BY CAROLINE F. ORNE.
Like a cloud of the summer sunset
Gleaming across the blue,
Like a star of the golden twilight
Through the misty evening dew,
Like a strain of heavenly music
Breathed mournfully and low,
Charming the heart to sadness
By its bewildering flow—
Thou camest to my presence
In the far off long-ago.
Thou camest for a moment,
Then fleeted swift away,
As the rosy cloud of sunset
Fades at the close of day,
As the beaming star of twilight
Withdraws its golden ray.
Thou hast past from out my presence
As the songs low cadence dies,
Which the heart seeketh ever,
And evermore it flies.
Oh, in my weary journeying
Come to me yet once more,
While still my footsteps wander
On Time's uncertain shore.
Come to me, oh, sweet vision
Of what my soul has sought,
And with mine once more mingle
Thy far, sky-piercing thought.
Call I in vain thy spirit?
Do I seek thee all in vain?
Shall I never hear thy accent
In music fall again?
Why didst thou cross my pathway,
Oh soul so pure and true?
To fade like the clouds of sunset.
Like the star from the misty blue?
AUTUMNAL SCENERY.
WHAT IS NECESSARY TO THE ENJOYMENT OF NATURE'S BEAUTIES.
BY JOSEPH R. CHANDLER.
I am not of those who think that a true enjoyment of the beauties of nature, of natural scenery, and natural objects, generally, is a test of the purity of principle or the delicacy of sentiment, any more than I hold that a love of music is essential to domestic, social or political virtue. The cultivation of the eye and the ear—or the capabilities in those organs for cultivation—have more to do with all this than many seem to allow; and men and women of the purest principles, and the highest benevolence, may stand within the loveliest scenes that nature has ever spread out, or may listen to the most delicious music that art has ever prepared and performed, without comprehending the beauties or the excellence of either, or imagining that there is a moral test applied to them in these attractions. Nevertheless, there is an enjoyment in such scenes and such sounds, and those who are permitted to share therein have another life—or such an additional enjoyment added to that of ordinary minds, that they seem to live more, if not longer, in such pleasures than the common allotment; and none, I suspect, will doubt that the indulgence of a taste for natural beauties tends to soften the mind, soothe the passions, and thus elevate the feelings and aspirations.
If I have less of the power of appreciating and enjoying rural sights and rural sounds, if there is vouchsafed to me a limited capability of understanding and delighting in the beauties of the field and wood, of gathering pleasure from the outstretched loveliness of land and stream, still I thank God; and I speak with reverence, I thank God that I have some pleasure in these things; and more than that, I have a certain fixed delight in noticing the enjoyment which the better formed and higher cultivated mind derives from what a good Providence has poured out for the decoration of the earth. Humble as this faculty may be, which is partly exercised through intermediate objects, I find it useful to me, and, still better, I find that it ministers to other pleasures—to enjoy what is lovely is a high and a cultivated talent—the enjoyment of that loveliness with another kindred or more elevated mind is a yet higher attainment, as the performance of concerted music is more difficult and more gratifying than a simple solo.
Rarely within my recollection, and that is as inclusive as the remembrance of almost any around me, rarely has an autumn been more delightful than that which has just closed, in its clear, shining sunlight, or more attractive for its bland and healthful temperature. Not leisure—for that I have little to boast of, or to fear. Let my young readers mark that word, fear. I am not about to write a homily upon the uses of time and talents, but let me parenthetically note that the gift of enjoying leisure is so rare in the young, that a lack of constant occupation should be rather feared than courted. I do not speak of the danger of flagrant vice, but of a growing propensity to disregard portions of time, because only portions may be necessary to the discharge of admitted duties—the danger is imminent—but not to the young alone. In youth, love of action may employ the leisure to the promotion of vice in age, a tendency to inertness may induce the abuse of the leisure to total inaction. I can hardly imagine any object more unsightly than an idle old man—the dead trunk of a decayed tree, marring the landscape and injuring culture. But I must return. Not leisure, for I have little of that to boast of or fear; not leisure, but a love, a growing love for the partial solitude of the field, and something of an enjoyment of the elevating communion which it leaves, sent me more than once in November last strolling beyond the dusty roads and noisy turnpike in the vicinity of our city. It was, as I have reason to recollect, on the eighteenth of November, that I was wandering observantly, but in deep contemplation, across some of the fields that lie near the road leading from the city to Frankford. It was a lovely day, and every feeling of my heart was consonant to the scene. Ascending a little eminence, I obtained an extensive view. The forest trees had lost their rich garb of mottled beauties, and their denuded limbs stretched out with attenuated delicacy, seemed to streak the distant horizon with darkened lines. On my right the winding Delaware lay stretched out in glassy beauty, and near me, glittering in the sunlight beyond, were a thousand gossamer webs that had survived a recent storm. The fields were unusually green, for the season, as if the year were clothing itself, like an expiring prelate, with its richest habiliments, that its departure might leave the impress of that beauty which comes from its usefulness. I had yielded to the influences of the scene, had allowed my feeling to predominate, and was in the midst of an unwonted abstraction from all ordinary cares and relations, catching something of that state with which the more gifted are indulged, when I was startled by the sound of footsteps upon the carpet-like grass around me.