  “Et l’on revient toujours À ses premiers amours.” (This is the veriest nonsense ever penned. It chimes in with our story and we use it, but without endorsing it the least in the world.) That night Ada relieved her full heart, by talking over the events of the last six months to her mother, who listened, as only a mother can listen, till midnight. Mrs. Somers had scarcely kissed her daughter’s cheek and left the room, when Ada rose, unlocked one of her bureau drawers, and took thence an antiquated-looking rose-wood box. Under heaps of broken chains and old fashioned jewels lay a dingy little emerald ring; she seized upon it, and uttered an exclamation of pleasure, as she found that it fitted her third finger. She then replaced her box, kissed the ring, and murmured a “good-night” to the giver. Some weeks after, Ada, her diamond and her emerald, became, one and all, the property of James. Dr. B. was at the wedding, and Catharine related to him every circumstance connected with what she styled “Ada’s pompous The day after the wedding, Johnny Wilson was favored with a large consignment of wedding-cake; and in after life, when, through Ada’s means, he had risen in station and fortune, he was heard to declare that he had marked with a white stone the day on which he had been nearly crushed to death by the horses of Mrs. James Darrington Stanley. ——— BY HENRY B. HIRST. ——— There is a flower which haunts the banks of streams, That blossoms only in the path of Spring, Lovingly bending where the water gleams. Its fragrant perfumes fill the azure air, As, gazing always in the limpid brook, It seems to watch the Naiades braid their hair, Or sport, in naked beauty, caroling hymns Of siren sweetness to poetic Spring, While gliding, here and there, on milky limbs. All day it gazes: day by day its eye Searches the stainless crystal of the stream, Watching those faultless, fairy forms float by. Day after day it watches, hour on hour, Like love above the grave of that it loved— More like a mortal than a simple flower. When night descends—when darkness, like the grave’s, Falls on the stream—when moss and fern and grass Are lost in gloom—when naught is heard but waves That roll and ripple through the restless reeds, It droops its head and sinks in dreamless sleep, Couched, like a jewel, among worthless weeds. But sometimes, when the argent moon awakes The Naiades to midnight mirth and song, The blossom from its mournful slumber breaks, And breathes again its sweet, unanswered sighs; And all the stars that gild the glassy stream Shine on its heavy gloom like pitying eyes. Day after day it watches—hour on hour— Love weeping by the grave of what it loved, More like a mortal than a simple flower. And day by day it pales and wanes away Until it lays its form along the stream, And slowly sinks to silence and decay. ....... There is a legend told in classic Greece— A myth, so musical of the olden time, That none who hears can bid the singer “Peace!” Pausanius tells it! In its rhythmic flow We find how fair Narcissos, young in years, Passionate beyond his age, so long ago As when the gods came down and walked with men, Had a sweet sister—would that sister’s name Had ever have fallen within the poet’s ken— A young, twin sister, lovely as the light Of twilight in her own delicious land— Lovely as Venus was at birth of Night. Narcissos was as fair, albeit his mould Had all the attributes that mark his sex; And men were deities in the Age of Gold. The sympathies of twin existence ran So warm in both, their being grew like one, Though she was feeble woman; he, strong man. Hand locked in hand, they haunted hill and plain, Passing in peace their simple innocent lives, Both singing, so it seemed, the same refrain. Or angling in the stream, or through the groves Hunting the deer, they owned one only rule— One gentle rule, and that was rosy Love’s. One day—the air was swooning with the heat— The maiden sought the border of a stream And stood and laved and cooled her burning feet. The loving water breathed an amorous tale; The maiden gave herself to its embrace, And in its passionate clasp grew deathly pale. Narcissos was afar: he could not hear His sister’s piteous murmur of his name: Alas! that poor Narcissos was not near! He came at night, and on the river’s shore Beheld her garments; but her faultless form, Save in his maniac dreams, he saw no more! And from that night, and from that hour, he lay, Swelling the stream with little brooks of tears, Sighing his soul away day after day. And gazing in its depths in search of her, He saw his image, which was so like hers, He grew to be his own sad worshiper. The gods, who saw him act this piteous part, Wept at the sight, and made his pallid form A snowy blossom with a crimson heart. There, by the stream, it watches, hour on hour, Love mourning by the tomb of what it loved, More like a mortal than a simple flower.
|
| For there is no place of annihilation—but alive they mount up each into his own order of star, and take their appointed seat in the heavens. Georgics, Book IV. |
A PARTY OF PLEASURE.
———
BY F. E. F., AUTHOR OF “A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE,” ETC.
———
A gayer party, bent on pleasure, never left the wharf than that now on board the steamer bound for Albany. It consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Castleton, Ruth Meredith and her friend Grace Fanshaw, with young Meredith, who had been coaxed by his sister to join the party, so that “they need be no trouble to Mr. Castleton.” He had consented, though voting it rather a “bore.” The presence of the pretty, winning, graceful Mrs. Castleton reconciled him, however, somewhat to the scheme, which was declared perfect in all its prospects and details, except the one drawback to the young ladies, of having been obliged to ask Mary Randall to accompany them.
There was no particular reason why Mary Randall’s being invited should have been a point so much objected to, as she appeared a quiet, inoffensive girl, by Ruth and Grace, only that she was not intimate with either, and seemed in their apprehension to spoil the ease and interfere with the excessive intimacy and familiarity of the other two. Harry Meredith, too, was put out with the prospect of “another woman to be civil to;” but, as Ruth said, “there was no help for it. Papa makes a point of it, as he wants to pay the Randalls some attention, and so does it by making me civil to Mary. It’s not pleasant, Grace, but it is better than not going at all.”
