawn.

When first I saw her eyes’ celestial blue,
Her cheeks’ vermilion, and the carmine hue,
That melted on her lips:--her auburn hair
That floated playful on the yielding air;
And then that neck within those graceful curls,
Molten from Cleopatra’s liquid pearls,
I whispered to my heart:--we’ll fondly seek
The means, the hour, to hear the angel speak;
For sure such language from those lips must flow,
As none but pure and seraph natures know.

’Twas said--’twas done--the fit occasion came,
As if to quench betimes the kindling flame
Of love and admiration:--for she spoke,
And lo, the heavenly spell forever broke;
The fancied angel vanished into air,
And left unfortunate Urilla there:
For when her parted lips disclosed to view,
Those ruined arches, veiled in ebon hue,
Where love had thought to feast the ravished sight
On orient gems reflecting snowy light,
Hope, disappointed, silently retired,
Disgust triumphant came, and love expired!

And yet, Urilla’s single fault was small:
If by so harsh a name ’tis just to call
Her slight neglect:--but ’tis with beauty’s chain,
As’ tis with nature’s:--sunder it in twain
At any link, and you dissolve the whole,
As death disparts the body from the soul.(27)

Let every fair one shun Urilla’s fate,
And wake too action, ere it be to late;--
Let each successive day unfailing bring
The brush, the dentifrice, and, from the spring,(28)
The cleansing flood:--the labor will be small,
And blooming health will soon reward it all.(29)
Or, if her past neglect preclude relief,
By gentle means like these; assuage her grief;
The dental art can remedy the ill,
Restore her hopes, and make her lovely still.(30)

Yet, other evils may her care engage,
The offspring of an epicurean age.(31)
Destructive caries comes with secret stealth
T’ avenge the violated laws of health:
Dilapidates the teeth by slow decay,
And bears them all successively away.(32)
So, silent Time, with unresisted power,
Labors at midnight in the lonely tower;
Corrodes the granite in the ivied wall,
And smiles to hear the crumbling atoms fall;--
Till all the mighty structure disappears,
A dream forgot, a tale of other years.(33)
When caries, thus, the solid tooth destroys,
That sullen enemy to mortal joys,
The tooth-ache, supervenes:--detested name,
Most justly damned to everlasting fame!(34)

They say who most have felt, and best should know
The power of this most execrable wo,
That when Pandora’s box of mortal pains,
Was first unlocked among the wondering swains,
To every vice its kindred grief was sent,
And every crime received its punishment,
Except intemperance:--no _single_ ill
Could heaven’s irrevocable law fulfil,
The fixed resolve, th’ omnipotent decree,
That each offence should meet its penalty;
Then all these mortal woes in one were joined,
And tooth-ache came, the terror of mankind!(35)

Thou haggard fiend! of hellish imps the worst,
To mercy deaf, by sorrowing man accurst;(36)
Though cheerless days made desolate by thee,
And long, long nights of sleepless agony,
Have marked thy fearful reign in days of yore,
Thy power is crushed,--thy scorpion-sting no more
Affrights the helpless, for the dental art
Commands thy gloomy terrors to depart,
Then wipes from beauty’s cheek the tears that burn,
And bids her roses and her smiles return.

END OF CANTO THIRD.

CANTO FOURTH.

ARGUMENT.

Remedies for the various disorders of the teeth.--Filing away
carious portions.--Stopping carious cavities with gold foil.--Loss
of the teeth occasioning the necessity of substituting others.--Of
artificial teeth.--Eulogium on those who labor for the benefit of
mankind.

CANTO FOURTH.

Auspicious art! before whose magic spell,
Disease and pain shrink shuddering back to hell,
Whose touch, like that mysterious gem of old,
That changed all baser metals into gold,
Restores the faded floweret to its bloom,
And saves the victim from the threatening tomb:--
Direct my song and teach me to rehearse
In the smooth numbers of enchanting verse,
Those varied stratagems employed by thee,
To soothe the pangs of frail humanity.

