GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XX. April, 1842 No. 4.
Contents
[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.
Painted by Prentice. Engraved by H. S. Sadd, N.Y.
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XX. PHILADELPHIA: APRIL, 1842. No. 4.
THE WIFE.
———
BY AGNES PIERSOL.
———
It was the dead hour of the night. The room was a high wainscotted apartment, with furniture of a rich but antique pattern. The pale moonlight streaming through the curtained window, and struggling with the subdued light of a candle placed in a corner, disclosed the figure of a sick man extended on a bed, wrapped in an unquiet slumber. By his side sat a care-worn though still beautiful woman gazing anxiously on his face, and breathlessly awaiting the crisis of the fever—for it was now the ninth day since that strong man had been prostrated by the hand of disease, and during all that time he had raved in an incessant delirium. He had at length dropped into an unquiet slumber, broken at first by starts and moans, but during the last hour he had been less restless, and he now lay as still as a sculptured statue. His wife well knew that ere morning the crisis would be past, and she waited, with all a woman’s affection, breathlessly for the event. Aye! though few women have been wronged as Emily Walpole had been wronged, she still cherished her husband’s image, for he was, despite his errors, the lover of her youth.
Few girls had been more admired than Emily Severn. But it was not only the beauty of her features and the elegance of her form which drew around her a train of worshippers: her mind was one of no ordinary cast, and the sweetness of her temper lent an ineffable charm to all she did. No one was so eagerly sought for at a ball or a pic-nic as Emily Severn, and at her parental fireside she was the universal favorite. It was long before she loved. She was not to be misled by glitter or show. She could only bestow her affections where she thought they were deserved, and it was not until she met Edward Walpole that she learned to surrender her heart.
Edward Walpole, when he became the husband of Emily Severn, was apparently all that a woman could wish. He was warm hearted, of a noble soul, kind, gentle, and ever ready to waive his own selfish gratification at the call of duty. But, alas! he had one weakness, he did not act from principle. His generous deeds were the offspring of a warm heart rather than of a regulated intellect. As yet he had never been placed in circumstances which severely tried his principles. But, about a year after his marriage, he fell heir to the large property of a maiden aunt, and at once his whole style of life was altered. His accession of wealth brought him into contact with society in which hitherto he had never mingled, where the polish of factitious politeness often hides the most depraved morals. Above all, by abandoning his profession, he condemned himself to comparative idleness. He now began to be tortured by ennui, and sought any excitement to pass away the time. The harpies who infest society, and with the appearance of gentlemen have the hearts of fiends, now marked him for their prey; and his open and generous nature made him their victim in a comparatively short space of time. We shall not trace his downward progress. It is always a melancholy task to mark the lapse from virtue of a noble and generous character, and how much more so when the heart of a wife is to be broken by the dereliction from rectitude.
Emily saw the gradual aberration of her husband, and though she mourned the cause, no word of reproach escaped her lips, but by every gentle means she strove to bring back her husband to the paths of virtue. But a fatality seemed to have seized him. He was in a whirlpool from which he could not extricate himself. He still loved his wife, and more than once, when her looks cut him to the heart, he made an effort to break loose from his associates; but they always found means to bring him back ere long. Thus a year passed. His fortune began to give way, for he had learnt to gamble. As his losses became more frequent his thirst for cards became greater, until at length he grew sullen and desperate He was now a changed man. He no longer felt compunction at the wrongs he inflicted on his sweet wife, but if her sad looks touched his heart at all they only stung him into undeserved reproaches. He was become harsh and violent. Yet his poor wife endured all in silence. No recrimination passed her lips. But in the solitude of her chamber she shed many a bitter tear, and often, at the hour of midnight, when her husband was far away in some riotous company, her prayers were heard ascending for him.
Two years had now elapsed, and the last one had been a year of bitter sorrow to Emily. At length her husband came home one night an almost ruined man. He had been stripped at the gambling table, of every cent of his property, over which he had any control, and he was now in a state almost approaching to madness. Before morning he was in a high fever. For days he raved incessantly of his ruin, cursing the wretches by whom he had been plundered. Nine days had passed and now the crisis was at hand.
The clock struck twelve. As sound after sound rung out on the stillness and died away in echoes, reverberating through the house, the sick man moved in his sleep, until, when the last stroke was given, he opened his eyes and looked languidly and vacantly around. His gaze almost instantly met the face of his wife. For a moment his recollection could be seen struggling in his countenance, and at length an expression of deep mental suffering settled in his face. His wife had by this time risen and was now at his bedside. She saw that the crisis was past, and as she laid her hand in his, and felt the moisture of the skin, she knew that he would recover. Tears of joy gushed from her eyes and dropped on the sick man’s face.
“Heavenly father, I thank thee!” she murmured at length, when her emotion suffered her to speak, while the tears streamed faster and faster down her cheek, “he is safe. He will recover,” and though she ceased speaking, her lips still moved in silent prayer.
The sick man felt the tears on his face, he saw his wife’s grateful emotion, he knew that she was even now praying for him, and as he recalled to mind the wrongs which he had inflicted on that uncomplaining woman, his heart was melted within him. There is no chastener like sickness; the most stony bosom softens beneath it. He thought of the long days and nights during which he must have been ill, and when his insulted and abused wife had watched anxiously at his bedside. Oh! how he had crushed that noble heart; and now this was her return! She prayed for him who had wronged her. She shed tears of joy because her erring husband had been restored, as it were, to life. These things rushed through his bosom and the strong man’s eyes filled with tears.
“Emily—dear Emily,” he said, “I have been a villain, and can you forgive me? I deserve it not at your hands—but can you, will you forgive a wretch like me?”
“Oh! can I forgive you?” sobbed the grateful wife, “yes! yes! but too gladly. But it is not against me you have sinned, it is against a good and righteous God.”
“I know it—I know it,” said the repentant husband, “and to His mercy I look. I cannot pray for myself, but oh! Emily pray for me. He has saved me from the jaws of death. Pray for me, dear Emily.”
