They called me mad—they left me here,
To my burning thoughts, and the fiend's despair,
Never, ah! never to see again
Earth or sky, or sea or plain;
Never to hear soft Pity's sigh—
Never to gaze on mortal eye;
Doom'd through life, if life it be,
To helpless, hopeless misery;
Oh, if a single ray of light
Had pierced the gloom of this endless night;
If the cheerful tones of a single voice
Had made the depths of my heart rejoice;
If a single thing had loved me here,
I ne'er had crouch'd to these fiends' despair!
They come again!
They tear my brain!
They tremble and dart through my every vein!
Ho! could I burst this clanking chain,
Then might I spring
In the hellish ring,
And scatter them back to their den again!
***
They seize my heart!—they choke my breath!
Death?—death! ah, welcome death!
Savannah, (Geo.,) 1837. R. M. C.
[OLLAPODIANA.]
NUMBER XXII.
——As I was saying last month, beloved reader, that 'I am thine in promise,' or to that purport, I have anchored myself in my fauteuil, to the end that I may be thine in fulfilment. In our conversation about the Catskills, I omitted sundry pertinent matters, with the which, however, malgré the postponement, I shall not here afflict. Since that period, I have for the most part been pent i' the populous city, amid the wakeful noises by day thereof, and by night the calm security of the streets thereof. I affect the supernatural bawl of the watchman, as it rings up to my pillow; I love the serenade which the neighboring lover sings to his fair, and of which I get the good as well as herself; I like to see the straggling cloud go floating over the slumbering town at midnight, with the moon silvering its edge; or mayhap to note the sheen of a star greeting the vision over a chimney-pot. All these have charms for my eye and ear; I seem to see holy sights and shapes in the firmament; the winds come and go on their circuits, unknowing how many brows they fan; and at times they hush a whole metropolis to silence, insomuch that its wide boundary scarce produces so much noise 'as doth a chestnut in a farmer's fire.'
By-the-by, when the sun begins to set at right descensions, and make his winter arches, I always think of the roaring fires in the domicil of the rural husbandman, with feelings akin to envy. Ye who toast your heels by anthracite; who survey the meagre 'blue blazes' of Liverpool coal, and whose nostrils take in the dry odor thereof, being reminded thereby of those ever-burning brimstone beds, where Apollyon keeps his court, and Judas has his residence; ye, I say, who have a life-long intimacy with these sorts of fuel, can have but small conception of a winter's fire in the country. Far round doth it illumine the apartment where it rages; intolerable is proximity thereunto; and its 'circle of admirers' is always large, because they cannot come a-nigh. A pleasant disdain is felt for the snow which whirls on whistling winds against the pane; the herds are huddled in their cotes secure; and the storm has permission to mumble its belly full, and spit snow at its pleasure. Hugeous reminiscences of delight come over my spirit, in this connexion; post-school hours; the steaming bowl of flip, or those orthographical convocations, where buxom maidens exulted in their secret heart, as tall words were vociferously mounted, in correct emission, by greenhorn swain. Sleigh-rides likewise; amatory pressures, under skin of buffalo or bison; long processions through wintry villages, whose tall smokes rose from every chimney; pillars of blue, standing upright in the air, like columns of sapphire. Cider, with its acidity of remembrance; apples, that melted on the tongue, as they descended toward the diaphragm; landscapes of snow; and slides down hill!—not forgetting those skating achievements, which for the time being fill the mind with such pride, that one scarcely wishes to reach heaven at last, if that amusement be interdicted among the just made perfect! All these circumstances and events, with curious confusion, hang in a nucleus about my memories of a rural hearth; 'but these I passen by, with nameless numbers moe.' Shakspeare had a good notion of the comforts to which I refer. He puts a lovely sentiment into the mouth of King Richard II., when he causes him to utter to the royal lady this tender language:
'Good sometime queen, prepare thee hence for France:
Think I am dead; and that from me thou tak'st,
As from my death-bed, my last living leave.
In winter's tedious nights, sit by the fire
With good old folks; and let them tell thee tales
Of woful ages, long ago betid;
And ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief,
Tell thou the lamentable fall of me!'