In nature’s vast domain, with curious eye,
Search through the earth, the ocean, and the sky;
Ask of the beast that crops the flowery plain,
And fish that threads the billows of the main;
Ask of the bird that journeys on the wind,
And reasoning man for nobler flights designed;--
If any link in wide creation’s chain
Of golden harmony, produces pain;
Or, in the general frame, is found a flaw,
But from resistance to wise nature’s law?

And this resistance comes from man alone,
Who vainly thinks to shake th’ Eternal’s throne;
Who spurns the good to humble virtue given,
And madly builds himself another heaven.
Folly with wisdom holds unequal strife,
In bold infraction of the laws of life.

If then the teeth, designed for various use,
Decay and ache, ’tis only from abuse;
And lo, triumphant art can well ensure,
At least a remedy, if not a cure.

Whene’er along the ivory disks, are seen,
The filthy footsteps of the dark gangrene;
When caries comes, with stealthy pace to throw
Corrosive ink spots on those banks of snow--
Brook no delay, ye trembling, suffering fair,
But fly for refuge to the dentist’s care.
His practiced hand, obedient to his will,
Employs the slender file with nicest skill;
Just sweeps the germin of disease away,
And stops the fearful progress of decay.(37)

Fair science, thus, with timely care combined,
Becomes the faithful friend of human kind;
Reverses, oft man’s miserable fate,
And serves his cureless ills to mitigate:
Extracts the poison from his tainted breath,
And plucks the feather from the shaft of death.

From long neglect which nothing can atone,
Should caries excavate the solid bone,
Destroy the bright enamel in its way,
And lay the nerve quite naked to the day;
Still dental science, subject of my song,
Invents expedients to redress the wrong.

’Tis then the world’s bright god, so highly prized,
That earth and heaven are daily sacrificed
Upon its altar, wrested from abuse,
Performs in nature one substantial use:--(38)
Unlike the sacrilegious part it bore
At thundering Sinai’s trembling base of yore,
When Israel’s blooming daughters gave their gold,
That Aaron, frail and impious priest, might mould
The idol calf--unlike its task assigned,
To bribe, and buy, and subjugate mankind;
To purchase love and friendship; and descend
A heritage where noble virtues end;
To be, with those who basely covet it,
The villain’s honor, and the dunce’s wit;
The shining claim that elevates the clown
To all the stupid mummery of the gown;
The lure by which the genius oft is led
To give the termagant his bridal bed;
The current bribe to hireling virtue given;
The bartered substitute for truth and heaven!

This idol god, that thus usurps the skies,
The artist now to noblest use applies;
Transmutes its form with Cæsar’s head impressed,
Or in Napolean’s robes imperial dressed,
To soft and yielding lamina;--with skill
The practiced dental surgeon learns to fill
Each morbid cavity, by caries made,
With pliant gold:--when thus the parts decayed
Are well supplied, corrosion, forced to yield
To conquering art the long contested field,
Resigns its victim to the smiles of peace,
And all decay and irritation cease.

Yet oft, through ignorance or negligence,
’Twere hard to say, through lack of common sense,
The fatal spoiler works his secret way,
With noiseless industry from day to day,
All undisturbed, till, lo, the work is done
That leaves to art new conquests to be won.
’Tis thus the solid teeth, from year to year,
By folly or misfortune disappear,
Announcing man’s inevitable doom,
And pointing to the portal of the tomb.(39)

But mark the triumphs of victorious art,
When sighing fair ones see their hopes depart;
When speech unsyllabled offends, and when
The lisping notes of childhood come again:
When vicious chyle from undigested food,
Abates the vital vigor of the blood;
Then--ever prompt to dry misfortune’s tears,
Again the artist’s magic skill appears.