The wife knelt at the bedside, and while the husband, exhausted by his agitation, sank back with closed eyes on the pillow, she read the noble petition for the sick, from the book of Common Prayer. At times the sobs of Emily would almost choke her utterance, but the holy words she read had at length, a soothing effect both on her mind and that of her husband. When the prayer was over, she remained for several minutes kneeling, while her husband murmured at intervals his heart-felt responses. At length she rose from the bedside. Her husband would again have spoken, to beseech once more her forgiveness. But with a glad feeling at her heart—a feeling such as she had not had for years—she enjoined silence on him, and sat down again by his bedside to watch. At length he fell again into a calm slumber, while the now happy wife watched at his bedside until morning, breathing thanksgivings for her husband’s recovery, and shedding tears of joy the while.
When the sick man awoke at daybreak, he was a changed being. He was now convalescent, he was more, he was a repentant man. He wept on the bosom of his wife, and made resolutions of reformation which, after his recovery, through the blessing of God, he was enabled to fulfil.
The fortune of Walpole was mostly gone, but sufficient remained from its wrecks, to allow him the comforts, though not the luxuries of life. He soon settled his affairs and removed from his splendid mansion to a quiet cottage in a neighboring village. The only pang he felt was at leaving the home which for so many years had been the dwelling of the head of his family—the home where his uncle had died, and which had been lost only through his own folly.
Neither Walpole nor his wife ever regretted their loss of fortune; for both looked upon it as the means used by an over-ruling Providence to bring the husband back to the path of rectitude; and they referred to it therefore with feelings rather of gratitude than of repining. In their quiet cottage, on the wreck of their wealth, they enjoyed a happiness to which they had been strangers in the days of their opulence. A family of lovely children sprung up around them, and it was the daily task of the parents to educate these young minds in the path of duty and rectitude. Oh! the happy hours which they enjoyed in that white, vine-embowered cottage, with their children smiling around them, and the consciousness of a well regulated life, filling their hearts with peace.
Years rolled by and the hair of Walpole began to turn gray, while the brow of his sweet wife showed more than one wrinkle, but still their happiness remained undiminished.
LOWELL’S POEMS.[[1]]
A NEW SCHOOL OF POETRY AT HAND.
We shall never forget our emotions when we inhaled, for the first time after a lingering illness, the fresh breezes of a September morning. Oh! the visions of dewy meadows, rustling forest trees, and silvery brooks which the delicious air called up before us. This little book has awakened much the same emotions in our bosom. It reminds us of the breezy lawns where we played when a child; of the old mossy forest trees beneath which we loved to sit and muse; of the silent, stately Brandywine that glided along at our feet, its clear waters sliding over the rocks or rippling against the long willow leaves that trembled in its current. There is a freshness about Lowell’s Poems which bewitches our fancy. They display a genius that has startled us. They breathe a healthy, honest, good old Saxon spirit, that opens our heart to them as by a sign of brotherhood. We feel that he is kin of our kin and blood of our blood, and we take his book to our bosom without suffering it to plead the exquisite petition which he has put into its mouth, for “charity in Christ’s dear name.” Lowell is a man after our own heart. We have a word or two to say of him in connection with the poetry of the day.
Every one must have perceived that a new school of poetry is at hand. No one who has thought on the subject can have failed to see that the fever for Byron, like all fevers, is both wearing itself out and exhausting the patient. With the death of the noble lord began the decline of the school to which he gave such popularity, and though he has had many imitators since, the phrenzy respecting his poetry is nearly over. We do not mean to depreciate Byron. Every great poet should be spoken of with reverence; for they all alike discourse in the language of the gods; and Byron was not only a great poet, but the greatest poet of his school. That school, however, was a bad one—the fierce, unholy offspring of an incestuous age. It was a school in which the restlessness of passion seems to have forced its votaries into poetry. They had none of the calm, enduring enthusiasm of the great poets of the past; they did not speak with the majesty of Jove, but with the fury of a Delphin priestess. They were essentially the poets of a crowd, expressing the emotions of men in a state of high excitement, and consequently whirling away their hearers with them in a phrenzy for the time unconquerable, but destined to subside with the first calm in the public mind. But the truly great poets—Milton, Shakspeare and Spencer—sit far away on a mountain by themselves, singing in calm enthusiasm to the stars of heaven, and startling the dweller on the plain as well as the shepherd on the hill-side with a melody that seems a part of heaven. The school of Byron is that of a generation; the school of the old masters is that of eternity. The one is a lurid planet, that blazes fitfully amid storm and darkness; the others are fixed stars, that shine around Milton, the greatest of all, in undimmed and undying lustre.
Ὡς δ’ οτ’ εν ουρανω αστρα φαεινην αμφι σεληνην Φαινετ’ αριπρεπεα.
We have said that a new school of poetry is at hand, and the remark may, at first sight, appear extravagant when we consider the stagnation which has been exhibited for years. But betwixt the decline of one school and the rise of another, there is always a pause. When Milton wrote, a lustrum had elapsed since Shakspeare died. After the decay of Pope, a half a century of barrenness ensued before Cowper brought in a more masculine verse. The poetic soil, during these interregnums, seems to be worn out, and to require to lie fallow until it can recruit its energies. Only a few sparse flowers bloom upon the waste. But these, although insignificant in themselves, serve to betray the changes in the soil. They are premonitory of the coming harvest. They give us a clue to the character of the approaching school, and although often vague and contradictory, they afford us hints for which we would in vain seek elsewhere. We do not say that, from such hints, the nature of a school can be certainly predicted. The public taste, to use a phrase from the geologists, is in a transition state, and what the result may be, will, in a measure, puzzle the acutest mind. But we can still approximate to the truth. And even now we may hazard a conjecture respecting the characteristics of the school which will supersede that of Byron. It will resemble, in many particulars, that of the old poets. It will have the same calm, enduring enthusiasm. It will be marked by a like earnestness of purpose, by the same comprehensive love for “suffering, sad humanity.” It will have none of the jaundiced views of Byron, and little of the petit maître style of Pope. It will be intellectual, and, we fear, pedantic also. It threatens to be disgraced by conceits. Circumstances, it is true, may occur to give a different turn to the character of the new school, or a Messiah may arise to do away by a single dispensation with all former types; but, so far as we can foresee now, the Tennysons, Longfellows, and poets of that cast of mind, will give the tone to the coming change in the public taste. Indeed they are already bringing about a revolution. Men are first acted on singly and then in masses, and the masses have even now begun to feel the influence of Longfellow and Tennyson. Wordsworth, too, is not to be disregarded in this revolution, but his influence, though powerful so far as it goes, will never be general. He is the poet of the few, not of the many. He is the priest of the metaphysicians, the seer of the refiners of fine gold. He writes poems, but his followers write twaddle. He cannot found a school. He cannot do this aside from his peculiarities. We will explain.