“Oh, to be sure,” replied Grace, thinking in her heart that old Mr. Meredith was a very disagreeable old gentleman; but there being no help for that either, the matter was settled.
“I dare say Mrs. Castleton will take her a good deal off our hands,” said Ruth.
“What a charming woman she is,” replied Grace.
“Mrs. Castleton? Oh, she has always been my beau ideal,” answered Ruth. “She’s lovely both in mind and person. Her manners are so graceful, and her tones so sweet—there’s altogether a charm and witchery about her that’s indescribable.”
“I hope your beau ideal will be a little more punctual another time, Ruth,” said young Meredith smiling. “Faith! I thought we had lost our passage.”
“Well, but we did not,” replied his sister.
“No,” said Meredith. “More by luck though than good management.”
“What a fuss you men always make about punctuality,” returned Ruth.
“And well we may,” replied her brother. “It’s the soul of business—and traveling, too, you’ll find. So pray have your carpet-bag ready in the morning—or—”
“Now don’t begin with scolding, Harry, because Mrs. Castleton happened to be five minutes out of the way.”
“Well, well,” replied Meredith, “that’s enough. Now go and choose your state-rooms. One of you will have to share one with a stranger.”
The girls looked at each other; Ruth and Grace wanting to be together, and yet not liking to propose it to Mary Randall, who said at once, with the almost of good nature,
“Oh, I’ll take that one. It’s the same thing to me, you know,” in a manner that quite warmed their hearts to her.
Mrs. Castleton had the first choice, of course, and so all the arrangements were made accordingly. But just when they were retiring for the night, Mrs. Castleton came to Ruth and Grace’s state-room, with a servant following her, bag in hand, saying in her usual sweet manner and soft tones,
“Girls, you’ll have to change with me. There’s such a walking overhead that I can’t sleep below.”
And so bonnets and shawls and bags were hastily gathered up, and all tumbled in confusion in the condemned state-room below.
“She might have thought of that before,” said Ruth with some little vexation. “It was her own choice.”
“Yes, I think so,” replied Grace. “She could sleep here I suppose as well as we.”
“I should think so,” said Ruth. “However, it’s no matter.” And so, full of talk of pleasure, they chatted half the night, to the great annoyance of their next neighbor, (who chanced to be a crusty bachelor, who all but cursed “those girls,”) until they fell asleep, to continue their schemes in their dreams.
“Oh, Ruth, dear, just stop and fasten my dress,” said Mrs. Castleton, looking out from her state-room in the morning, as her young friend was passing in a great hurry. “I am so late,” she continued. “Do help me pack up these things.”
Ruth looked round in despair at the floor and chair, heaped with an indescribable mass of gowns, caps, shoes, and every thing that had been quickly out of the trunk, in Mrs. Castleton’s hasty search after a particular pair of manchettes, which were deemed indispensable to her toilette, because they just matched the pattern of her collar, and answered,
“I’ll come back, Mrs. Castleton, as soon as I have fastened my own trunk. I left my room in a hurry, to speak to Harry, who wanted me, and half my things are out yet.”
“Oh, you’ll have plenty of time,” urged Mrs. Castleton persuasively, but still pertinaciously, “and my husband will be so angry if I am late. He can’t scold you, you know,” she added, with one of those playful smiles Ruth usually thought so bewitching, but which she was in no mood to admire now, as she thought—“And
“Can I help you, Ruth? I am all ready.” So, to her inexpressible relief, she took Ruth’s place, saying in a low voice, “Go and finish your own packing—I’ll get Mrs. Castleton ready.”
“What a dear, good girl you are,” said Ruth, in a perfect effervescence of gratitude—for it is not always the magnitude of the favor, that produces the greatest amount of gratitude. “I declare, Grace,” she said afterward to Miss Fanshaw, “that Mary Randall is the nicest girl I know. I would rather have her with us than not.”
The hurry and skurry of getting ashore was hardly over, when it was discovered that Mrs. Castleton’s bag had been left in her state room, and to avoid an explosion of vexation on the part of the provoked husband, Harry Meredith had to start off poste haste to get it, having scarcely time to spring back to shore ere the boat pushed off for Troy, and thinking, as he did so, that if the lady had not been so pretty he would not have interfered to prevent her getting the scolding she so richly deserved. Heated and panting he returned in time for a cold cup of coffee, as the rest of the party had already breakfasted during his absence. But Mrs. Castleton said so gracefully, “I am afraid my carelessness has made you lose your breakfast, Mr. Meredith,” that he could not but answer,
“Oh, not at all. I have had a capital breakfast.”
The pleasant ride however to Utica restored the travelers to their usual high spirits. Mary Randall was discovered to have as keen a sense of enjoyment as any of them, with a fund of good temper that seemed inexhaustible.
“And so punctual,” as young Meredith said most approvingly. Her shawl was never missing, and her carpet-bag was always ready, (two great points, young ladies, if you would win a gentleman’s heart in traveling,) but graceful, charming Mrs. Castleton was forever forgetting something, and they never stopped any where that they did not hear Mr. Castleton’s voice saying, in a tone of mixed vexation and despair,
“Now, Julia, have you got your bag? and where is your shawl?” To which she generally answered
“Yes—no—is not this mine? No, dear, I believe I left it in the car—or perhaps its only in the carriage. Just call the driver back, wont you?”
“The stage starts at six in the morning for Trenton, ladies,” said Meredith at night as they parted. “So you must be bright and early. There’s no danger of your not being ready,” he said, turning to Mary Randall with a smile. “You are a capital traveler, I see.”
Mrs. Castleton did not look pleased. She thought the compliment to Mary was an implied reproof to herself—and she was not used to any thing but admiration, except, indeed, from her husband; but she seemed used to his scolding, for somehow she did not appear to mind, if indeed she heard it, which seemed doubtful. Meredith often thought him downright cross.
“How he does scold that pretty wife of his,” he said to Ruth. “And how sweetly she bears it. I declare I can hardly keep from answering for her sometimes.”
“She does not seem to care for it though,” replied Ruth, who was beginning to be a little disenchanted of her beau ideal; “and she is provoking.”
“If she were not such a beauty, I suppose she would be,” he replied.
“Are you ready, Mrs. Castleton?” said Ruth, in her animated voice, at her door the next morning.
“Ready!” exclaimed Mrs. Castleton, who was standing before the glass, as she stroked her glossy hair. “Ready!”
“Yes,” said Ruth, looking aghast at the trunk which was open as usual with half its contents on the floor. “Yes, Mr. Castleton sent me up to say that the stage starts in ten minutes.”
“Oh dear! then we can’t go in this one,” she replied, quietly. “I can’t get ready in that time. We must take the next one going.”
“But no other goes to-day,” said Ruth, in despair.
“Then we must wait until to-morrow,” replied Mrs. Castleton, calmly. “I would just as leave stay here a day as not.”
But Ruth would not, nor Grace, nor any of them; and as Mrs. Castleton continued, “I’ve been to Trenton before—so I don’t care about staying there more than a day.”
Ruth thought she should have exploded. To be cut short of a day at Trenton, she and Grace, who had talked and dreamed of nothing else all summer. And Mary, too, who wanted to take sketches there—it was more than her patience, or rather impatience could bear; but she saw that the only thing to be done, was to get her ready herself—so she said with the energy of desperation.
“Dress yourself, and I’ll pack your trunk. You have plenty of time.” And so she turned to and rapidly folded dresses, and packed and locked the trunk, and then seized the carpet-bag, and stuffed every thing in it she came across in an incredibly short time; and ere Mrs. Castleton had calmly put her bonnet on, she came panting down stairs, dragging the bag after her, and loaded with shawls and cloaks, heated and out of breath. She was just in time to hear Mr. Castleton call out,
“All ready, ladies?” to which his wife answered in the sweetest tones of bright alacrity,
“Yes, all ready!” to his infinite satisfaction and approving surprise, for he answered,
“Ah, that’s right!” as he handed her in the carriage, and as poor Ruth jumped in after her, she exclaimed,
“Why Ruth, dear, how heated you look!”
Now if any thing is provoking, it is to be told when you are heated, that you look so. But Mrs. Castleton, feeling fresh and cool, seemed quite amused as well as surprised at her friend’s looking so flushed and flurried.
Two stylish young men, strangers, who were to be
Two delightful days were passed at the Falls. The stylish young strangers had made Harry Meredith’s acquaintance, and been by him introduced to the party, which they joined. So the girls were in ecstasies. They could have staid there willingly for a month; but their time was limited, as they wanted to be back in time for the ball at West Point; and the young men being, like themselves, bound for Niagara, they were somewhat reconciled at leaving Trenton, which was declared to be the most perfect spot under heaven. “They could live there forever,” etc.; and so the whole party, with its new made addition, returned to Utica again.
“Oh, my bouquet! I left it on the table in the drawing-room!” exclaimed Mrs. Castleton, the next morning, just as they were all seated in the cars. “Do, dear,” turning to her husband, “go and get it for me.”
“It’s of no consequence, Julia,” he replied; “and I have not time.”
“Oh yes, indeed it is,” she urged. “You have plenty of time. Tell the conductor to wait a minute for you.”
“Nonsense, Julia,” he replied, impatiently. “Do you suppose he’d stop if I were to ask him—and I certainly would not ask him if he would.”
But she looked so imploringly, and at the same time so very pretty, that Mr. Sutherland (one of the strangers before mentioned) thought her husband a brute to refuse her, and darted out of the cars, which the next minute were starting off.
“There! Sutherland has lost his place!” some one exclaimed, as the bouquet was thrown in at the window, and fell into Mrs. Castleton’s lap; but a gentleman, putting his head out of the window, said, “No! there he is, jumping on the outside!” “Oh, how dangerous!” cried out two or three voices at once. And one old gentleman drew in his gray head with the quiet remark, “Young men will do these mad things. I only wonder more accidents don’t happen;” and in another minute, Mr. Sutherland, animated and laughing, was making his way through the centre of the car, and as he took his seat, said,
“I was afraid you would lose your flowers, Mrs. Castleton. I quite gave you all up as I saw the cars starting.”
“I am very much indebted to you,” she said, gracefully. “I am so fond of flowers. Their fragrance is really refreshing,” she said, as she raised the large bouquet to her delicate face, not less fair and soft than the beautiful flowers that almost hid it.
The young man looked at her most admiringly, as if it was a beautiful and refined taste, just suited to so lovely and graceful a creature.
The little party passed so pleasant a day together, and the young men were so captivated with Mrs. Castleton’s grace and beauty, and the high spirits and general good looks of the three girls, that it was proposed that they should join parties, and take an “extra” together for the next stage of their journey.
This suited the ladies extremely well, who were not less (only not so openly) charmed with the gentlemen. And the next day a later hour was named for their starting than usual, as the conveyance was their own.
“Is Mrs. Castleton ready?” said Harry Meredith, in a tone of suppressed impatience, the next morning. “It’s most nine o’clock, and we were to have been off at eight.”
“Oh, no!” replied Ruth, in a low voice. “I doubt whether we get off to-day, Harry. She says there’s no hurry as we have an “extra.” I do think with all her pretty ways, she is the most provoking woman!”
“Where is Mary Randall?” he asked.
“Helping her,” continued his sister. “I came away in perfect vexation and despair. As to her husband’s being cross to her, I think he’s a perfect marvel of patience.”
“I declare I am beginning to think so too,” said Harry. “Well, to-morrow we take the boat on the lake, thank fortune! so there’ll be no more running back for flowers and bags.”
In spite of little drawbacks, however, the pretence of the two young strangers, who kept Mrs. Castleton in high good-humor, made the two days stage-traveling very delightful; and now they had reached the boat, and were on the broad and beautiful Ontario.
“Do, Ruth, put on your cloak,” said Meredith, to his sister. “The morning air is very keen.”
“I can’t find it, Harry,” she replied.
“How could you mislay it!” he said, quite provoked. “You will catch your death of cold.” And a great stir was made for the missing cloak, everybody getting up and looking under chairs and behind benches; and poor Ruth, quite disconcerted at discomposing so many persons, was saying all the time, “Oh, it’s no matter, Harry.” But he only replied, “It is matter, Ruth. You’ll be ill.” When the general move having reached Mrs. Castleton, she said,
“What are you looking for, Mr. Meredith?”
“Ruth’s cloak,” he answered.
“Oh, I have it on,” she calmly replied. “I could not find mine. It’s somewhere in the lady’s cabin,” she continued, looking up at Ruth, without, however, making any offer of returning Ruth her own.
“Go and get it, Ruth,” said her brother.
She went, and in a few minutes returned without the cloak; and in answer to Mr. Meredith’s remonstrance, said, in a low voice,
“I cannot help it, Harry; the air is so bad down there that I could not stand it; and there’s such a confusion, it’s impossible to find any thing.”
“I hope you have not taken cold. You look quite blue,” and she continued to gaze at her, with an air of surprise, at anybody’s being so cold and looking so ugly.
“Sutherland,” said his friend a few days after, “your pretty Mrs. Castleton’s a bore, with her sweet manner and dilatory selfishness. I mean to cut the party and travel off for Niagara by myself. I don’t ask you, however, to do so too, if you prefer remaining with them.”
“No,” replied Sutherland, “I believe you are right. Pretty women are very charming at home, and in ball-rooms, but it is, as you say, a bore to be tied to them in traveling.”
“The girls are nice girls,” pursued the other. “If it were not for this spoilt beauty, I would rather remain with them than not.” So it was determined between them that they should go on in the night train, and so free themselves from the rest of the party, who they would meet again at Niagara.
“How strange,” said Mrs. Castleton, as her husband conveyed to her the adieux of the young men, who affected a sudden haste that must carry them immediately on. “I declare it’s quite rude,” she continued, somewhat offended.
“I am not at all surprised,” said Harry Meredith, quietly.
“It’s very provoking,” said Ruth, who knew what her brother meant, and all the ladies were for the first time quite sulky. Mrs. Castleton, for she missed the admiration of the two handsome, fashionable, agreeable young men; Ruth, because she was angry with Mrs. Castleton as being the cause of their being driven away, and Grace, not less put out than the other two at losing the society of their agreeable traveling companions—all but Mary, were in thorough bad humor.
“You seem to bear the loss of our new friends very philosophically,” said Harry Meredith.
“They were very pleasant additions to our party,” she replied, good-humoredly, “but as we started without them, and without any idea or knowledge of them, I do not think they are at all essential to our having quite as agreeable a journey as we anticipated.”
“What a sweet tempered creature she is,” said Harry, pleased with the calmness with which she regarded the loss of the two heroes.
“Oh,” replied Ruth, “it is easy enough for her to keep her temper. You have not left the party.”
“I,” he ejaculated, looking amazed.
“Yes,” pursued his sister. “You are almost as much of a stranger to her, and quite as agreeable as either of the other two.”
“Thank you,” said he, laughing. “Then how comes it that you and Grace do not value me as highly?”
“You are my brother,” she replied, “and Grace has known you since she was a baby. There is no throwing the light of imagination round a man so circumstanced.”
Harry laughed, and he did not like Mary the less for his sister’s explanation of her good temper.
“Mrs. Castleton,” he said, “I’ve been to look at the rooms. There’s only one on the second story, and another in the third. I presume you’ll take the one on the second.”
“Oh, yes,” she replied, “I never mount more stairs than necessary.”
“So I presumed,” he replied; and presently he came back with a smiling expression in his eyes, that made his sister ask him once or twice what was the matter, to which he replied each time, “nothing.”
But she knew better. Something evidently pleased him very much.
“It’s excessively cold,” said Mrs. Castleton, as she drew herself up in her shawl. “I wish we had a little fire.”
“You had better go up stairs as soon as your room is ready,” said her husband. And presently, when the housekeeper came to show them to their rooms, shivering and blue, she bid the girls good night.
“Let me carry your shawls for you,” said Harry, as he gathered up his sister’s and friends’ “things,” and following them up, he heard one of the girls exclaim, as she opened the door, “Oh, charming! How comfortable!” It was a large room, and a nice wood-fire was blazing most cheerfully.
“Now, Ruth,” he said, “you see what amused me.”
“How?” she asked.
“Why, Mrs. Castleton chose, as usual, what she supposed was the best; but her room has no fire-place in it; and I really enjoyed her selfishness being for once at fault.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” said Mary, “for she seemed really suffering. I did not know it. If I had—”
“Yes,” said Harry, with an admiring look, “I thought you would offer to change with her if you knew it, so I said nothing about it.”
“You were right, Harry; I am glad of it,” said Ruth. “There’s no reason why we should not be comfortable too. So good-night to you.” And as she shut the door, she continued with, “A very bright idea of Harry’s; and now girls don’t let us go to bed this hour yet. Let us enjoy this fire.” And they did enjoy it, abusing Mrs. Castleton.
It was quite amusing to hear them. One would scarcely think she could be the same person they started with. But young girls are always equally enthusiastic in either liking or disliking.
Mrs. Castleton had been an angel because she was pretty and graceful. She was now, if not quite a devil, at least, detestable, because she was discovered to be spoilt. And “that cross Mr. Castleton,” was now “poor Mr. Castleton.” So much for moods and tenses. Traveling is a magic glass.
A few days at Niagara, in equal ecstasies, when Mr. Sutherland and his agreeable friend were met again. Then they turned their faces once more toward home. The gentlemen pursuing their original plan, separated
At Albany, however, Mrs. Castleton said to her husband:
“We’ll take the night boat, my dear, I am tired.”
“But you want to stop at West Point, don’t you?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” she replied, “I am tired, and want to get home.”
“Not stop at West Point!” exclaimed the three girls in a breath.
“No,” she replied. “Those balls are stupid things.”
“But, dear Mrs. Castleton,” said Grace, and “Oh, Mrs. Castleton do,” said Ruth, in every accent of imploring urgency.
But Mrs. Castleton, though very gentle, could be very firm, when her own wishes were concerned, and as she did not care to meet Mr. Sutherland again, who had quite devoted himself to Grace the last few days at Niagara, and as his friend had been indifferent from the first, she saw no reason why she should stop there. As for the ball, she quite laughed at the girls for even wanting to go at all.
“It’s useless to say any thing more, Ruth,” said Harry, in a loud tone. “She’s a selfish creature—that’s the end of it.”
But that was not the “end of it,” for the three girls did not meet for a month that at least half an hour was not devoted to a lively abuse of their once beau ideal, “that lovely Mrs. Castleton.” And we are mistaken if Mary Randall, to whose joining the party Harry Meredith had so warmly objected, because he’d have to be civil to her, has not made a conquest of the same Mr. Harry Meredith. And there is every appearance of Trenton reminiscences leading to something with Grace and Mr. Sutherland; and so I rather think there’ll be two weddings next winter, at which Ruth will be bridemaid.
———
BY WILLIAM M. BRIGGS.
———
There was a maiden once—so fair—
So shy in look—yet so beguiling—
With wealth of changeful golden hair,
And eyes so bright, yet ever smiling;
That fain thought I—so fair was she—
It should be writ in Poesie!
Her name was like a poet’s dream—
And that sweet name, they call it Mary—
A word of gentle, sunny sheen—
Though names may, like young maidens, vary—
And May, with woman’s wayward will,
Had sometimes gleams of April still!
But often on some dreamy day,
Out where the old green woods were swaying,
When the blue skies stretched far away,
And the glad sunshine’s every ray
Seemed with each bud and floweret playing,
And misty air and sunny beams
Grew tempting-full of foolish dreams;
Then would she sit in quiet mood,
With thoughtful face and gentle tone;
I dreamed the spirit of the wood
Had come to tryst with me alone,
And speak such earnest words as tell
That human hearts may love too well:
Such exquisite, sweet thoughts as rise
From souls that artless passion moves,
And mounting upward through the eyes
Betray the heart that loves,
And whisper, ere the lips can part,
That love lies brooding at the heart.
That love—young love—oh! who can tell
How much there is of mad’ning pain
For one who loves too deep—too well
To be beloved so back again—
To be so loved, yet doomed to see
All that he loves droop hopelessly!
Ah me! I look upon the past,
As o’er some book of faded flowers,
Where Joys, now crushed, too sweet to last,
Remind me of those vanished hours;
And every trace those leaves impart
Is pressed more deeply on my heart.
The touch, the tone, the melting look,
The half-reclining, gentle pressure,
The keeping time with hand and foot
To some love ditty’s murmured measure
While with her fingers, soft and fair,
She smoothed the tangles of my hair;
And how through long and silent ways
We wandered in the sunny weather,
As light of heart and full of lays
As any wanton bird in feather—
And every word that she would say
Seems ringing through my soul to-day.
There was a maiden once—so fair—
That I shall ne’er forget it—never—
Though time may silver o’er my hair,
And I may seem as calm as ever—
For dreams, whose guidance ne’er can vary,
Are trystings still for me and Mary.
———
By REV. J. N. DANFORTH.