In climes remote, where sacred Ganges flows
From Thibet’s mountains of eternal snows,
Or far beyond the golden Gambia’s source,
Where Lander sought the Niger’s mystic course;
The lordly elephant, in hoary pride,
Toils through successive ages to provide
The ivory tusk; the fertilizing Nile
Breeds the huge Hippopotamus, whose spoil
Supplies new treasures;--and the ocean wave
Nurtures the sea-calf in his rocky cave,
To furnish fit materials to impart
Increased importance to the favorite art.

And now, while every sister art aspires
To light her torch at more celestial fires,
The Dentist, e’en, too proud to lag behind
The bold aeronaut who rides the wind,
Or the adventurous mariner that braves,
With bellowing steam, the fury of the waves,
O’erleaps the bounds to ancient science known,
And to all past experience adds his own.
Thus, strange to tell, is daring genius led
By truth and heaven, exultingly to tread
Untrodden fields in nature’s realms afar,
Beyond the milky way or polar star.

Behold the dental artist’s bright array
Of magic wonders glittering to the day;--
The white stalactite from the mountain cave;
The branching coral from the ocean wave;
The crystal from the rock; the gem that shines
With decompounded light from Indian mines;
And alabaster; and that yellow stone
That graces jealous beauty’s virgin zone;
The brightest gifts of every varying clime,
Resplendent spoils of nature and of time;--
And see, obedient to his ruling will,
Their forms transmuted by his plastic skill,
Till, as when Cadmus, coveting to reign,
With teeth of dragons sowed the Theban plain
A marshalled host sprang vigorous from the glade,
In blazoned arms and towering plumes arrayed;
So spring to light, while love her flag unfurls,
A shining panoply of orient pearls.(40)

With aids like these, from nature’s store supplied,
And following nature man’s unerring guide,
The artist bodly ventures to restore
The dental arch, till, perfect as before,
The teeth in order greet the wondering sight,
A theme of admiration and delight!

Let servile tongues applaud the glittering state
That decks the vain, hereditary great;
The circumventive arts of dark chicane,
That mark the general game of _loss and gain_;
The statesman’s tricks, in search of sordid pelf,
To prove that none are patriots but himself;
The feats of arms that strew th’ embattled plain
With mangled limbs, and crimson all the main;
Be mine the task to render just applause
To those who toil in virtue’s nobler cause;
Whose serious thoughts and labors are designed
To mitigate the woes of human kind;--
Whom works of usefulness and love employ,
Like Him who fills unnumbered worlds with joy.(41)

END OF CANTO FOURTH.

CANTO FIFTH.

ARGUMENT.

Apostrophe to health.--Sympathetic action of disease on the
system--Destructive influence of disordered teeth on the lungs,
digestive organs, and nervous structure.--Influence of the teeth
on health and longevity, arising from their relation to the solid
aliments of man.--Importance of the teeth to the arts of eloquence
and vocal music.--The commander addressing his troops on the eve
of battle.--The advocate at the bar of justice, pleading the cause
of injured innocence.--The venerable pastor exhorting his flock to
pursue the path to heaven.--The fate of Seraphina.

CANTO FIFTH.

Come, rosy Health! thou pretty sun-burnt maid,
And laugh with Labor in the noon-day shade;
Awake with Temperance at the peep of dawn,
And brush the dews that deck the fragrant lawn.

Enchanting nymph! how often have I seen
Thy quick elastic footstep on the green,
At summer eve among the reaper train,
The favorite belle of many a rustic swain;
The village minstrel on the turf reclined,
To melting music all his soul resigned;--
The hills, the dales, the fields, and woods around
Seem wrapped in silence, listening to the sound,
Save that one hoary rock across the plain,
Returned in echo every silver strain.

Gay, blushing Health! without thy freshening glow
Protracted life were only conscious wo;
And earth’s unnumbered joys would end in pain,
If thou wert banished from the fair domain.
Be thou the blithe companion of my way,
Through cheerful years, to life’s remotest day;
Though babbling fame should eulogize me not,
Nor fortune gild my solitary cot.