It is a common error to attribute the formation of a school of poetry to the influence of some one great mind, and we are pointed to Byron, Pope, Shakspeare and others, as instances to prove this creed. The theory is false and illegitimate, the offspring of shallow minds and conceited pedants. A popular poet, we grant, may have many imitators of his verbal style; but the spirit of his school, like the prophet’s inspiration, dies with him. If we look to the poets of our own language we shall find that the great masters usually followed rather than preceded their respective schools; and if we look abroad we shall, with few exceptions, discover the same fact. The school of Byron, for instance, was born of the atheism, scorn and fury of the French Revolution, and we can see foreshadowings of the spirit of Childe Harold in most of the minor poems of that day. Byron carried the school up to its culminating point, and since his death, if not before, it has been on the decline. Pope was the last of a school that had its origin as far back as the exile of Charles the Second, and the French style and sickly effeminacy of this most finished of our poets began to decline while Walpole still sat at the Treasury, when Lady Mary played the wit at Richmond, while clouded canes and full-bottomed wigs yet figured in the Mall. Milton belonged to no school but his own; he stands alone in unapproachable glory; but his genius was deeply influenced by the commotions of the civil wars. Shakspeare had few followers, but many predecessors, and as he was the last so he was the greatest of his school; while Spencer, standing as he did above the grave of chivalry and allegorical romance, only gave vent, in his immortal poem, to a requiem for the departed great. All these men embodied the characteristics of their age, and left them as a heritage to posterity. They were types of their times: they spoke the universal mind of their cotemporaries. It is the cant of the day to talk of men as being in advance of their age; but there never was and never will be such a man. Even Bacon, the giant of the modern world, and the reputed author of the inductive philosophy, was only its great high-priest; for even before he had written his advancement of learning, twenty minds, in every quarter of Europe, were stumbling on the same truths. We are not waiting, therefore, for the advent of a seer to found a new poetic school, for the school must come first, and then we may expect the seer. It will require a dozen Tennysons to make a Spencer. The days of the years of the sons of the prophets are not yet numbered—when they shall be, a new Messiah will appear in our midst.
The tendency of the age to a new school in poetry is strikingly evinced by the genius of Lowell. He was educated in the school of the older poets until his whole soul has become imbued with their spirit. Of these writers Spencer is clearly his favorite. The allusions to this fine old poet are frequent in his poems, and we often meet with expressions and turns of thought, reminding us strikingly of the Faery Queen. We do not mean to charge Lowell with plagiarism: far from it. But he has read Spencer so thoroughly that he is often guilty of unconscious imitation. His fondness for this enchanting writer, is indeed the greatest peril which threatens his poetical career. There is such a thing as being beguiled by a syren until you become her slave. We tell him to beware. Let our young countryman shake himself loose from his bewitching fetters, and be, as he is partially and can be wholly, original. Let him be his own master. Aut Cæsar, aut nihil.
This language, when applied to some, would be a satire. But Lowell has evinced the possession of powers, nearly, if not altogether equal to those of any cotemporary poet; and when, in connexion with this, we consider his youth, we feel justified in assigning to him a genius of the first rank. Let us not be misunderstood. We do not say that Lowell has written better poems than any American, but only that he has evinced a capacity, which in time, may enable him to do so. Indeed this volume of poems, although possessing high merit, is rather a proof of what he may do than of what he has done. There is scarcely a poem in the book which a critic might not prove to be full of faults; but then there would be passages scattered through it which, to an honest man, would redeem the whole. And since the publication of this volume, Lowell has written other poems evincing a progressive excellence and establishing his genius beyond cavil. In one faculty he is certainly equal to any cotemporary, and that faculty is the highest one a poet can possess—we mean IDEALITY. The imagination of Lowell is of the loftiest character. No one can read a ballad published in this Magazine for October, 1841, or a poem entitled “Rosaline,” published for February, 1842, without awarding to our young countryman the gift of this enviable faculty. Whether he is capable of conceiving and executing an extended poem remains to be seen; and we would not advise him to attempt the task until time has matured his taste and refined his powers. But if the Lycidas of Milton, or the Venus and Adonis of Shakspeare were any evidence of the intellect of these two masters, then are some of the poems of Lowell evidence that he has the power, which if properly cultivated, will enable him to write a great poem. The young eagle that flutters its wings on the mountain top may not yet be able to breast the tempest, yet it is an eagle still, and he must be deaf indeed who cannot distinguish its cry. We say that Lowell has an ideality of the loftiest order, and that no one can read his poems without discovering this. We say that ideality is the highest quality of a poet’s mind. So far forth, therefore, Lowell is entitled to rank among the foremost of our poets.