———
In contemplating the varieties of human kind, nothing is more obvious than that some men are endowed with genius for the production of one set of results, while others are invested with the same power with a manifest adaptation to different results. So the interior texture of that impalpable thing we call genius, is diverse in various subjects. In some we find the development of extraordinary energies, in others the elaboration of the gentler traits of character. Some are eminently capable of devising, others of executing. One man is distinguished for the ardor of his imagination, another for the soundness of his judgment. A bold, daring temper of mind is indigenous to one class; a gentle, timid disposition characterizes another. The spirit of sarcasm, of irony, of invective, riots in the mental activities of some men, while that of tenderness, benevolence, and habitual charitableness constitutes the repose of others. Of the former, Byron might be mentioned as an example; of the latter, Cowper. They were both men of acknowledged genius. The world has adjudicated on their respective titles to the inheritance of fame. But how different the men!
It may be true that the qualities of Byron were more fitted to excite the stronger and sterner, as they certainly were to awaken the severer and more rampant feelings of our nature, while those of Cowper tend to elicit whatever in man is tender, reverent, social and sympathetic. He is eminently the poet of the home and the heart, and even when contending with the foul and formidable spirit of melancholy, he strives to make others cheerful and happy.
In one of his letters he says that his own experience contradicts the philosophical axiom that nothing can communicate what it has not in itself, for that he wrote certain poems “to amuse a mind oppressed with melancholy,” and that by so doing he has “comforted others, at the same time that they administer to me no consolation.” One can hardly believe that from a mind over which hung such clouds and darkness there could issue such a piece as “John Gilpin,” or the “Report of an adjudged case, not to be found in any of the books.” Yet the mind of man is wondrous! What powerful efforts will it not make to rise into a region, where it can behold the cheerful light of day, and breathe the healthful air of freedom. Cowper long looked upon himself as a doomed reprobate, a hopeless exile from the favor of God—but faith triumphed at last. That exploded absurdity—that a powerful genius must necessarily reside in a slender and morbid frame—seems long to have possessed even intelligent minds. Education is coming to be considered as properly embracing our whole physical, intellectual, and moral being, and the time, we hope, is at hand, when it will be no reproach to carry about a robust mind in a robust body. Indeed we have among the intellectual magnates of the land, men of massive fames and ample physical development. Look at the stalwort line of Secretaries of State for some years past!
But a poet must be a man of more ethereal mould. Why so? Behold Sir Walter Scott, that man of regal imagination, who breathed the spirit of poetry into the body of his romance, and transfused romance into his poetry, while with dramatic energy and verisimilitude he summons before us, on the stage he has erected, the stirring scenes and characters of other days, as with the wand of an enchanter. What an athletic form ministered to the commands of his kingly mind, for it was he who loved to say, “My mind to me a kingdom is.” And Johnson, the critic, moralist, essayist, lexicographer, poet—yes, POET, for in his great mind the elements of the sublime and beautiful lay in all their wondrous nativity; Johnson was a man of giant physical strength, of an apparent animalism too awkward to admit of refinement in this world. Burns, too, was a man of massive mould, yet how exquisitely poetical. The philosophy of the union of soul and body is as yet little understood. We want healthy men to conduct the affairs of the world, as well as to serve in the Court of the Muses and the Graces. What injuries have States sustained; what interruptions of the peace of the world have been caused by a fit of the gout, of dyspepsy, of morbid melancholy, of base intemperance, or by some paroxysm of passion engendered by the humors of an unhealthy body. The very Union of the States may be endangered by these causes.
Had Cowper been free from those distressing maladies, from the depredations of that “fierce banditti,” as he calls them,
“That with a black, infernal train,
Make cruel inroads in the brain,”
how much happier had he been, how much more might he have accomplished. Pity, not censure; charity, not severity, are due to the interesting sufferer, who had too much timidity to read aloud before his superiors, thereby losing a good office. That, however, was a trifle, compared with the deep fountain of melancholy that existed within him, whose waters no kind angel descending from heaven healed by casting in some celestial gift. Religion itself became tinged with the dark coloring of the disease it would relieve. To most pilgrims of Time the “New Year” is a cheerful season. “Happy” wishes then fly in clusters all around the domestic and the social circles. How does Cowper speak of the old year? “I looked back upon all the passages and occurrences of it as a traveler looks back upon a wilderness, through which he has passed with weariness and sorrow of heart, reaping no other fruit of his labor than the poor consolation, that, dreary as the desert was, he left it all behind him.” While indulging a similar strain of lugubriousness, his thoughts
We do not recollect that any of the biographers of Cowper have given sufficient weight, if they have even adverted to one very natural cause of depression, the destitution of any regular profession or employment for nearly seventy years, with no wife to love, no children to provide for. It were enough to wither even a joyous temperament. “The color of our whole life,” said Cowper, “is generally such as the first three or four years in which we are our own masters make it. Then it is that we may be said to shape our own destiny, and to treasure up for ourselves a series of future successes or disappointments.” Those years were spent in idleness, to the influence of which was added the effect of his mortifying failure as clerk to the House of Lords, thus throwing him upon any chance resources for the supply of the various wants of life. The final result was the providential overruling of the whole to the production of a consummate poet. “Had I employed my time as wisely as you,” he writes to his friend, Mr. Rose, “in a situation very similar to yours, I had never been a poet perhaps, but I might by this time have acquired a character of more importance in society.”
