Pain brings us more than pleasure;
Tears comfort more than wine;
Grief's hands are full of treasure,
And sorrow is divine.
The nightingale that's making
Night happy with his strain,
His little heart is breaking:
He sings to still its pain.
Better than laughing folly,
Gay songs and wassail ale,
Thy tuneful melancholy,
O poet nightingale!
I have no ear for gladness
When thou with song dost make
Such rapture out of sadness—
Such transport of heart-break.
Charles Quiet.
THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE.
BY GEORGE MACDONALD, AUTHOR OF "MALCOLM."
CHAPTER LXVIII.
THE CREW OF THE BONNIE ANNIE.
Having caught as many fish as he wanted, Malcolm rowed to the other side of the Scaurnose. There he landed, and left the dinghy in the shelter of the rocks—the fish covered with long, broad-leaved tangles—climbed the steep cliff and sought Blue Peter. The brown village was quiet as a churchyard, although the sun was now growing hot. Of the men, some were not yet returned from the night's fishing, and some were asleep in their beds after it: not a chimney smoked. But Malcolm seemed to have in his own single being life and joy enough for a world: such an intense consciousness of bliss burned within him that in the sightless, motionless village he seemed to himself to stand like an altar blazing in the midst of desert Carnac. But he was not the only one awake: on the threshold of Peter's cottage sat his little Phemy, trying to polish a bit of serpentine marble upon the doorstep with the help of water, which stood by her side in a broken tea-cup. She lifted her sweet gray eyes and smiled him a welcome.
"Are ye up a'ready, Phemy?" he said.
"I haena been doon yet," she answered, "My mither was oot last nicht wi' the boat, an' Auntie Jinse was wi' the bairn, an' sae I cud du as I likit."