But this is not all. A poet may have the intellect of a god, and yet want the heart to make him truly great; for all true greatness is based on nobility of mind, without which mere intellect is but a tinkling cymbal. All the great old poets eminently possessed this quality. Their hearts kept time, in a majestic march, to noble sentiments. They loved their race, and in their writings showed they were in earnest. This love for his fellows is one of the finest characteristics of Lowell, and contrasts strikingly with the frippery of Pope, and the sneering misanthropy of Byron. We adore this feeling. It is the good old Saxon spirit, the sentiment of universal brotherhood. We are all the children of one father, fitted for sympathy, companionship, affection. We are not born to scorn our fellows. We have not been created to seclude ourselves from society, to dwell in caves, and cells, and lonely hermitages. We are made for nobler purposes. Our mission, like that of him of Nazareth, is to go about doing good. Nor let any man hate his fellows, thinking them regardless of his sorrows. The most unfortunate of us are not without friends, often loving us unknown and in spite of our faults. We have seen the criminal at the bar, when all others shrunk from him, cheered by the affection of the very wife or mother he had wronged; and even the houseless old beggar by the way-side finds a friend in every honest heart that sees his grey hairs tossing in the wind. All over this wide world, in hut, or cottage, or lordly hall, millions of hearts are beating with love towards each other, so that the whole human race is, as it were, interwoven together by innumerable fine threads of sympathy and affection. A word, a deed, or a kind look may make us a friend of whom we little think: and it may be that even now, some one whom we have never seen, is yearning towards us, because something that we may have written has found an echo in his bosom. God be thanked for this, the brightest gift in a poet’s mission! How many hearts have sympathised with the blind old Milton, and how many more will sympathise with him to the end of all time. And thus it is with the good of every age. They live again in the memory of posterity. The dying words of Algernon Sidney will thrill the freeman’s heart through untold centuries. The apostolic charity of Fenelon, Latimer, Bunyan, Augustine, and of all holy men, will endear them to noble hearts as long as time endures. The only immortality worth having is an immortality like this; and it matters not whether our names are known to those who bless us or not. Men have written noble sentiments and died and been forgotten, yet posterity has still yearned towards the poet when it read his lines. What comfort may not an author thus bring upon his fellows! Go out into the country and enter that lowly cottage,—you will find perhaps some mother weeping over little Nell, and drawing consolation from traits in the character which remind her of a darling child now in heaven. Thus by ten thousand links does an author bind himself to the hearts of his fellows, until at length he comes to be loved as we would love a brother. And often the precepts he instils awaken the dormant good in other hearts. Lowell has finely expressed this in one of his earliest poems—
“Noble thoughts like thistle-seed,
Wing’d by nature, fall and breed
From their heedless parents far,
Where fit soil and culture are.”
This fellowship for his kind glows in every line of Lowell. Open his pages where you may, the eye lights on some kindly word, some noble thought, some sentiment overflowing with the milk of human kindness. There is a fine sonnet now before us which expresses the feeling of brotherhood in true Saxon words—
“Why should we ever weary of this life;
Our souls should widen ever, not contract,
Grow stronger, and not harder, in the strife,
Filling each moment with a noble act:
If we live thus, of vigor all compact,
Doing our duty to our fellow-men,
And striving rather to exalt our race
Than our poor selves, with earnest hand or pen,
We shall erect our names a dwelling-place
Which not all ages shall cast down agen;
Offspring of Time shall then be born each hour,
Which, as of old, earth lovingly shall guard,
To live forever in youth’s perfect flower,
And guide her future children Heavenward.”
And here is one, on the same theme, which many a brother poet would do well to emulate. How fitly this sonnet might have been read to Gray!
“Poet! who sittest in thy pleasant room,
Warming thy heart with idle thoughts of love,
And of a holy life that leads above,
Striving to keep life’s spring-flowers still in bloom,
And lingering to snuff their fresh perfume,—
O, there were other duties meant for thee,
Than to sit down in peacefulness and be!
O, there are brother hearts that dwell in gloom,
Souls loathsome, foul, and black with daily sin,
So crusted o’er with baseness, that no ray
Of Heaven’s blessed light may enter in!
Come down, then, to this hot and dusty way,
And lead them back to hope and peace again,—
For, save in Act, thy Love is all in vain.”
Here is the sentiment of our mission finely expressed—
“We were not meant to plod along the earth,
Strange to ourselves and to our fellows strange.
We were not meant to struggle from our birth
To skulk and creep, and in mean pathways range;
Act! with stern truth, large faith, and loving will!
Up and be doing! God is with us still.”
The following lines will cheer many a lonely heart in its sore distress:
“Be of good courage, bear up to the end,
And on thine after way rejoicing go!
We all must suffer, if we aught would know;
Life is a teacher stern, and wisdom’s crown
Is oft a crown of thorns, whence, trickling down,
Blood, mix’d with tears, blinding our eyes doth flow;
But Time, a gentle nurse, shall wipe away
This bloody sweat—”
Here are three lines which deserve to pass into a proverb:
“Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping but never dead
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;”
Lowell has a passion, if we may use the word, for images of quiet beauty. He seems to worship nature; he is evidently a dreamer. We venture to predict that he has spent many a day loitering through the summer woods, or lingering by the side of some silvery stream. He is a close observer—as what genius is not? There is a freshness about his writings which convinces you that he has not drawn his notions of the country, like many even of our rural poets, from books. He writes freely and therefore gracefully. His images of nature come to us with a delicious freshness, reminding us of forest nooks, sylvan retreats, and the fragrance of new mown hay. He seems to be peculiarly fond of water, and of the music which its dropping or its flow occasions, Thus:
“Thy voice is like a fountain
Leaping up in still starlight,
And I never weary counting
Its clear droppings lone or single,
Or when in one full gush they mingle,
Shooting in melodious light!”
“And thy light laughter rang as clear
As water drops I loved to hear
In days of boyhood as they fell
Tinkling far down the dim, still well.”
“Weary never, still thou trillest
Spring-gladsome lays,
As of moss-rimmed water brooks
Murmuring through pebbly nooks
In quiet summer days.”
“And like a moonbeam was her hair
That falls where flowing ripples are,
In summer evening, Isabel!”
Many of the poems in this volume as well as several pieces since given to the world, are love-poems, and breathe all the delicacy and exquisite tenderness of a first affection. Lowell’s conception of the female character is noble, chivalrous, pure and elevating. No poet in our language has a loftier idea of a true woman. Mere personal beauty does not appear to awaken his adoration, but every feeling of his soul kindles at a sweet voice or a lovely mind. We like him for this. A sweet voice is a talisman, and we question whether any true poet could love a woman whose voice was not low and musical. There is a witchery in a soft melodious accent that no language can describe. It seems to dissolve itself into the soul and steal us away unconsciously to ourselves. A lovely mind is the highest charm a woman can possess. How exquisitely has Lowell pictured in the following verses, the purity of a young maiden:
“Early and late, at her soul’s gate
Sits chastity in warderwise,
No thought unchallenged, small or great,
Goes thence into her eyes.”
“She is so gentle and so good
The very flowers in the wood
Do bless her with their sympathy.”
“Thou mad’st me happy with thine eyes,—
And gentle feelings long forgot
Looked up and oped their eyes,
Like violets—when they see a spot
Of summer in the skies.”
“Peace sits within thy eyes,
With white hands crost in joyful rest,
While through thy lips and face arise
The melodies from out thy breast.
She sits and sings
With folded wings.”
