And now, with a sheer descent, full fifty fathoms down, let us plunge like the eagle when he shoots before the burning thunderbolt. We are on the wide ocean, and what a sight! Sea and air are commingled into one. You seem buried alive in a whirling tempest of snow-flakes, and though, as on the mountain, you hear on every side sounds of utter agony, yet, as there, the keenest eye cannot penetrate the wan, dim prospect around; but here, unlike on the hills, there is one voice superior to all the rest—the deep, awful bass of the rolling surges. And then the hurricane! How it whistles, roars and bellows through the rigging, now piping shrill and clear, and now groaning awfully as if in its last extremity. The snow is blocking up the decks, wet, spongy and bitterly cold. There! how she thumped against that wave, quivering under it in every timber, while the spray was dimly seen flying wild and high over the fore-top. “Shall we—oh! shall we live till morning?” asks a weeping girl. “We know not, sweet one, but we are in the Almighty’s hand, and his fatherly care will be over us as well here as on the land.” There; see—“hold on all,” thunders the Stentor voice of the skipper, sounding now however fainter than the feeblest infant’s cry; and as he speaks, the craft shivers with a convulsive throe, and a gigantic billow, seething, hissing, flashing, whirls in over the bow, deluges the deck, and roars away into the blackness of darkness astern. Was that a cry of a man overboard? God in his infinite mercy, pardon the poor wretch’s sins; for, alas! it were madness to attempt his rescue. Already he is far astern. Another and another wave! Oh! for the light of morning. Yes! young Jessie, thou would’st give worlds now for the breezes of the far-off land—the hum of bees, the songs of birds, the scent of flowers in the summer sunshine—the sight of thy home smiling amidst its murmuring trees, with the clear brook hard by laughing over the stones, and the voices of thy young sisters sounding gaily in thy ears. But ere morning we may all be with our brother who has but just gone from our midst. Ora pro nobis!
We were but dreaming when we thought ourselves among the mountains and on the sea, and we were awoke by thy soft voice—oh! loved one of our soul—and looking into thy blue eyes—moist, not with tears, but with thine all-sensitive soul—we feel a calm come down upon us soothing, how gently and sweetly, our agitated thoughts. Many and many a tale could we tell thee of sorrow and peril on the seas, and our heart is even now full of one which would bring the tears into other eyes than thine—but no! you tell us we are all too agitated by our dream, and that another time will do—well, well! Sing us, then, one of thine own sweet songs—Melanie!—for is not thy voice like the warbler of our woods, he of the hundred notes, the silvery, the melting, the unrivalled? That was sweetly done—ever could we sit and listen to thee thus.
“Thy voice is like a fountain
Leaping up in sunshine bright,
And we never weary counting
Its clear droppings, lone and single,
Or when in one full gush they mingle,
Shooting in melodious light!”
That is Lowell’s—a noble soul is his, and all on fire with poetry. We tender to him, though we have never met in the flesh, our good right hand, joining his herewith in cordial fellowship, the hearts of both being in our eyes the while:—we tender him our hand—he far away in his student’s room at Boston and we here in old Philadelphia—and we tell sneering worldlings and critics who are born only to be damned, that, for one so young, Lowell has written grandly; that he is full, even to overflowing, of purity, enthusiasm, imagination, and love for all God’s creatures; and being this, why should not we—aye! and all honest men beside—grasp him cheerily by the hand, and if need be, stand to our arms in his defence?
But the clock has struck six, and we will walk to the door to see if the tempest still rages. What a glorious night! The moon is out, sailing high up in heaven, with a calm mystic majesty that fills the soul with untold peace. Far away on the horizon floats a misty veil—while here and there, in the sky, a cloud still lingers, its dark body seeming like velvet on an azure ground, and its edges turned up with silver. There are a thousand stars on the frosty snow; for every tiny crystal that shoots out into the moonshine glistens all diamond-like; and, as you walk, ten thousand new crystals open to the light, until the whole landscape seems alive with millions of gems. Hark! how the hard crust crackles under the tread. If you put your ear to the ground you will hear a multitude of almost inarticulate sounds as if the sharp moon-beams were splintering the snow—but it is only the shooting of myriads of crystals. There have been icicles forming all day from yonder twig, and now as we shake the tree, you may hear them tinkling, one by one, to the ground, with a clear silvery tone, like the ringing of a bell miles off among the hills. Early in the afternoon, the snow melted on the river, but towards nightfall the stream became clogged, and now the frost is “breathing a blue film” from shore to shore—and to-morrow the whole surface will be smooth as glass, and the steel of the skater will be ringing sharp along the ice. How keen was that gust!—you may hear its dying cadence moaning away in the distance, like the wail of a lost child in a forest. Hush! was that a whistle down in the wood?