Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

passed, with his book, into oblivion. Yet only one source for their knowledge, which

there are some clever things in the volume, with a few of which I may hereafter regale my readers-amongst them criticisms upon the American poets who were the author's cotemporaries-Dwight, Trumbull, Barlow, and perhaps Freneau.

is nature, however much they may differ in their interpretation of nature's facts."

A CRAZY CANNIBAL.-"A man has been arrested in Hungary for killing four children and eating their hearts raw. He acted on the belief that he would have the power to become invisible when he had eaten seven, but was not permitted to carry his experiment to a conclusion."

PROGRESS IN WORSHIP.-" In a prominent

"THE AIR WE BREATHE.-'Malakoff,' Paris correspondent of the New York Times, tells an interesting and frightful story about the quality of the air breathed in theaters and other close houses containing a thousand or more persons. A chemist made an analy-church at Indianapolis, last week, the execusis of the air breathed by such persons. tion of a fine piece of music was applauded He carried into a theater, at 10 o'clock at with clapping of hands and stamping of feet." night, a bottle of ice placed on a plate, and then collected the vapor which rapidly condensed on the outside of the bottle and flowed down on to the plate. At first this vapor thus collected had the smell, the taste, and, far as could be determined, every chemical quality belonging to the waters of the most deadly fever marshes. Under the microscope this water was at first clear, but soon-that is to say, in a week-it was found to be full of fine animalculæ. A little later on, these animalculæ had grown, and the big ones were seen pursuing and devouring the little ones. Still later on, at the end of two months, the water was thick with animalcule; various forms were seen, and still the work of destruction was going on. At last, but three hideous monsters were seen-microscopic monsters, of course, since they were contained in a drop of water-and these were still fighting to see which could devour the other. At the end of three months the water became clear and miasmatic again."

"A CHAP Who was told by a tract pedlar to ' remember Lot's wife,' replied that he had been in trouble enough already about other

men's wives."

EDGAR POE'S LAST MOMENTS.-"It having been denied lately in a magazine article that Edgar Allan Poe died in consequence of a drunken debauch, Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, who was a personal friend of the poet's, has published an account of his death, from which it appears that he (the writer) found Poe ‘in a state of beastly intoxication' in a low tavern in Baltimore, and assisted in having him removed to a hospital, where he died, one week later, of mania à potu. Poe's body was buried in the cemetery belonging to the Westminister Presbyterian Church-not in the Potter's Field, as has been stated-and the only mark by which his grave could be distinguished was 'a piece of undressed pine board, as unlettered as it was unsuited.' During one of his lucid moments, and when it became clear that he was about to die, the physician in attendance asked him if he would like to see any of his friends; to which Poe replied, pressing his hand to his forehead: Friends! My best friend would be he who would take a pistol and blow out these d―d wretched brains! ' Monday, the 7th of November, 1849.”

Poe died on

MENTAL CULTURE IN ADVANCED LIFE.AGASSIZ ON DIFFERENCE OF OPINION.- "Instances have frequently occurred of indiProfessor Agassiz, in his Lecture upon Mon-viduals in whom the power of imagination keys, speaking of the right which mankind have to differ with each other in opinion,

says:

"A great change has come upon men in that respect. It is no longer possible for any man, or for any set of men, to assume that the truth is with them exclusively. Men have learned that there is only one common foundation for their beliefs, however much they differ from one another in their religious propositions. Men have learned that there is

has, at an advanced period of life, been found susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men, what an accession is gained to their most refined pleasures!—what enchantments are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind awakening, as if from a trance to a new existence, becomes habituated to the most interesting aspects of life and of nature; the intellectual eye is 'purged of its film;' and things the most familiar and unnoticed disclose charms invisible before.

The same objects which were lately beheld a sensible sign, in order to form a conception with indifference occupy now all the powers of the Most High. And is not the sun, the and capacities of the soul-the contrast be- incomprehensible source of light, an image tween the present and the past serving only of that Invisible Being who blesses and preto enhance and to endear so unlooked-for an serves all things?' The Israelite thereupon acquisition. What Gray has so finely said rejoined: 'Do your people, then, distinguish of the pleasures of vicissitude conveys but a the type from the original? They call the faint image of what is experienced by the sun their God, and, descending from this man who, after having lost in vulgar occu- even to a baser object, they kneel before an pations and vulgar amusements his earliest earthly flame! Ye amuse the outward, but and most precious years, is thus introduced blind the inward eye, and while ye hold to at last to a new heaven and a new earth: them the earthly, ye withdraw from them the The meanest floweret of the vale, heavenly light. Thou shalt not make unto The simplest note that swells the gale, thee any image or any likeness.' 'How, then, The common sun, the air, the skies, do you designate the Supreme Being?' asked To him are op'ning Paradise."" the Parsee. We call him Jehovah Adonai,

The above is from the pen of Dugald that is, the Lord who is, who was, and who

Stewart.