The poems entitled “My Love,” “Ianthe,” and “The Lover,” are peculiarly fraught with these elevated sentiments, and we recommend them, apart from their poetic merit, to all who love to contemplate true beauty in woman. The sonnets of Lowell are equally full of those delicate touches. Those on names are very fine—the one entitled “Anne” particularly so. Many others may be instanced as exquisite poems, full of tenderness and beauty.
With all this ideality, this calm enthusiasm, this love for his fellow men, this freshness and delicacy, Lowell would be entitled to rank already among the first poets of the country, if it were not for an occasional affectation, and a comparative want of artistical knowledge. His affectation is the result of his extravagant fondness for Spencer, and partakes, in a great measure, of the peculiarities of that fine poet. The most usual forms in which this affectation developes itself in Lowell, is in a tendency to push his metaphors to the verge of allegory, and in a quaintness that is as much out of place as a tie-wig on a beau of the present generation. The want of artistical knowledge is only comparative, for Lowell understands the rules of his art better than nine-tenths of the craft. Indeed we question whether the slovenliness of many of his poems, does not arise from carelessness as much as from ignorance. The writings of few men betray such rapidity of composition, evincing clearly to our mind, that the thoughts of the poet are thrown upon the paper as fast as they bubble up from his heart. Lowell seems to scorn revision. He strikes off his poems at a white heat, disdaining to polish the steel when it has grown cool. Such neglect always leads to the disbelief in an author’s artistical skill. The public will never give him the credit of being a good workman, while he shows so great an indifference to the finish of his wares.
This carelessness is not only evinced in an occasional false measure, but in other ways more detrimental. One of the slovenly habits of our poet, is in the use of the accent to lengthen a short syllable. We constantly meet with such words as “poisèd” “inspirèd,” and others of like false quantity. Against such liberties we protest. It is no argument to tell us that other poets have been guilty of the practice. Twenty wrongs do not constitute a right, nor will volumes of false quantity make a poem. An author is to take the language as he finds it and evince his skill by adapting it to his purpose. If every writer is allowed to beat a short syllable into a long one, there will soon be as many varieties of accent in our language, as there are gods in the Chinese theology. If words may be twisted as we please there will be no end to the fools who write poems. It is time that men stood up for the purity of our tongue. The affectations of Hunt, Lamb, and Hazlit, might have been forgiven: but the barbarous jargon of Carlyle deserves to be damned in the first act. There is a saint in the Brahmin calendar whom a legion of devils has been tormenting for a thousand years; and the good old manly English tongue seems to be in much the same predicament. Every lustrum or two a new onset is made at its purity. Each successive generation witnesses a mania for some foreign, illegitimate, unholy alliance. The rage in the days of Pope was for the French school, in the days of Johnson for the Latin school, and just now it is for the German school. If we live many years longer we shall expect to see men affecting the negro jargon from Coromantee.
The false accentuation of his words is not the only sin of Lowell against the purity of our tongue. His poems are disfigured, on almost every page, by the use of compound words, which he seems to fabricate, like an editor makes news, to fill out. We have “dreamy-winged,” “long-agone,” “grass-hid,” “spring-gladsome,” “moss-rimmed,” “study-withered,” “over-live,” “maiden-wise,” “rosy-white,” “full-sailed,” “deep-glowing,” “earth-forgetting,” “down-gushing,” “cross-folded,” and a host of like mongrel expressions, which no pure writer would use, and for which not even the genius of Lowell can obtain currency. The only redeeming feature in his case is that his later poems evince a decided improvement in this respect. They betray comparatively little of this carelessness. They show a wider command of words, a more sonorous and elevated verse. They are less disfigured by affectations from Spencer and others of the quaint old writers. They begin to be worthy of the genius of Lowell.
We have attributed these faults to carelessness; but they may be the result of affectation. Much of the unique appearance of the poetry of Lowell, is to be assigned unquestionably to these very things which we have denounced as errors. But if intentional the faults are only the more reprehensible. It is a very different thing whether a man commits a murder ignorantly or with malice aforethought. If the first he may be pardoned; if the second he should be hanged.
The earlier poems of Lowell are apt to be as much overrated by one set of readers, as they are to be depreciated by another set. The use of obsolete words, of arbitrary accents, of metaphors that verge on allegory, commend these poems to a certain school which seems to caress quaintness with the infatuation of Queen Titania in kissing the long ears of Bottom. But there is another school, which, possessing an honest contempt for any thing like affectation, is in danger of transferring its dislike from the errors to the author himself—of questioning his genius because of the faults of his style. We condemn each of these schools—both that which exaggerates and that which depreciates the poet. Lowell has many of the elements of a great poet inherent in his nature; while his faults are manifestly acquired, and can be corrected. His ideality, his enthusiasm, his nobility of sentiment, would enable him to produce even a great poem, if to these were added the capacity to grasp a series of incidents in one vast comprehensive whole. This capacity, or at least the elements of it, we believe him to possess, and if he adheres to a rigid course of study, and awaits the mature development of his powers, he will be enabled to prove this to the world. By that time his taste will be ameliorated and his artistical skill improved. He now writes rather as his feelings dictate than after any sustained plan. We must be understood however, as using this language only comparatively; for as we have before said, Lowell is already equal in these respects to most of his cotemporaries. But there is an empyrean to which none of them have yet attained. To that region of eternal day we would have our young countryman aspire.
We have spoken with frankness, because we love with discretion. The genius of Lowell is surpassed by no cotemporary and he has only to be known in order to be understood; but his countrymen have a right to interpose and save him from the errors into which a false taste, a pedantic clique, or indiscriminate flattery may plunge him. He cannot wholly resist the peculiarities of the approaching school, but there is no reason why he should not soften their errors and elevate their style. He can display the taste of Coleridge without his absurdities, he can be as intellectual as Shelley without his mysticism, he can emulate the ideality of Tennyson and Keats without the affectation of the one, or the redundancy of the other. He has high genius, susceptible of improvement, but capable of perversion. He is in that critical period of a poet’s life when the intoxication of success may lead to idleness, when the misguided silence of his friends may confirm him in his worst faults. The improvement which his later poems evince, fill us with high hopes for the future; but his task is not yet done, as his powers are still in the process of development. If we were his bosom friend we should speak as we have written, using that noble sentence as our apology, “strike, but hear me.”
We look forward to the future career of Lowell, with hope, not unmingled, however, with fear and trembling. To his hands, we fondly trust, has been committed the task of achieving a great original American poem, a work that shall silence the sneers of foreigners, and write his own name amid the stars of heaven. He has the dormant intellect which if rightly disciplined, will enable him to fulfil this mission. But let him bide his time. Let him husband his powers, and yet not let them rust in idleness; but gird up his loins for the work that is before him, so that when the day of his translation shall arrive he may lift up his eyes for the chariot of fire. If he does his mission aright the hour of his rejoicing will surely come. No power will be able to avert it. Against the revilings of the envious, against the sneers of the unbelieving, against the persecution of hostile powers he can bear himself proudly up, for the sight of the fiery chariot will swim before his eyes and the sounds of celestial harmonies entrance his soul.
We take leave of Lowell with a single word. He must not be discouraged if his genius should at first be questioned. Few prophets have honor in their own country.
C.
| [1] | “A Year’s Life”—by James Russell Lowell; 1 vol. C. C. Little & J. Brown, Boston: 1841. |
LIFE IN DEATH.
———
BY EDGAR A. POE.
———
Egli è vivo e parlerebbe se non osservasse la rigola del silentio.
Inscription beneath an Italian picture of St. Bruno.
My fever had been excessive and of long duration. All the remedies attainable in this wild Appennine region had been exhausted to no purpose. My valet and sole attendant in the lonely chateau, was too nervous and too grossly unskilful to venture upon letting blood—of which indeed I had already lost too much in the affray with the banditti. Neither could I safely permit him to leave me in search of assistance. At length I bethought me of a little pacquet of opium which lay with my tobacco in the hookah-case; for at Constantinople I had acquired the habit of smoking the weed with the drug. Pedro handed me the case. I sought and found the narcotic. But when about to cut off a portion I felt the necessity of hesitation. In smoking it was a matter of little importance how much was employed. Usually, I had half filled the bowl of the hookah with opium and tobacco cut and mingled intimately, half and half. Sometimes when I had used the whole of this mixture I experienced no very peculiar effects; at other times I would not have smoked the pipe more than two-thirds out, when symptoms of mental derangement, which were even alarming, warned me to desist. But the effect proceeded with an easy gradation which deprived the indulgence of all danger. Here, however, the case was different. I had never swallowed opium before. Laudanum and morphine I had occasionally used, and about them should have had no reason to hesitate. But the solid drug I had never seen employed. Pedro knew no more respecting the proper quantity to be taken, than myself—and thus, in the sad emergency, I was left altogether to conjecture. Still I felt no especial uneasiness; for I resolved to proceed by degrees. I would take a very small dose in the first instance. Should this prove impotent, I would repeat it; and so on, until I should find an abatement of the fever, or obtain that sleep which was so pressingly requisite, and with which my reeling senses had not been blessed for now more than a week. No doubt it was this very reeling of my senses—it was the dull delirium which already oppressed me—that prevented me from perceiving the incoherence of my reason—which blinded me to the folly of defining any thing as either large or small where I had no preconceived standard of comparison. I had not, at the moment, the faintest idea that what I conceived to be an exceedingly small dose of solid opium might, in fact, be an excessively large one. On the contrary I well remember that I judged confidently of the quantity to be taken by reference to the entire quantity of the lump in possession. The portion which, in conclusion, I swallowed, and swallowed without fear, was no doubt a very small proportion of the piece which I held in my hand.
The chateau into which Pedro had ventured to make forcible entrance rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those fantastic piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. Day by day we expected the return of the family who tenanted it, when the misadventure which had befallen me would, no doubt, be received as sufficient apology for the intrusion. Meantime, that this intrusion might be taken in better part, we had established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay high in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary—in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that having swallowed the opium, as before told, I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room—since it was already night—to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed—and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them.
Long—long I read—and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. I felt meantime, the voluptuous narcotic stealing its way to my brain. I felt that in its magical influence lay much of the gorgeous richness and variety of the frames—much of the ethereal hue that gleamed from the canvas—and much of the wild interest of the book which I perused. Yet this consciousness rather strengthened than impaired the delight of the illusion, while it weakened the illusion itself. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by, and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I so placed it as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.
But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It was the portrait of a young girl just ripened into womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus shut, I ran over in mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought—to make sure that my vision had not deceived me—to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the painting.
That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me into waking life as if with the shock of a galvanic battery.
The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom and even the ends of the radiant hair, melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the back-ground of the whole. The frame was oval, richly, yet fantastically gilded and filagreed. As a work of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. The loveliness of the face surpassed that of the fabulous Houri. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half-slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting and of the frame must have instantly dispelled such idea—must have prevented even its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for some hours perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied of the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in a perfect life-likeliness of expression, which at first startling, finally confounded, subdued and appalled me. I could no longer support the sad meaning smile of the half-parted lips, nor the too real lustre of the wild eye. With a deep and reverent awe I replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I there read the vague and quaint words which follow:
“She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art: she a maiden of rarest beauty and not more lovely than full of glee: all light and smiles and frolicksome as the young fawn: loving and cherishing all things: hating only the Art which was her rival: dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to portray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour and from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastily in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter, (who had high renown,) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his visage from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. And when many weeks had passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while yet he gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice ‘This is indeed Life itself!’ turned himself suddenly round to his beloved—who was dead. The painter then added—‘But is this indeed Death?’ ”
THE MINER’S FATE.
FROM THE PORT-FOLIO OF A RAMBLING ARTIST.
A bright fresh May morning smiled upon one of the loveliest landscapes in nature, and revealed to the eye of a wandering young artist a picture of such exceeding beauty, that he found it impossible to confine his attention to his canvas sufficiently long to produce the faintest semblance of the loveliness which reigned and revelled around him.
“What a grand effect is produced on that magnificent amphitheatre of hills by the sunrise purpling their rising mist as it ascends and imperceptibly mingles with the rose-colored clouds—while its base is wrapped in the cold blue tint which the stronger rays of the sun will presently disperse. If I could catch the hue of that many-tinted mist, and throw over it the soft dreamy haze which clothes the atmosphere, I should more than rival the mighty master, Claude Lorraine—one more trial; such a scene must inspire the humblest artist.”