Ye lovely fair, who deprecate the doom
Assigned by general taste to tarnished bloom,
Be wise in time--’tis folly to delay;
Cast all your vile cosmetic drugs away;
Exchange the shallow artifice of dress
For nature’s more enchanting loveliness;
And know that blooming health alone abides
Where chaste and temperate cleanliness resides.

As, when the sun from burning Cancer throws
His radiant fires till all the ether glows,
The spotted plague and fever’s frantic train
In pop’lous cities hold their ghastly reign,
By filth engendered--by intemperance fed,
Till half the living sink among the dead,
While pale affright, with desolating brand,
Spreads consternation through the trembling land;
So, in the breathing microcosm of man,
Each slight derangement of the general plan,
Each local malady of every name,
Disturbs throughout the sympathizing frame.

But most the teeth, for various use employed,
Disturb the system when themselves destroyed;(42)
For when these organs yielding to decay,
In morbid exhalations waste away,
The vital air, from heaven’s aerial flood,
That warms with life the circulating blood,
Bears to the heaving lungs the deadly bane,
Where all its noxious qualities remain,
While every breath the poisonous draught repeats,
And spreads disease with every pulse that beats.(43)

Nor less the nervous sympathy conveys
Each dental malady a thousand ways,(44)
For, as the witching music of the lyre,
Is heard along each vibratory wire,
What time the heaven-instructed minstrel flings
His hurried hand among the magic strings:--
So when disease invades the dental arch,
And strides in anguish on his angry march,
His burning touch, like the electric flame,
Flashes through every fibre of the frame;
Fever ensues, with all its raging fires,
And oft the maniac sufferer expires.(45)

And yet of all the evils that accrue
From loss of teeth, though neither small nor few,
The chief is this;--’tis nature’s general plan,
That all the solid aliments of man,
Before admission to the secret shrine,
Where vital chemistry, with skill divine,
Transforms the cruder mass to milky chyme,
By nature’s metamorphosis sublime,--
Should suffer comminution;--hence we find
The dental organs formed to cut, and grind,
And masticate the food:--this rightly done,
The process of digestion, well begun,
Results in health to each dependant part,
That feels the living impulse of the heart.(46)

But when, from loss of teeth, the food must pass,
A crude, and rigid, and unbroken mass,
To the digestive organs: who can know,
What various forms of complicated wo,
May rise terrific from that single source?(47)
For nature, once resisted in her course,
Breeds frightful things--a monstrous progeny!
Consumption, fevers, palsy, leprosy,
The hobbling gout, that chides, at every breath,
The lingering pace of all-destroying death;
And apoplexy, dragging to his doom
The half surviving victim of the tomb.

See thus the mortal life of erring man,
Reduced by vice and folly to a span;
And years of joy alloted him below,
Exchanged for fleeting months of bitter wo!

The Power Supreme, who gave all being birth,
And fashioned man the sovereign lord of earth,
Free-will and understanding both bestowed,
The likeness and the image of his God;
And gave what beast, bird, fish, could never reach,
The all-controlling attribute of speech.
Transcendant gift! that elevates our kind
To all the lofty pleasures of the mind;
To social joys;--to all the polished arts,
That spring from sympathy of kindred hearts!

This power of speech, in which are nicely wrought,
All shades of feeling, and all forms of thought;
The silver cord that binds all human kind;
The circulating medium of the mind;--
Results from organs formed with heavenly art,
To act in concert their appointed part.
With these the dentals hold the foremost place,
Since, to their loss or injury, we trace
The greater part of those imperfect sounds
With which the general speech of man abounds.

Behold the orator, in church or state,
When warm persuasion, or when cool debate
Impels the common mind to daring deeds,
While virtue triumphs, or a nation bleeds.
His vocal organs, trained with patient skill,
Perform their part, obedient to his will.
If rampant war, with all its dire alarms,
Employ his eloquence; the shock of arms,
The shouts of armies, and their dying groans,
Roll on his quivering lips in silver tones,
While murmuring crowds, impatient still to go,
Rush to the pathway leading to the foe!

