THANATOPSIS.
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language: for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart,
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice: Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements—
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good—
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between—
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite hosts of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning; traverse Barca's desert sands,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there;
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite fantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men—
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man—
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
PRE-EASTER PHILOSOPHY.
A Few Reflections, Pertinent and Impertinent, on the Subject of Clothes, Their Cost, and
the Consequences of Sartorial Splendor.
Dwellers in huts and marble halls—
From shepherdess up to queen—
Cared little for bonnets, and less for shawls,
And nothing for crinoline.
But now simplicity's not the rage,
And it's funny to think how cold
The dress they wore in the Golden Age
Would seem in the Age of Gold.
Henry S. Leigh—The Two Ages.
Nothing is thought rare
Which is not new, and follow'd; yet we know
That what was worn some twenty years ago
Comes into grace again.
Beaumont and Fletcher—Prologue to the Noble Gentleman.
Dress drains our cellar dry,
And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires,
And introduces hunger, frost, and wo.
Where peace and hospitality might reign.
Cowper—The Task. Bk. II.
He that is proud of the rustling of his silks, like a madman, laughs at the rattling of his fetters. For indeed, Clothes ought to be our remembrancers of our lost innocency.
Fuller—The Holy and Profane States.
I'll be at charges for a looking-glass,
And entertain some score or two of tailors,
To study fashions to adorn my body:
Since I am crept in favor with myself,
I will maintain it with some little cost.
Richard III. Act I. Sc. 2.
So tedious is this day,
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child, that hath new robes,
And may not wear them.
Romeo and Juliet. Act III. Sc. 2.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 3.
The glass of fashion and the mold of form,
The observ'd of all observers.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 1.
Their clothes are after such a pagan cut too,
That, sure, they've worn out Christendom.
Henry VIII. Act I. Sc. 3.
You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred;
only I do not like the fashion of your garments.
King Lear. Act III. Sc. 6.
He is only fantastical that is not in fashion.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy.
And as the French we conquer'd once,
Now gives us laws for pantaloons,
The length of breeches and the gathers,
Port-cannons, periwigs, and feathers.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. I. Canto III.
Thy clothes are all the soul thou hast.
Beaumont and Fletcher—Honest Man's Fortune. Act V. Sc. 3.
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility—
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.
Robert Herrick—Delight in Disorder.
Fashion—a word which knaves and fools may use,
Their knavery and folly to excuse.
Churchill—Rosciad.
As good be out of the world as out of the fashion.
Colley Cibber—Love's Last Shift.
Who seems most hideous when adorned the most.
Ariosto—Orlando Furioso. XX. 116.
I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 148.
Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet;
In short, my deary, kiss me! and be quiet.
Lady M.W. Montagu—Summary of Lord Littelton's Advice.
Classics From Carlyle.
Two of the Most Celebrated Passages in "Sartor Resartus," Penned By
the Great Scottish Philosopher in What He Called "The
Loneliest Nook in Britain."
"The selections printed here are taken from what is regarded by nearly every one as the masterpiece of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). "Sartor Resartus" (The Tailor Retailored) is the title of a book which exhibits the very soul of Carlyle himself, with all its mingled scorn, lawlessness, humor, and pathos. He wrote in what he called "the loneliest nook in Britain"—a little Scottish farm at Craigenputtoch.
To this place Carlyle had taken his bride, Jane Welsh, a very brilliant woman, and there the two lived for years amid the most desolate surroundings and after the rudest fashion. They were a strange and ill-assorted couple—he in manner and appearance a gaunt and uncouth peasant; she a delicate and nervous woman of the world. Carlyle suffered tortures from dyspepsia, which often made him as savage as a wolf. His wife, who had married him less from love than because she thought he had a great career before him, suffered from his heedlessness and roughness, yet took her revenge upon him by the sharpness of her tongue, and by the burning record which she left of their mutual bitterness and spite.
It was in this lonely place that Carlyle wrote "Sartor Resartus," which first appeared in Fraser's Magazine (1833-1834). It is one of the strangest and most eccentric of literary productions. It has no form. Its language is often exclamatory, vociferous, and wild—interlarded also with foreign words, and words that Carlyle himself invented. It really sets forth the personal opinions, the fanciful speculations, and the mental writhings of its author; and it foreshadows the almost demoniac power wherewith Carlyle afterward wrote the story of the French Revolution, which he himself called "truth clad in hell-fire."
Carlyle, as a man, was so erratic as to be almost impossible. His opinions were extreme, and he was fond of bellowing them forth in the fiercest and most furious words, insulting those who differed with him, eaten up by a colossal vanity, and yet unquestionably a genius of the first order.
Night View of a City.
"Ah, my dear friend," said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks Boötes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the zenith in their leash of sidereal fire?
"That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like night-birds, are abroad; that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid!
"The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being born; men are praying—on the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void Night.
"The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw; in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard, hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting and playing their high chess game, the pawns being Men.
"The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready, and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders; the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his pick-locks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes.
"Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but in the Condemned Cells the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow; comes no hammering from the Raven's Rock?—their gallows must even now be a-building.
"Upward of five hundred thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie around us, in horizontal positions; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten—all these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but carpentry and masonry between them—crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel—or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others; such work goes on under that smoke-counterpane! But I sit above it all; I am alone with the Stars."