He re-arranged a small easel as he spoke, and proceeded to cover his pallet with the choicest and most exquisite colors; but the glories of outre mêr and carmine seemed so pale and faded before the inexpressible radiance of earth and ether, that long before he had finished laying on the dead coloring of his picture, he threw it aside in despair.
“I must complete it,” he said, “at some other time when the majesty of nature may not mock my humble efforts.” He then arose, and re-packing his paint-box, deposited it safely among the mossy rocks, and sauntered slowly onward, to enjoy at least, if he could not imitate, the enchantments of nature. And truly he might well give up his heart to the passionate love of beauty which pervaded it; for the loveliness of that quiet valley was well calculated to gratify the intense desires of a mind thirsting for images of perfection. Not only did the mountain tops and mist gleam with the golden sunlight, but every flower at his feet, every blade of grass displayed each its wealth of gem-like dew glittering with unrivalled colors.
“The plumed insects swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,”
filled the scented air, and shed their “music of many murmurings” upon his path; and he was inclined to fancy that no new feature could add beauty to the landscape around, when a sudden turn in the winding path convinced him of his error.
He had turned his back on the semi-circular range of hills, and emerged into a tract of country much more extensive, though still very broken. Huge masses of rock salt, covered with crystals whose prismatic forms lent them a startling brilliancy, gleamed upon his sight, and the green sweep of land between was diversified by many small cottages built of the gray rock which abounded throughout the country. The narrow path bordered with vines and wild roses lured him on, until the sweet accents of a female voice broke upon his ear, and he found that his path would lead him to trespass upon the enclosure of a cottage which appeared to be one of the neatest and best arranged among them. The painter paused, and his eye, (that morning destined to agreeable surprises,) readily discovered a group without the door, which immediately called out his pencil and pocket port-folio. A very bright-eyed child had thrown his chubby little arms around his father’s neck, and seemed resolved upon detaining him from his day’s labor; while the young wife, with eyes and lips scarcely less bright than those of the child, vainly endeavored to attract the infant with the most enticing toys. At length the father succeeded in unclasping the dimpled hands, and placing the baby on the floor; but the child still endeavored to detain him by holding the skirts of his coat.
“Philip seems determined that you shall not go to-day,” said the young woman; “perhaps there is a meaning in his warning.”
“If I listened to all your signs and warnings, I should very seldom leave you,” replied the husband. “I must go and that quickly, in spite of my persevering little pet.”
“But you will come back very soon?”
“I cannot even promise that,” replied the miner; for the husband was a laborer in the extensive salt mines, whose crystallizations produce so beautiful an effect in the distance. “We have a tremendous piece of work before us to-day, and there is no telling when it will be finished.”
“Would to God it were safely over.”
“Don’t look so pale and frightened, Mary; worse jobs are done every day—but they will call me sluggard if I loiter here—so good-bye, good-bye, darlings.”
“Heaven preserve you,” responded the wife; and she turned with feelings half of dread and half of hope to the cottage door.
“Just such a morning,” muttered an old woman who sat crouching in the chimney corner—“just such a morning, bright as this,—and a black night followed the bright day—a black, black night.”
“Now the saints save us!” exclaimed the young woman: “who ever heard Dame Ursula talking away at such a rate before? As sure as fate something unusual will happen. What is it you were saying grand-dame?” she added in a louder tone, approaching the thin, withered old hag who had crept slowly toward the door-step, and seating herself there, continued to mutter and mumble half indistinct words.
“Storms follow the sunshine—storms and tempests and thick darkness.”
The anxious wife followed and sat down beside her.
“Is there any evil hanging over us? for mercy sake tell me if you know,” she asked.
“Evil, did I say Evil! I spoke of the past, not the future—I spoke of the days of youth and hope and beauty.” Then as her wandering memory gradually linked together the chain of by-gone associations, her countenance brightened, and she poured into the ear of her astonished auditor the narrative of events which had taken place nearly a century before, and were generally forgotten,—treasured only in the heart of that desolate, and decrepid old creature.
“Youth and beauty, and love I said, and you marvelled at hearing such words from my lips; no wonder, for many a year has passed since these things have been aught to me save idle dreams. But the time has been, when I too was young—loving and loved—blessing and blessed. My brother, your grandfather, and myself were left, you know, in early life as orphans in the hands of strangers; and although we had no claim on them except that of helplessness, and could only repay their kindness by our exertions, we had no reason ever to complain of harshness or ill-treatment among our kind and simple people. I was older than my brother, and as I grew up to be a tall handsome lass, the young men of the village strove which could make themselves most agreeable to the light hearted and beautiful Ursula. I know it is folly in me to talk so now, and you can scarcely believe it, but eighty years hence, if you should live so long, your cheek may be wrinkled and your eye bleared like mine, so that your laughing boy will scarcely credit the tale of your former beauty.”
“Heaven forbid.”
“And if not,” resumed the crone, “the change may be far more fearful—but where was I? Oh—a merry romping lass of eighteen, with blue eyes, fair curling locks and red ripe lips—admired by all the village—but above all the favored choice of young Albert Wessenbery. The handsomest, bravest, noblest being! I wish you could have seen him, Mary, in all his pride of vast strength, and perfection of manly beauty. Words cannot express the love with which I loved him. A lifelong loneliness has proved it. Well, as I told you, I was his choice, and consequently the envy of all my acquaintances, for no one thought of denying that Albert Wessenbery was the pride of the village. So powerful, so stately, so devoted to me,—well, well! our wedding day was fixed, and the bridesmaids appointed. A week before—yes, just seven days before our wedding was to have taken place, I bade farewell to Albert for a day only, I believed. Just such a day as this, it was—and perhaps that is the reason why the soft clear sunshine, and the sweet sounds in the air have called up all these old memories so freshly. He pressed me in his arms and bade me farewell till evening. I dreaded his going out to work that day, for there was dangerous duty to be done; but he went in spite of my entreaties, and from that hour to this, I have never seen him return. I remember but dimly what followed. A stunning shock as if an avalanche had overwhelmed me. Death to him was worse than death to me. They told me he had perished in the mine. I know not whether they spoke truly. I have known nothing clearly since that time. I remember only that the light was removed from my path, and that the blackness of madness gathered round me for a while. How long this lasted I know not—when I arose from my bed of sickness, my heart and my flesh failed me, and I was as useless and decrepid as if years had passed over my head. Since that time I have struggled on through a long life of darkness and misery, dragging on a useless and tedious existence.”