If lovely innocence, when fair and young,
Fall by the vile seducer’s lying tongue,
And seek redress where justice holds her throne,
The trembling wretch, unfriended and alone,
And bathed in bitter tears, invokes the laws,
And calls on heaven to vindicate her cause:--
The orator appears:--his searching glance,
A moment, eyes the culprit wretch askance,
That crushed the bleeding flower:--words follow next,
And as the foaming mountain torrent, vext
By the projecting cliff, in angry bound,
Decends in cataracts, with thundering sound,
Till all the desert wild, and savage rock,
And hoary mountain, tremble at the shock,
So does the stream of eloquence impart
A palsied shuddering to the villain’s heart!
The listening crowd reply with loud acclaim,
While Emmet lives--immortal heir of fame!

On yonder hill, which freshening shades invest,
Beneath whose spreading boughs forever rest
The mouldering ashes of the son and sire,
The village church erects its modest spire.
Behold, each Sabbath morn, with measured pace,
The silent groups that seek that hallowed place,
And mark, how meek devotion worships there,
With heart uplifted in the hour of prayer.

The morning song of love is sweetly sung,
While heaven’s own flame inspires each tuneful tongue;
And see--the venerable man appears,
White with the hoary frosts of threescore years;--
The good old man, whose useful hours have flown,
To sooth all others’ sorrows but his own;--
Whose daily labors to mankind are given,
In charity, but all his heart to heaven.
So pure the life this virtuous man has passed,
That all his powers are perfect to the last;
No borrowed lock to grace his brow aspires;
No optic glass his vigorous eye requires;
He lacks no single tooth that nature gave,
Nor asks a staff to guide him to the grave.(48)

With voice subdued, and unobtrusive mein,
He speaks of heaven,--he paints the flowery scene,
Where angel-natures--forms of purest love,
Meet in the bowers of innocence above,
To drink at living fountains, and be fed
On fruits immortal, and the living bread,
Till gushing tears fall fast from every eye,
And faith and hope look smiling to the sky.

Yet, in that choir that sung the morning song,
One vacant seat afflicts the listening throng;
One well known voice, admired so oft before,
For sweetest melody, is heard no more.

Is Seraphina dead, whose melting strains
Had won the hearts of all the neighbouring swains?
Or does she now forsake the house of prayer,
And spurn her venerable pastor’s care?
Unjust suspicion! tarnish not her fame,
Nor let reproach attaint her spotless name;
For while her mellow voice obeyed her will,
She fondly lingered our musician still;
And though by cruel fate compelled to part,
She leaves us all the homage of her heart.
To lonly solitude she gives her hours,
In shady copse, or shadier garden-bowers:--
In silent grief, and unconsoled, she pines,
And scarce to heaven’s high will her soul resigns.
For, lo, the heavenly music of her lip--
So sweet, the laboring bees might stop to sip,
Has passed away; discordant notes succeed,
And Seraphina’s bosom lives to bleed.

Ye ask the cause:--by premature decay,
Two of her dental pearls have passed away;
The two essential to those perfect strains,
That charm the soul when heavenly music reigns.
But fly, ye swains, to Seraphina fly,
And bid her fastly flowing tears be dry;
Haste to her cottage, where in vain she seeks
To wipe the burning deluge from her cheeks;
And when you find her, soothe her frantic mind,
And bid her cast her sorrows to the wind;
In secret whisper this kind truth impart;--
There is a remedy:--the dental art
Can every varying tone with ease restore,
And give thee music sweeter than before!--Thus,
to desponding man in life’s dark way,
The angel, mercy, points the opening day;
And through the tear that trembles in his eye,
Reveals the glories of her kindred sky.(49)

END OF CANTO FIFTH.