"OUR FATHER."-"A Jew entered a Parsee temple, and beheld the sacred fire. 'What!' said he to the priest, 'do you not worship the fire?' 'Not the fire,' answered the priest; 'it is to us an emblem of the sun, and of his genial heat.' 'Do ye, then, worship the sun as your God?' asked the Jew; 'know ye not this luminary, also, is but a work of that Almighty Creator?' 'We know it,' replied the priest; 'but the uncultivated man requires

will be,' answered the Jew. 'Your appellation is grand and sublime,' said the Parsee, 'but is awful too!' A Christian then drew nigh, and said, 'We call him Father. The Pagan and the Jew looked at each other and said, 'Here is at once an image and a reality; it is a word of the heart,' said they. Therefore they raised their eyes to Heaven, and said with reverence and love, 'OUR FATHER!' And they took each other by the hand, and all three called one another brothers."

LONGFELLOW-FLOWER DE LUCE.

BY JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON.

To what extent transcendentalism will ex- | may be certain he beholds a child of song. pand before another crisis, another culmina- If we see a lawyer, a doctor, a saddler, or a tion of revolutionary opinions will bring silversmith walking the street with a hangabout a new order of things, is a quare; dog look, we know a poet is in travail, and but it is certain that in literature, especially a poem is soon to be. In fact, if we meet a in poetry, this crisis ought to be much de- man, a hundred chances to one he is a poet! sired. Parnassus has become frightful on The good old time of Poeta Nascitur is nearly account of the rank weeds that cover it from forgotten. It only lives in the memory of base to brow, and also on account of the those who cling to the dead. The art conhideous reptiles that crawl and hiss and show cerning which Horace said so many delicious their forked tongues at every step. In truth, things, is now taught in log school-houses by poetry has "become a name "-the poet has pedagogues of every grade of culture. There become the rule, the honest man the excep- are a thousand Anacreons for every Ionia tion. If one looks into a barber-shop and now-a thousand Pindars for every Boeotia, sees a mild-eyed man strapping a razor as if and every overhanging rock of every possihe were keeping time to a hornpipe, one ble shore is lined with wailing Sapphos

every book he could obtain. From the time of our first meeting down to the present, a narrative of events has been kept, which reads as follows:

"MY LOST YOUTH. "And the burden of that old song, It murmurs and whispers still; A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

ready to leap. In these center the nerves of In Clark County, in the State of Kentucky, progress and, as a matter of course, the about six miles south of the little village of wheels slip on the track without advancing Kiddville, stands, or did stand, an humble log an inch. It is the only consolation left to house, at the opening of a singularly beautithe lover of genuine literature to know, that ful dell, known as Chalybeate Hollow. This while there are only a few light-houses on house was the home of a dark-haired, hazelthe Mare Tenebrarum their rays are un-eyed boy, with whom in our youth we were mistakable, though a thousand wills-o'-the- well acquainted. He was a boy of remarkwisp wave their delusive torches. The read-able mind, and devoured the contents of ing world has lately been shown three new volumes of poems-poems of a high order poems of the immortal. Jean Ingelow's book is full of that inspiration which comes from Aiden, from the Garden of Delights, from the haunts of beauty-those delights that are rainbow sorrows, that beauty which is a sad "joy forever." Laus Veneris comes from Helusion, from the dusky groves, from the flowery meads, from the perfumed harems of a pagan paradise. Jean has all the voluptuous vigor of Oriential imagery-the pink of Persian peach-blooms tinges all her poems; but she is vague in her expression, and after all, leaves us where she found us, only a little less contented with our lot. Swinburne is fierce and melancholy by turns -now a vulture, now a sad dove; he tears our hearts one moment-the next he coos us into tears; but at all times and at every turn he evinces all the animal vitality of Bulwer's "Margrave." The third of the above named trio, and by far the best book of poems published since Tennyson's "In Memoriam," is "Flower de Luce," by Prof. Longfellow. Of this we purpose to write; and first, let us retrospect.