“Oh say not useless my good friend; have you not while you had strength, given to others the happiness which fate denied you?”
“My brother gave me a home in his chimney corner, and here have I lived more years than I can count, and for what? God knows—perhaps I may yet live to see Albert return. I cannot fancy him altered as I am. I cannot help hoping to see him once more as he was of old. Vain as the hope may seem to you—that hope has been the only happiness I have known since he left me—the only hope. Of what other use am I in the world? why should I live? what other use? what other hope?” So speaking and shaking her palsied head, she relapsed into her former half unconscious state, occasionally muttering words to which her young companion listened with strained attention; but she could hear no more, neither did she succeed in again arousing the old woman from her apathy.
The Artist sauntered idly onward until he reached the mines; here finding that the reflection of the noon-tide brilliancy from the crystals was painful to the eyesight, he descended into one of the deepest excavations, where he found his acquaintance of the morning, and a fellow labourer at work. The day’s work was a heavy one, for they were opening a communication between the mines, and in heaving up the massive rocks there was great danger of being buried alive beneath their crumbling weight. Such things had often happened.
“Here is a mass which requires more strength than we can furnish,” said Philip, and he shouted for help. The desired assistance arrived, and after an hour’s severe labor, the huge rock was heaved upwards. This removal disclosed a solid stratum of the salt for which they were toiling; but the attainment of the object of their labor called forth no expression of pleasure from the beholders, for the attention of every one was riveted upon a strange and unlooked for apparition. Extended upon this singular couch, lay the form of a young man, apparently not more than twenty years of age; his limbs were exquisitely moulded, and he looked as if but yesterday he had been hushed in the deep sleep of death. It was evident to the minds of all, that many years must have elapsed since the being they had thus disinterred, had been overwhelmed with destruction in attempting to move that massive weight; for many years had passed since that portion of the mine had been worked upon. But was his destruction instantaneous? or did he linger on, day after day, in vain hope for the help which came not? how long had that crystalized rock been his mausoleum? who was he? where were his kindred? Here was a wide field for conjecture. Could no one remember that form which might have passed for a sculptured image of Antinous? But stranger than all this, the body seemed utterly untouched by the hand of time. The very pliability of the flesh remained! Destruction had passed harmlessly by that glorious form, and decomposition had not come near it. There he lay—he, whose existence none could remember—life-like, and beautiful—embalmed as it were in the solid rock. The sinewy, and rounded limbs told of the strength and beauty which had once been theirs, and the long black hair curled wildly over the clay cold face, and nerveless shoulders. He was in his ordinary mining dress, and by his spade and pickaxe beside him, gave evidence of his final and fatal occupation. The body was removed, and laid upon the thick green sward for further inspection, and perhaps recognition. The news spread rapidly, and the inhabitants quickly crowded around. None recollected him, although some of the oldest among them told stories of such an accident which had happened when they were little children; but none could remember the circumstances. After awhile a universal murmur broke from the crowd, for they beheld their oldest villager, Dame Ursula, approach with tottering and unsteady steps, leaning on the arm of a handsome young female. Not the exhumation of the life-like corpse itself, produced greater sensation among them, than the appearance of the living spectre—for such the old woman appeared, having never left her home for more than twenty years.
“Jesu, Maria—the Saints save us,” were echoed around her as the crowd respectfully made room for her to advance. She passed on slowly, and with difficulty, until she reached the stiff white figure of the dead miner. Then throwing herself upon the grass beside him, she passed her withered long fingers through his hair, and pressed it back from the pale brow.
“It is he, it is he—Albert Wessenbery,” she murmured; “and it was for this I have been spared through long years of loneliness, and wretchedness—long, long years—I knew not why I lived. It was for this, for this: that I might see him once more, once more in all his unearthly beauty, in his unmatched perfection: that I might see, and know that time has not marred, nor decay changed, nor the worm defiled the being I have idolized for nearly a century. Spared too to rejoice that my own Albert cannot behold the change which time, and life have wrought in a form he once loved so well. To him these withered arms and lips are welcome as if they yet retained all their former loveliness. He will not reject his early love for her age, and sickness, and unsightlessness. To him therefore I devote the remainder of my existence. Here will I fulfil the vows of love and constancy plighted in the spring time of life.”
She bent her head as she spoke and imprinted with bloodless lips a kiss upon his; her white hair streamed down, and mingled with his raven tresses, her long skinny fingers warm with life, pressed the cold marble hand of the dead! Strange union of youth and age—beauty and deformity—life and death! Seven days afterwards they were buried in the same grave, the superannuated woman, and her youthful lover. The constancy of a lifetime was rewarded, for she was permitted to rest her aged and hoary head, upon the manly, and unaltered breast of him she had loved so long and so well. Turf and flowers sprung up as greenly and freely above their grave as if they had been always young, and beautiful, and happy. Many a garland of young flowers, and the more lasting wreaths of the amaranth were hung upon that grave; and the names of Ursula and Albert, rudely sculptured on the grey stone which covered them, formed their only obituary, save the memory which survives in the hearts of the villagers.
BIRTH OF FREEDOM.
———
BY WM. WALLACE, AUTHOR OF “JERUSALEM,” “STAR LYRA,” ETC.
———
Yes, Freedom! Tyrants date thy splendid birth
With those uprisings in the bloody Past,
When all the lion-hearted of the earth
Unfurl’d their rebel-banners to the blast,
And from their limbs the dungeon-fetter cast;
But thou, Oh, idol of the brave! was’t born,
In full-grown majesty, upon that morn
When all the stars together sang, and forms
Of wondrous beauty, suns of dazzling light
Flamed from the bosom of those primal storms
Which lashed the rivers of chaotic night:
And some would drive thee from our gloomy sod;
Vainly they war with such blasphemous might;
Thy birth-place, Freedom! was the heart of God.
RECOLLECTIONS OF WEST POINT.
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BY MISS LESLIE.
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