He had reached fifty years before Fame had dropped a single wreath upon his brow, or he had even seriously courted the poetic Muse. “Dejection of spirits, which I suppose may have prevented many a man from becoming an author, made me one. I find constant employment necessary, and therefore take care to be constantly employed.” He seems to have thought that the season of winter was the most congenial to the operations of his mind and the productions of his fancy. “The season of the year which generally pinches off the flowers of poetry, unfolds mine, such as they are, and crowns me with a winter garland. In this respect, therefore, I and my contemporary bards are by no means upon a par. They write when the delightful influence of fine weather, fine prospects, and a brisk motion of the animal spirits make poetry almost the language of nature; and I, when icicles depend from all the leaves of the Parnassian laurel, and when a reasonable man would as little expect to succeed in verse, as to hear a blackbird whistle.” The very spirit of modesty breathing through language deeply poetical! It is the province of genius, in its imaginative forms, to render tributary to its object the whole circle of the seasons, and to expound the thousand occult meanings of nature in her depths and her varieties, as well as to exhibit the more obvious images of beauty, of which she furnishes in such profusion the striking originals. Hear the voice of his Muse apostrophizing even stern Winter:
“I crown thee king of intimate delights,
Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness!”
Bachelor as he was, he sought his chief happiness in the interior sanctities of domestic life. There his gentle spirit was nourished with the aliment drawn from the purest sources of friendship and virtue, and thence his imagination took its flights, not bold, but beautiful, not ascending to the lofty height of Milton’s “great argument,” but holding its graceful way through that middle region of thought, and fancy, and feeling, familiar to the mass of minds in any measure susceptible to the beauties of poetry. The critics of half a century ago, while they hesitated to admit Cowper to that high rank among the great poets, which has been adjudged him by the verdict of posterity, confessed that his works contained many traits of strong and original genius, and a richness of idiomatic phraseology seldom equalled in the English language. Readers of poetry had become so accustomed to the refined diction and polished versification of his predecessors—Addison, Pope, Gray, and Prior—that they were slow to welcome a new aspirant for the bays, who came with a free, unfettered, and even somewhat careless air to claim their homage. He might gather a few humble flowers along the sides of Parnassus, but to think of reaping near its summit was the height of presumption. Yet which of those poets has now so many readers as Cowper? Goldsmith may better compare with him for permanence and extent of interest, so eminently natural is he; but what shall be said of Dryden, earlier, it is true, than the others, but one who had long been considered as having passed into the apotheosis of the Dii majores? He may have one reader to five hundred who luxuriate in Cowper’s parlor, alcove, and garden, with the Task in hand.
Then for purity, what a contrast between these last two. The Bard of Christianity, as he has been called, wrote no line, which, “dying he would wish to blot.” To Cowper the sentiment is more impressively applicable by the suffrage of the public mind, than Thomson, to whom it is applied by Lord Lyttleton—and deservedly so. They both communed with Nature, the one with her minute lights and shades, the other with her grander forms and more striking developments. The imagination of Cowper, like the microscopic glass, detected the shape and tint of the very petal of a flower. That of Thomson ranged with the sweep of the telescope through fields of light, and distant spheres, radiant with beauty and vocal with harmony. Each fulfilled his mission with dignity, propriety, and devotion, causing us to pray O! si sic omnes! But the nineteenth century has produced so much mysticism, such an amount of nebulous metaphysics in poetry and prose, as to make some honest people doubt the lawfulness of their veneration for the standard poets, especially the more intelligible ones, or whether there is any such thing as standard poetry. Coleridge, indeed, is clear, solemn, and sublime, when he approaches nearest to Milton, as in his Sunrise Hymn; and Wordsworth is most natural, perspicuous, and impressive, when he most resembles Cowper; but
Cowper stands almost alone in having nothing to do with the passion of love, which has always figured at
“I never framed a wish, or formed a plan,
That flattered me with hopes of earthly bliss,
But there I laid the scene; there early strayed
My fancy, ere yet liberty of choice
Had found me, or the hope of being free.
My very dreams were rural; rural, too,
The first born efforts of my youthful muse.”
The regions of fiction he left others to explore; the artificial manners of a polished age; the martial deeds of heroic periods he relinquished to their admirers, and devoted himself to the socialities of domestic life, to the promotion of pure morals, and the elevation of public sentiment on a proper basis, and to a worthy standard. “He impresses us,” says Campbell, “with the idea of a being, whose fine spirit had been long enough in the mixed society of the world to be polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so soon as to retain an
Among those sentiments which have been incorporated into the thinking and speaking of men, may be found many of the conceptions of Cowper’s genius, especially as embodied in the Task, near the conclusion of which he ascends to so lofty a height, as to remind us of the sublimity of Milton. It is perfectly obvious, that before his muse took that flight, she had bathed her wing in the fountain of inspiration. The voice of the bard seems to echo that of the Hebrew prophet, as he stood upon the Mount of Vision, and beheld the unfolding glories of the latter day.
The satire of Cowper was at times as keen as his own sensibilities, yet blending itself with a gentle manner and a genial humor, it disarmed all suspicion of malignity in its composition, thus augmenting its moral power. Vice, folly, and even finery, felt the sharpness of his satire. In his themes, as in so many clear mirrors, we see reflected the multiplied images of the spirit of the man. Truth, Hope, Charity, Retirement, Ode to Peace, Human Frailty, the Rose, the Doves, the Glowworm, Lily, Nosegay, Epitaph on a Hare, such are the subjects that wakened in him congenial thought and feeling. The lines on his Mother’s Portrait are exquisitely tender and affecting, instinct with love, overflowing with affection, with that love which is never so intense as when softened by affliction, and intertwined with pensive recollections of the past. His pieces are not wrought with the perfection and coldness of artistic skill, like those of the sculptor, but flow from the imagination right through the channel of the heart, taking the most natural shape and costume of the moment and the occasion.
The great critic of the North, who sat so many years on the Bench of Literature before he occupied the Bench of Civil Justice, from which death has recently called him, thus pronounced his opinion of Cowper: “The great variety and truth of his descriptions; the sterling weight and sense of most of his observations, and, above all, the great appearance of facility with which every thing is executed, and the happy use he has so often made of the most ordinary language, all concur to stamp upon his poems the character of original genius, and remind us of the merits that have secured immortality to Shakspeare.”
Little need be added concerning his prose. It is known to have been eminently easy and natural. His letters especially are models. It is sufficient praise to say, that Robert Hall, that master of the art of composition, thus speaks of Cowper: “I have always considered his letters as the finest specimens of the epistolary style in our language. To an air of inimitable ease and negligence, they unite a high degree of correctness, such as could result only from the clearest intellect, combined with the most finished taste. I have scarcely found a single word which is capable of being exchanged for a better. Literary errors I can discern none. The selection of the words, and the structure of the periods are inimitable; they present as striking a contrast as can well be conceived to the turgid verbosity which passes at present for fine writing, and which bears a great resemblance to the degeneracy which marks the style of Ammianus Marcellinus, as compared to that of Cicero and Livy. A perpetual effort and struggle is made to supply the place of vigor; garish and dazzling colors are substituted for chaste ornament, and the hideous distortions of weakness for native strength. In my humble opinion, the study of Cowper’s prose may on this account be as useful in forming the taste of young people as his poetry.”
———
J. R. BARRICK.
———
How sweet to me the evening hour,
When Nature sinks to rest,
And like a warrior in his pride
The sun goes down the west.
As evening stars, like diamonds bright,
Come peeping through the sky,
Ah! what a thing of joy ’twould be
From earth to fade and die.
MY “LIDA.”
———
BY “L’INCONNUE.”
———
The spring-time is waking to beauty and bloom,
The storm-clouds are breaking, and bright through the gloom
The blue heaven flashes like gleams of thine eye,
Through the dark silken lashes, which deepen its dye,
’Tis a glance full of tenderness, blended with pride,
Like thine own azure eye-beam, my sweet sister Lide!
The rose-buds are sleeping—but odors around
Tell of hyacinths peeping from yon grassy mound;
And the peach-bloom is blushing like cloudlets at even,
When the sunset is flushing the calm summer heaven,
And I dream as its leaflets float down at my side
Of the rose-tinted cheek of my sweet sister Lide.
The south wind is blowing, and up from the wood,
Where the streamlet is flowing, in charmed solitude,
Swells in low, liquid numbers the waterfall’s song,
As its chanting wave slumbers, or dashes along;
And the clear silvery tone of that murmuring tide
Seems the love-laden voice of my sweet sister Lide.
The soft stars are twinkling in beauty above,
And the dew-drops besprinkling their blossoms of love,
While a fresh, balmy breathing of spring-tide’s perfume
O’er my free soul is wreathing that delicate bloom,
Which glows o’er the beautiful feelings that glide
Through the pure angel-heart of my sweet sister Lide.
There’s a charm in the far gleam of waves on the sea,
And a spell in the star-beam that whispers of thee;
But as gay hours in fleeting new blushes of Spring
To this wild bosom’s beating in loveliness bring,
So its soft feelings deepen to glorious pride
When it dreams of its angel, my sweet sister Lide.
The world thinks us lonely—’tis true we’re alone,
Not as twin-spirits only—our hearts are but one—
With no parent, no brother, no glad, happy home,
We’re the world to each other, wherever we roam,
And my young life glides onward like spring’s sunny tide
When I dwell with “mine own one”—my “love of a Lide!”
Memphis, 1850.
———
BY GEO. D. PRENTICE.
———
It is a glorious eve—the stream
Without a murmur wanders by,
And on its breast, with softened beam,
The sleeping stars so sweetly lie,
’Twould seem as if the tempest’s plume
Had swept through woods of tropic bloom,
And scattered down their blossoms bright
To sleep upon the waves to-night.
And see—as hangs the moon aloft,
Her beams come gushing through the air
So mild, so beautifully soft,
That wood and stream seem stirred with prayer,
And the pure spirit, as it kneels
At Nature’s holy altar, feels
Religion’s self come floating by
In every beam that cleaves the sky.
There’s glory in each cloud and star,
There’s beauty in each wave and tree,
And gentle voices from afar
Are borne like angel-minstrelsy;
In such a spot, at such an hour,
My spirit feels a spell of power,
And all beneath, around above,
Seems earthly bliss and heavenly love.
Oh, Mary, idol of my life,
My heart’s young mate, my soul’s sweet bride,
Dear soother of my spirit’s strife,
I would that thou wert by my side,
And I would kneel on this green sod
In love to thee and praise to God,
And, gazing in thy gentle eyes,
Dream but of thee and Paradise.
I see thy name in yon blue sky,
In every sound thy name I hear,
All nature paints it to my eye
And breathes it in my listening ear;
I read it in the moon’s sweet beam,
The starlight prints it on the stream,
And wave and breeze and singing bird
Speak to my soul the blessÉd word.
THE QUEEN OF THE WOODS.
A LEGEND OF NEW ENGLAND.
———
BY MISS M. J. WINDLE.
———
(Concluded from page 334.)