Longfellow, from the very beginning of his literary career up to the present, has written in too moods alternately. Some of his poems are of the soul, others are the offspring of mere intellect. Of passion, properly socalled, he has none, consequently there is little voluptuousness in his pictures. He fails in nearly all his love passages from sheer necessity, while his power to express the affections is unlimited. We might quote a score of poems illustrating our assertions, but will not on account of our limited space. The "Children's Hour," "Weariness," and "Footsteps of Angels," are brimful of a holy affection, free from the faintest tinge of passion. Just here some sad, but pleasantly sad, reminiscences arise. Through our study of Longfellow is woven back and forth the story of a heart. There may be a moral in the tale.

"To-day I met Paul Hope, and am inclined to think he is the strangest boy in the world. Sometimes he is as timid and bashful as a girl-sometimes he is solemn and gloomy-sometimes he is wildly hilarious— sometimes really cynical. Paul is sixteen, and rather tall for his age. A little dell runs away from Paul's house, sinking deeper and deeper at every step into delicious shade, till at length in the coolest, wildest crypt imaginable, a spring of yellow chalybeate water gurgles out to lave the feet of some giant tulip-trees, and runs off among flowering alders and clumps of witch-hazel. Paul was reading Longfellow's 'Birds of Passage' a greater part of the time while we were together sitting by the spring. He has a rich voice and is an excellent reader. Over against a huge rock he sat facing me, with his fine head pillowed on the moss, and his dreamful eyes half-closed. I am three years older than Paul, but I have already found that he knows much more than I do. He reads Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Arabic, and I heard him speak of the Hebrew Talmud as if he had read that too, though I do not know what that is. 'Sandalphon,' one of Longfellow's most artistic poems, brought up the subject. Here is the finest passage of mere poetical expression to be found, perhaps, in any language,' said Paul as he read:

[ocr errors]

'When I look from my window at night
And the welkin above is all white,
All throbbing and panting with stars,
Among them majestic is standing
Sandalphon.'

He read the verse italicised in a peculiarly

mellow tone, and ever since it has been ringing in my ears. I think I shall never look upon the sky of night again without thinking of the Angel of Prayer."

Longfellow's first poems are, in one respect, his best. They are natural. His "Hymn to the Night" is a "cry of the human," as Mrs. Browning terms it. However consummate a command of language he has since acquired, and however sweetly and elaborately modulated may be the cadences of his later poems, the "Psalm of Life" is his truest poem. is the echo of his individual nature-indomitable energy. The thoughts of his youth were "long, long thoughts." His will" was the wind's will," and he sang like a bird.

It

"I have just returned from Italy after an absence of two years and a half. I have been squandering time in travel and amusement, learning nothing. I have just been to see Paul Hope, and find him full-grown but slender, and rather inclined to be weak physically. He has studied too hard-taken too little exercise. When I look upon his pale face and furrowed brow, and think how ruddy and weather-beaten and strong I am, I feel that my vagabondage has had at least one good result; and I thank my stars I am no poet-no student. And, furthermore, I am under the deepest weight of obligation to Fate for so constituting me that to love, in the poetical sense of the word, is impossible. Paul is desperately in love with one Carrie Gray, whom he has seen somewhere. He says she is a perfect Houri, whatever that is, and he has written some verses about her -verses, too, of the most extravagant kind. Here is one stanza:

⚫Calling across the hush of night,

Soft voices wake me from my dreams;
Far in the starry deeps of light

A vision of thy beauty gleams.'

Bear a lily in thy hand;

Gates of brass can not withstand One touch of that magic wand.'

"Poor Paul! it seems his heart has not more than the brass gates! I am impatient been strong enough to withstand' it any to see this Carrie Gray of whom Paul talks so much. I know she is beautiful, for Paul is a real artist: his taste is never at fault. Well, we are going to have a May-day party despite this dreadful war, and I'll meet her there. It is so lucky that we live in this secluded section.

66 THE PICNIC.

'Oh, stay!' the maiden said, and rest Thy weary head upon this breast!' "The last day of April was a terrible one. The wind blew almost a hurricane, and the rain fell in torrents. May, however, dawned fair, the wind blowing in fitful gusts. It was but a short gallop from home to the place appointed for the picnic. I went early and alone, meaning only to stay an hour-only till I could see Carrie Gray. I found a number of young people collected at Mrs. M.'s, hard by the place of rendezvous, and joined them. Paul had not yet arrived. The little boys and girls of a neighboring school were present in holiday attire, running and shouting on the lawn in front of the house, and some one in the parlor was singing:

'Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.

'Ye open the eastern windows
That look toward the sun,
Where thoughts are singing swallows
And the brooks of morning run.'

