With bile and buskin attitude.”
There is more of this pretty poem, but I have quoted as much as my own irascibility can bear. I, at least, have been a child, and have spent some of my childhood’s happiest hours with Manfred on the Alps; and have with him beheld
“the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance,”
and have believed with all a child’s sincerity in his remorseful gloom:—
“for I have ceased
To justify my deeds unto myself—
The last infirmity of evil.”
Every line is inexpressibly dear to me now, recalling, as it does, the time “when I was in my father’s house, and my path ran down with butter and honey.” Once more I see the big, bare, old-fashioned parlor, to dust which was my daily task, my dear mother having striven long and vainly to teach my idle little hands some useful housewifely accomplishment. In one corner stood a console-table, with chilly Parian ornaments on top, and underneath a pile of heavy books; Wordsworth, Moore, the poems of Frances Sargent Osgood,—no lack of variety here,—“The Lady of the Lake,” and Byron in an embossed brown binding, with closely printed double columns, well calculated to dim the keenest sight in Christendom. Not that mysterious and malignant mountain which rose frowning from the sea, and drew all ships shattered to its feet, was more irresistible in its attraction than this brown, bulky Byron. I could not pass it by! My dusting never got beyond the table where it lay; but sitting crumpled on the floor, with the enchanted volume on my lap, I speedily forgot everything in the world save only the wandering Childe,
“Who ne in virtue’s ways did take delight,”