"The voice was the sweetest I have ever heard, though I have listened to those who have made the world wonder. Soft and low, clear as a flute, it warbled and cooed till my "Paul is still reading Longfellow, but he heart almost ceased to beat as I stood chainhunts the love-passages now, and reads themed to the spot. When the song ended I went rapturously.

'Maiden! with the meek brown eyes,
In whose orbs a shadow lies

Like the dusk in evening skies.'

"If you could hear Paul read that stanza and those that follow, you would but love the exquisite poem from which they are taken with doubled fervor.

'Like the swell of some sweet tune,
Morning rises into noon,

May glides onward into June!

in. A girl not over fifteen sat on the pianostool, whereby she had swung herself round so as to face the company after singing. She was as sweet as an angel could be. Her eyes were dark as night and full of passionate tenderness-full of the deep splendor of love! She was a brunette, and her jetty hair was a crown of dusky glory. A faint blush glimmered on either cheek, and her lips were red as rubies. I was fairly startled when my eyes met hers; and instantly I thought of

the verses Paul had so often read to me of the girl standing on the brink of the river of womanhood:

'Deep and still that gliding stream
Beautiful to thee must seem,
As a river of a dream,'

"She sat at ease, gracefully but motionless, looking right into my eyes-right into my soul, with a smile of baby-innocence playing about her lips and just stirring the twin dimples in her chin and cheeks. She was allowed to rest but a moment; then the whole

company begged her to sing again, and she turned to the piano. She swept the keys hurriedly, then turned to me and said in a sweet, child-voice:

[blocks in formation]

"Can I tell you how she looked? Can I You have seen these latter, but you have paint a sunset? Can I photograph a dawn? not seen Carrie Gray. She was dressed in a light blue picnic dress of very costly material made high in the neck, where it

6 6 Mr. T- —, please help me to sing this ended in a snowy ruffle encircled by a narlittle song.'

row pink cravat. The dress just tipped the "Had a ball of fire fallen at my feet I could floor as she bent, and the flowing sleeves alnot have been more astonished.

"Come,' she continued, 'I have heard so much of your singing.'

"She was an utter stranger, and I at first tried to excuse myself, but I could not syllable a single word; so I rose mechanically and walked to the piano.

"You are kind,' she whispered, 'very kind, and I thank you. After we have sung I wish you to tell me all about the countries you have been visiting, the people you have seen, and a thousand pleasant and curious things. We don't need an introduction-I have heard so much of you; my name is Annette Gray.'

"She now began the song, and we filled the room with our voices and the deep tones of the magnificent instrument. While we were singing, some one entered the room, and I heard Paul Hope's voice. I can not account for the condition I was in. I grant I was blinded by the artless beauty of Annette Gray; but this was not all. Some one I had not seen thrilled me more. I knew she had come. I knew she sat at my back looking at me. The excitement under which I labored gave my voice a quavering volume, and if I ever sang well it was then. When we had finished I turned slowly round. I saw Paul's face first. It was flushed, and there was a flash of joy in his eyes. I had thought him handsome before; now I thought him superbly beautiful, magnificently noblelooking. I fixed my eyes on his and walked over to shake his hand. I knew who sat beside him, but did not even glance at her.

[ocr errors]

most hid her little hands, whose taper fingers were white as snow. She was about the middle hight, round and rather full of form, with slightly tapered shoulders, and the bust of a Venus. Her neck, as white as a swan's, drooped gently forward. Her chin was firmly set, but fell gracefully away to a pouting under lip which, even in repose, stood slightly apart from the upper, giving a continuous half-smile to her mouth, in which were set the most beautiful teeth it is possible to imagine. Her cheeks were pink, not red, and her forehead was fair as Parian marble. Her nose was straight and small, with thin nostrils, and over it the arched brows left a space which dimpled when she raised her eyes. The contour of her face was oval, and her forehead was rather broad and low, over which her dark brown hair shone splendidly. But her eyes! They were wells of rapture— they were deeps of glory-they were resplendent mysteries! Dim shades that were not shadows played across fields of light, and brown glooms softened to tenderness what would otherwise have been a starry gleam. They were bewildering mazes of shade and sheen and dusk and splendor-they were hazel orbs of liquid vitality-they were translucent spheres of embodied life. They looked beyond you-beyond the horizon into the infinity of the future—at least it seemed so— and you were awed while enraptured. I can not say what passed in the next half hour. It passed, however, and the company rose to walk down to a high bluff on a little river hard by-the spot chosen to pass the day.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »