Mine are the night and morning,The pits of air, the gulf of space,The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,The innumerable days.
I hide in the blinding glory,I lurk in the pealing song,I rest on the pitch of the torrent,In death, new-born and strong.
No numbers have counted my tallies,No tribes my house can fill,I sit by the shining Fount of life,And pour the deluge still.
And ever by delicate powersGathering along the centuriesFrom race on race the fairest flowers,My wreath shall nothing miss.
And many a thousand summersMy apples ripened well,And light from meliorating starsWith firmer glory fell.
I wrote the past in charactersOf rock and fire the scroll,The building in the coral sea,The planting of the coal.
And thefts from satellites and ringsAnd broken stars I drew,And out of spent and aged thingsI formed the world anew.
What time the gods kept carnival,Tricked out in star and flower,And in cramp elf and saurian formsThey swathed their too much power.
Time and Thought were my surveyors,They laid their courses well,They boiled the sea, and baked the layersOf granite, marl, and shell.
But him—the man-child glorious,Where tarries he the while?The rainbow shines his harbinger,The sunset gleams his smile.
My boreal lights leap upward,Forthright my planets roll,And still the man-child is not born,The summit of the whole.
Must time and tide forever run?Will never my winds go sleep in the West?Will never my wheels, which whirl the sunAnd satellites, have rest?
Too much of donning and doffing,Too slow the rainbow fades;I weary of my robe of snow,My leaves, and my cascades.
I tire of globes and races,Too long the game is played;What, without him, is summer's pomp,Or winter's frozen shade?
I travail in pain for him,My creatures travail and wait;His couriers come by squadrons,He comes not to the gate.
Twice I have moulded an image,And thrice outstretched my hand,Made one of day, and one of night,And one of the salt-sea-sand.
I moulded kings and saviours,And bards o'er kings to rule;But fell the starry influence short,The cup was never full.
Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,And mix the bowl again,Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements,Heat, cold, dry, wet, and peace and pain
Let war and trade and creeds and songBlend, ripen race on race,—The sunburnt world a man shall breedOf all the zones and countless days.
No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,My oldest force is good as new,And the fresh rose on yonder thornGives back the bending heavens in dew.
An earnest plea was once entered in Maga's pages for the bodies of saints. Yet it is to be hoped that others not included in that respectable class may have physical needs also, and it is to be feared that they may not be above the necessity of a little of the same invigorating tonic. For there are not a few on this continent of ours, whom theAvvocata del Diavolowould certainly expect to enter anolo contendere, who stand in much need of a healthy animalism. That these sinners would be benefited by what Mr. Kingsley's critics call "muscular Christianity" cannot be denied. For they are not sinners beyond all hope of amendment, by any means; and their offences being rather against the laws and light of Nature than against any of the commands of the Decalogue, it is earnestly desired that they be brought within the pale of promise, even if they never reach the sacred fane of canonization.
Indeed, at the outset, let there be a protest entered on behalf of the sinner against this unnecessary pity of the saint. It is a part of that false halo with which enthusiastic admiration (reckless of gilding and ruinously prodigal of ochre) delights to endue the favored heads of thebeati. The saint himself countenances the folly, and meekly inclines his head (sideways) to the rays. It is a part of the capital of the calling to look interesting. The revered and reverend Charles Honeyman, in the hands of that acute manager, Mr. Sherrick, was bidden to sit in his pew at evening service andcough. A qualified consumption and a moderate bronchitis are no bad substitutes for eloquence, learning, and that indiscreet piety which is so careless of feminine favor as to bring into the pulpit a robust person and to the dinner-table a healthy appetite.
But the saint, if he have a reasonable sense of his pastoral duty, gets,malgré lui, a very fair share of that open-air medicine which is supposed to be the great lack of his profession. For if he be a clergyman in a rural parish of tolerable extent and with no great superfluity of wealth, he will not want for either air or exercise. The George Herbert so situated finds by no means his whole round of duty in the study. Old Mrs. Smith, sick and bedridden, lives a couple of miles from the parsonage; but the thoughtless creature actually expects a weekly visit and half-hour's reading of certain old familiar English literature, and will remind her pastor of it, if the expected day pass without his coming. Jones and his wife, who live in just the other direction, are wantonly apt, upon the insufficient plea of a long walk, to be missed from their wonted pew on a stormy Sunday, and must be looked up. Little Mary Gray has not been to Sunday-school. Cause suspected,—insufficient shoes. Bessy Bell, up the cross-road, quite over beyond Beman's Farms, is likewise delinquent, from the opposite want of a bonnet. Wilson, the cross-grained vestryman, has an idea, which never fails by Saturday night to break out into a positive rush of conviction, that the minister is neglecting his studies and "going to Rome," if he doesn't in the course of the week go to Wilson and carry him the Church papers and take a look at the Wilson prize-pigs. So good Mr. Herbert never fails, in due attestation of his "abhorrence of the Bishop of Rome and his detestable enormities," to foot it over the rocky hill and down across the rickety little bridge and past the poor-house farm, (where he stops on a little private business of his own, that perhaps makes a few old hearts and certainly one old coat-pocket the lighter,) and so on, a good piece, through the woods, to where Vestryman Wilson is bending over the hoe or swinging the axe, and thinking the while what an easy life the parson has of it.
Then Mr. Herbert gets the occasional tonic of a brisk walk over the hard-beaten snow, of a moonlight winter's night. A walk-only think of it!—over the crisp, crunching snow, to the distant outlying hamlet of Paton's Corner, where a few are gathered in the little school-house to hear him preach, and to give him the happy relief of a five-mile tramp home again.
It is really doubtful if dumb-bells, a gymnasium, and a pickerel-back racing-wherry would meet precisely the case of Mr. Herbert, however desirable for city saints who have plenty of spare sixpences for the omnibuses.
But the miserable sinner,—"where," as the shepherd exclaimed, to Mr. Weller's indignation, "is the miserable sinner?" Keeping school, keeping books, making books, standing behind counters when busy and on street-corners when disengaged, doing anything or everything but taking care of his precious body, and thereby giving his precious soul the chance of being in very bad company, and following the fate of poor Tray, and of the well-meaning stork in Dr. Aesop's fable. What shall he, or rather, what can he, do with his leisure? For leisure more or less almost every young man has,—and it is of young men, and especially of theveryyoung men, that we are benevolently writing. If he dwell in an inland town, the boat-club is hopeless,—and boat-clubs, though capital things for the young gentlemen of Harvard and Yale and Trinity, have also their drawbacks. One cannot always be ready to move in complete unison with a dozen fellow-mortals. Pendennis is never ready when the club are desirous to row; Newcome is perpetually anxious to tempt the wave when the wave tempts nobody else. The gymnasium gets to be a wearisome round of very mill-horse-like work, after the varieties of possible dislocation of all one's bones have been exhausted. Climbing ropes and poles with nothing but cobwebs at the top, and leaping horses with only tan at the bottom, grow monotonous after six months' steady dissipation thereat. Base-ball clubs do not always find desirable commons, and the municipal fathers of the towns have a prejudice against them in the streets. What shall youth, conscious of muscle and eager for fresh air, do? Even the gloves are not fancy-free, but are very apt to bring with them the slang of the ring and the beastly associations of professional pugilism. Youth looks up to its teachers; but if its teachers in the manly art be the Game-Chicken, the Pet, the Slasher, youth, in learning to respect the brute strength of such men, will hardly learn to respect itself.
But—and here lies the purport of this article—there is hardly a town or village of New England which has not within a quarter of a mile of its suburbs a patch of woodland or a strip of sandy beach. What is to hinder the sinner, if he repent him of the foul air and cramped posture of which he has been the victim, from a little pedestrianism? Do American men and boys ever walk? Drive, it is known they do; they can always get time for that. But to walk, certainly to scramble and to climb, must be added by Mr. Phillips, in the new editions of his exquisite and inexhaustible Lecture, to the catalogue of the "Lost Arts."
Yet Nature never grows outworn,—is unwearied in the bounty which she bestows on the seeker. I said a strip of sandy beach, just now. For that I beg leave to refer the reader to Mr. Kingsley's fascinating "Glaucus," and to the delightful papers which appeared in "Blackwood" a year or two ago. My business is with the woods and fields. Certainly some who read my pages will have leisure to climb a stone wall now and then, and for them the following sketches of New England wood-walks may serve to show how much enjoyment may be got with but little outlay of appliances. Of course the most tempting thing to seek is sport. But the gun and the fishing-rod are useless in many towns, from the disappearance of all worthy objects for their exercise. The birds are wild and shy; the trout have beencoculus-indicusedout of the mountain-brooks to supply metropolitan hotel-tables and Delmonican larders. Let us go after more attainable things. And first, being a true nemophilist, I protest against botany. A flower worth a five-mile walk and a wet foot is worthy of something better than dissection with the Linnaean classification, afterward adding insult to injury. The botanist is not a discoverer; he is only a pedant. He finds out nothing about the plant; he serves it as we might fancy a monster doing, who should take this number of the "Atlantic" and sit down, not to read it, not to inhale the delicate fragrance of its thought, but to count its articles, examine their titles, and, having compared them with the newspaper advertisement, sweep the whole contentedly into the dust-heap. To study the plant, to see how it gets its living, why it will grow on one side of a brook in profusion, and yet refuse to seek the other bank, is not his care. It is simply to see whether he can abuse its honest English or New-English simplicity by calling it by one set or another of barbarous Latin and Greek titles. Pray, my good Sir, does a man go to see the elephant only to call him a pachydermatous quadruped?
But we are wasting time and shall never get into the woods. In the winter wild you will hardly get far into them, except at the Christmas season for greenery. Gathering this by deputy is poor business. It is all very well, if you can do no better, to engage Mr. Brown to engage some one else to bring in the needed spruce, fir, and hemlock with which to obscure the fresco deformities of St. Boniface's; but it is far better to hunt for them yourself. There is something intensely delightful in the changes of the search; for it begins dull enough. You start in the drear December weather, with a gray sky and leaden clouds softly shaded in regular billows, like an India-ink ocean, overhead, and a somewhat muddy lane before you. Then to pick one's way across the plashy meadows, and, after a ticklish pass of jumping from one reedy tussock to another, to get once more upon the firm soil, while the grass, dry and crisp under your feet, gives a pleasantwhish, whish, as it does the duty of street-door-mat to your mud-beclogged sandals. Now for the stone wall. On the other side are thick set the thorny stalks of last summer's "high-bush" blackberries. A plunge and a scramble take you through in comparative safety; and stopping only to disengage your skirts from a too-fond bramble, you are in the woodland. Thick-strewn the dead leaves lie under foot. What music there is in the rustling murmur with which they greet your invading step! On, deeper and deeper into the wood,—now dodging under the green and snaky cat-briers, with their retractile thorns and vicious clinging grasp,—now dashing along the woodman's paths,—now struggling among the opposing underwood. At last a little sprig of feathery green catches the eye. It is a tuft of moss. No,—it is the running ground-pine; and clearing away, with both eager hands, leaves, sticks, moss, and all the fallenexuciaeof the summertime, you tear up long wreaths of that most graceful of evergreens. Then, in another quarter of the woodland, where the underbrush has been killed by the denser shade, there rise the exquisite fan-shaped plumes of the feather-pine, of deepest green, or brown-golden with the pencil of the frost;—for cross or star or thick festoon, there is nothing so beautiful. And again you are attracted into the thickets of laurel, and wage fierce war upon the sturdy and tenacious, yet brittle branches, till you are transformed into a walking jack-o'-the-green. The holly of the English Christmas, all-besprent with crimson drops, is hard to be found in New England, and you will have to thread the courses of the brooks to seek the swamp-loving black alder, which will furnish as brilliant a berry, but without the beautiful thorny leaf. Only in one patch of woodland do I know of the holly. In the southeastern corner of Massachusetts,—if you will take the trouble to follow up a railroad-track for a couple of miles and then plunge into the pine woods, you will come upon a few lonely, stunted scraps of it. The warmer airs which the Gulf Stream sends upon that coast have, it is said, something to do therewith. Of course, if I am wrong, the botanists will take vengeance upon me; but I can only say what has been said to me. We nemophilists are apt to be careless of solemn science and go upon all sorts of uncertain tradition.
But "Christmas comes but once a year." After chancel and nave have been duly adorned, and again disrobed against the coming sobrieties of Lent, there are other temptations to the woods. Before the snow has wholly vanished from the shelter of the wood-lots, the warm, hazy, wooing days of April come upon us. On such a day,—how well in this snow-season I remember it!—I have been lured out by the hope of the Mayflower, the delicateepigae repens, miscalled the trailing arbutus. Up the rocky hill-side, from whose top you catch glimpses of the far-off sparkling sea, with a blue haze of island ranges belting it,—up among the rocks, into warm, sheltered, sunny nooks, you go upon your quest. For the Mayflower, though found in almost every township in New England, has secret and unaccountable whims of its own,—will persist in blooming in just one spot, where you ought not to expect it, and in avoiding all likely places. Yet when you come to its traditionary habitat, it is not there. Round and round we pace, hoping and despairing, till a faint, most delicate odor, indescribably suggestive of woodland freshness, catches the roused sense; or else one silvery star peeps out from under an upturned birch-leaf. Then down on hands and knees; tear up brush to right and left, the brown skeletons of the withered foliage. The ground is white with stars. Some are touched with delicate pink, some creamy white,—but all breathing out the evanescent secret of the early spring. Such the children of Plymouth used to hang in garlands about the Pilgrim stone, in honor of the never-to-be-forgotten name of the New England Argo.
Later in the year come the beautiful blue violets, which are, I am sorry to say, scentless. Yet their little white cousin, which delights in all swampy places, is sometimes, in the first days of its appearing, more regardful of the prime duty of all flowers. I have gathered tufts of them which (botanists to the contrary notwithstanding) were wellnigh as odorous as if reared in the sunniest Warwickshire lane; but, as with a perfect specimen of the cast skin of a snake, such a boon is to be hoped for only once in a lifetime. With the violets, the beautiful blush-bells of the anemone come garlanded with their graceful leaves, plentifully enough. But did the rambler ever find the sensitive fern, which resented the intrusive hand with all Mimosa's coyness? I never did but once. I have wooed many a delicate frond of all varieties of fern since, but never one so conscious. Now, too, ere the trees come into leaf, is the time to seek the boxwood, called, I hope improperly, by the ominous name of the Southern dogwood. It is worth an afternoon's ramble to come upon one of those trees, standing in an open glade of the forest, a pyramid of white or cream-colored blossoms. Before a leaf is on the tree, it clothes itself in this lovely livery, and at a little distance seems like a snowy cloud rather than a shrub.
But with June comes the most exquisite of our New England wild-flowers, the arethusa, or swamp-pink, as it is often styled, to the great confusion of its delicate, high-born nature with the great, vulgar, flaunting azalea. When June comes,—when the clethra is heaped with its bee-beloved blossoms, and the grass is green and bright as never again in the year, then the arethusa is to be sought. A most unaccountable flower, of all shades, from pale pink to a deep purple, with a lovely shape that I can liken to nothing so nearly as thefleur-de-lison French escutcheons, it has a delicate, yet powerful, aromatic scent, as if it were an estray from the tropics. One specimen, snowy white, I have seen, and can tell you where to find another. You are to go out along the President's highway, due northward from a certain seaport of Massachusetts. Take the eastward turn at the little village which lies at the head of its harbor, and so north again by the old Friends' meeting-house, which looks in brown placidity away toward the distant shipping and the wicked steeple-houses, into the which so many of its lost lambs have been inveigled. Then be not tempted to strike off down yonder lane, to see the curious old farm-house, relic of Colony times, with its odd stone chimney, its projecting upper story and carved wooden pendants, and its shingles all pierced into decorative hearts and rounds. Its likeness is not in Barber's book,—no, nor its visible form, I believe, (it is many a year since I went that way,) on earth. It became a constellation long ago,—being translated to the stars. Keep on with good heart along the highway ridge, whence you can look down on the solemn, close-set, pine forest, which hides from you the windings of the river, and the beautiful lakelet, where the water-lilies float in the summer. Go on down the valley, past the old tavern,—relic of stage-coaching days, the square, three-story, deserted-looking tavern,—up again a couple of miles or so, till the river has dwindled to a brook and then to a marsh. Here is the place of our seeking. For under the shade of one of those huge granite rocks over which the thin soil of —— County is sprinkled, and which here and there have shaken off the superincumbent dust in indignation at the presumption of man in attempting to farm them,—under that rock—of course I shall not tell you which—you will find the White Arethusa, if you are born under a lucky star.
A little later, the crimson lady-slipper loves to spring up in pine clearings, around the base of the wood-piles which the cutters have stacked in the winter to season. To one born by the salt water there is an especial forest delight in the pine woods. For that best-loved sound of the ceaseless fall of plunging seas upon the beach comes to him there. Many a time I have walked from Harvard's leafy shades and cheerful halls out to the quiet of the Botanic Garden for the sake of hearing the wind in the pine tree-tops. Shut your eyes, and the inward vision sees once more the long line of sandy and shingly beaches, the green curving-up of the surges tipped with dazzling foam,—sees the motionless and blackened timbers of the wreck on the shore, the white wings dipping and turning along the combing tops of the waves racing in upon the sands,—sees the dry tufted beach-grass, and the wet, shining, compact slope down which slides swiftly the under-tow. And what a healthful exhilaration it is to breathe the balm-laden breath of the pine forest, and to tread the elastic slippery-soft carpet of the fallen spiny leaves! Here is the haunt of the lady-slipper, (cypripedium,) a shy, rare flower, like a little sack delicately veined, with a faint musky scent, and large-flapped leaves shading its flower.
In the hot July and August, the scarlet lobelia, the cardinal-flower, is to be found. Never was cardinal so robed. If Herbert's rose, in poetic hyperbole, with its "hue angry and brave, bids the rash gazer wipe his eye," certainly such a bed of lobelia as I once saw on the road to "Rollo's Camp" was anything but what the Scotch would call "a sight for sair een." For the space of a dozen or twenty yards grew a patch of absolutely nothing but lobelia. At a little distance it was like a scarlet carpet flung out by the roadside. If you desire to twine the threefold chord of color, as Mr. Ruskin calls it, I know of no lovelier foil for the lobelia than the white orchis, which haunts the same marshy spots. Those long spikes of feathery and balanced blossoms are the most absolute white of anything in Nature. They positively insist upon the very refinement of purity, as you look at them.
Did you ever see a pond-lily?—not the miserable draggled green-and-mud-colored buds which enterprising boys bring into the cars for sale; but the white water-lily, floating on the silent brooks, or far out in the safe depths of the mill-ponds. The "Autocrat" knows what pond-lilies are, having visited Prospero's Isle and seen the pink-tinged sisterhood of a certain mere that lies embosomed in its hills. But to know them, you must hunt for them,—tramp off to the distant stream, and then, not stand on the bank and wish and sigh, but off hose and shoon, and, careless of water-snake and snapping-turtle, wade in up to their virgin bower, and bear off the dripping, fragrant prize. None but the brave deserve—lady or lily.
But if the stream be too deep and wide, and the lilies are anchored far out among their broad pads,—a floral Venice, with the blue spikes and arrowy leaves of the pickerel-weed for campaniles and towers,—there are yet "lilies of the field" over which you may profitably meditate, remembering that Solomon Ben-David was not so arrayed. Two kinds there are,—one like the tiger-lily of the gardens, the petals curled back and showing the whole leopard-spotted corolla,—the other bell-shaped, rarer, and growing one only on a stalk. Both are to be found in open spaces, bush-grown fields, and airy, sunny spots. It is worth a hot and dusty June walk to get into one of those nooks. You can spend days and not exhaust the study which one little triangular bit of overgrown pasture affords,—spend them, not as a naturalist in close, patient study, because to such a one a square yard of moss is as exhaustless as the forests of Guiana to a Waterton, but as a nemophilist, taking simple delight in mere observation and individual discovery.
"Many haps fall in the fieldSeldom seen by watchful eyes."
And so all sorts of curious ways are discoverable by the mere wood-lounger. At one time your way is barred by the great portcullis of the strong threaded web of the field spider, who sits like a porter in king's livery of black and gold at his gate. Then you have a peep into the winding maelström-funnel of another of the spider family. Poe must have suffered metempsychosis into the body of a blue-bottle, when he wrote his "Descent into the Maelström"; for such an insect, hanging midway down that treacherous, sticky descent, and seeing Death creeping up from the bottom to grasp him, might have a clear idea of what was undergone by the fisherman of Lofoden.
Or, if one tire of the open meadows, and the sun be too hot, think of the laurel groves,—not now, as in the Christmas-time, white with snow, but white again with thousands on thousands of argent cups, loaded with blossoms, meeting over your head in arches of flowery tracery, and one solitary tree standing deep in the woods, like a frigate packed with her silver canvas lying out to windward of the fleet of merchantmen she is convoying. The cool laurel groves! Often as one sees that sight, it is always with a fresh shock of pleasure to the frame.
Then, when autumn comes and the leaves change, there is still endless variety for the little basket or botanical-case which swings lightly on your arm or hangs across your shoulder. Owen Jones never devised any ornaments for wall or niche one half so brilliant as the color of those leaves which a dexterous hand will readily group upon a sheet of white paper, where your eye may catch it, as, after achieving a successful sentence, you look up from your study-table. Speaking of leaves, who knows how large an oak-loaf will grow in this New England? I have just sat down after measuring one gathered in a bit of copse hard by the town of M——, a bit of copse which skirts a beautiful wild ravine, with a superb hemlock and pine grove creeping down its steep bank. I have just honestly measured my leaf, and it showsfourteeninches in length by a trifle ofnine and a halfin breadth.
In the same ravine I found—and in any patch of woodland you may do the like—a perfect treasury of mosses. A shallow tin box or a wooden bowl filled with these and duly watered will give a winter-garden to the smallest lodging. Sun and light are, as Mr. Toots says, of "no consequence" to the moss family. But if one be above such trifles as mosses, and with Young American loftiness aspire to full-grown trees, there is still plenty to do in the most ordinary woodlands. After a chapter of Mr. Ruskin upon Claude and Poussin and Turner, there is nothing like going to the original documents. In default of the National Gallery from London and the Pitti Palace from the other side of Arno, which cannot be summoned into court at a moment's notice, we can solve at least half the problem. Mr. Ruskin may or may not be right about the Claudes; but it is very easy to see if he be right as to the trees. And if we prove him right with his theory of branches and bark, we have a fair presumption that he has eyes to see the alleged falsehoods in him of Lorraine. Now here is a chance to do a little bit of Art-criticism quite unexpensively. Discontented young gentlemen murmur about the education of this people being too practical, unaesthetic, and all that, and sigh for the culture which a foreign land only can give. But a man who has no eye for Nature will hardly learn to love her at second-hand through the mediation of canvas and colors. I should like very much to be able to walk into a Turner Gallery once a week; but, for all that, I would not give up a Connecticut Valley sunset, such as last summer could be had for the looking at. Not Turner, even, could paint those level shadows, all interfused with trembling light, that filled the hollows of the hills across the river, and brought out their wavy contour, and showed the depth and distance of the valley opening miles away. Could he throw athwart the dark mirror of the sleeping water in the gorge, which led the imprisoned river stealthily to the sea, the gliding snows of the sails rosy-white that stole swan-like from behind the bluffs? Could he bring down the rainbow till its hither abutment rested on the centre of the stream in a transparent mist of driving rain, while its keystone was lost in the stooping cloud above? Art is good, as well as long; but time is also fleeting, and, not being millionnaires, with the luxury of a run across the Atlantic at command, let us make what we can out of what we have. It is very probable that architecture, too, is a sore subject to aspiring Young America, who turns discontentedly from the stucco and pine-plank tracery of the new cathedral of St. Aërian. But let Young America go out to the meadows, and discover for himself a group of young elms. There is one I know of, not unattainable by very moderate pedestrianism from the same seaport before alluded to, where a most exquisite arrangement of arches and tracery can be seen. Six or eight elms, their long bending boughs clothed with thick, clinging leafage, mingle their tops, forming a sort of vaulted roof, such as at the intersection of nave and transepts occurs in every Gothic church which has no central tower. More exquisite curves, better studies for a healthy-minded and original architect, could hardly be found. The interlacing branches are suggestive of tracery-patterns, not to be outdone even in the flamboyant windows of York and Rouen. There is no excuse for the squat, ugly, and stupid arches one sees in almost every attempt at pointed architecture, when the elm-tree springs by every riverside in the land.
But it is time to conclude our desultory rambles. It would be pleasant to me to recall many another of my old haunts, spots which, perhaps, were never called beautiful before now, and may not be again for many a day. For they all lie in a very tame and prosaic country, nearly level, the utmost elevation getting hardly a couple of hundred feet above tidewater mark; a country with less natural beauty than belongs to most New England towns,—bare, bleak, rocky, with stunted vegetation and ungenial soil. Yet within its limits there are brooks and marshes and copses and woodlands,—rocks over which the wild columbine hangs its fuchsia-like pendants, and dells where nestle the earliest and sweetest of the wood-flowerets.
And now to come back to the miserable sinner. As schoolboy, as bank-clerk, as teacher, as worker in many ways, he has unemployed leisure in the hours of daylight,—not so many as he should have, perhaps, but still many hours in the course of the month. Shall he go to the livery-stable, the bowling-alley, or the billiard-saloon? Not being a saint, of course he can plead no high-toned sense of need of physical culture, to warrant these indulgences. He goes because he likes it, gets enjoyment, exercise, rest for a mind tasked to the full with the day's work. This he ought to have; and if butting little ivory balls about or propelling big wooden ones will give it him, let him have it, if so be that it cannot be got otherwise. There is no contamination in the cue or the ten-pin; but there is in the habits and associations of the places where they are found. Let us not be maw-wormish about it, but tell the truth as it is. The quasi-gambling principle upon which all such places are conducted stimulates the love of hazard and makes way for the betting propensity to become full-blown. Of course, one can bet, if one have money; two lumps of sugar and a few flies will enable a man to lose the fortune of the Rothschilds, if he will. That is not the question. The billiard-saloons do educate men for the gambling-house, simply because they cannot go to them without either losing their money or winning their games. Beside that, the gaseous, dusty, confined, and tobacco-scented air of those places is not to be compared with our free, open, out-doors hills and meadows, for any hygienic purposes.
But, argument apart, there is a sad New England story, so often repeated as to be almost wearisome, were it not so sad. It is of the fresh, frank, honest-hearted boy, who may be seen behind many a bank-counter. At first, so active, trustworthy, and trusted,—yet with the constant temptation of unemployed time and energies demanding supply of action. Little by little these are supplied,—supplied by the billiard-table and its concomitants. It is the same story,—first, rumors, then equivocation, then exposure. Perhaps a petty sum is all; but, to the austere justice of banking, this is as bad, nay, worse than millions. And then a brief paragraph in the newspaper, and one more ruined young man, sulking beside the family-hearthstone, his father's shame, his mother's unextinguishable sorrow,—a candidate for crime, if he have power of mind and spirit to feel, or an imbecile dependant, if he have not.
Now preaching, whether lay or clerical, will not do much to prevent this, especially if it be pitched (as it commonly is) upon too high a key.Preventingmeans, or used to mean, when words had a meaning,getting beforehand with anything.And if young Homespun have from the outset something he likes better, he will not take to the ivory balls in pleasant weather, and in rainy weather will be apt to prefer even quite a stupid book to the board of green cloth. Therefore, boys, go,—and girls, too, for that matter,—on flower and moss hunts!—and ye, dear middle-aged people, send them, and go also upon the same! Find something that will tempt you into the woods,—something neither berries nor sassafras,—something which cannot be eaten or sold, but which will simply give you a sense and a love of beauty. These pages have been written to show that it lies at your very doors,—that nothing but stout boots, an old coat or jacket, and an observant eye, is needed. When you come to be saints, or even to be men, there will be plenty of active work to do, if so be that you will only do it. Then, in careful regard to your bodies, you may have hard-trotting (not fast-trotting) horses, pickerel-backed boats, and a billiard-room over the stable,—if your canonization seem to require it. But the saint, if he be true saint, needs no such care. He will get work enough, hard, physical work, if only in trotting up and down the steep stairs of tenant-houses, to keep his digestion in tolerable order. It is only your pseudo-saint, who cuddles himself for the pulpit and the platform, and keeps the safety-valve down with midnight sittings while "rosining up" the furnaces with strong coffee, that will come to grief by collapse of flues. If a man, whether sinner or saint, will run races for the honor of being the fastest boat in the river of popular favor, he must take the consequences.
But for the poor, benighted, heathen sinner, desiring enjoyment that shall be honest, cheap, satisfying, and attainable, I say, in the full faith of the creed of Nemophily,—Get into the woods! No matter what you expect to find there,—go and see what you can find. Don't walk for "constitutionals," without an object at the end or on the way. Keep your feet well shod and your eyes open. Bring home all the flowers and pretty wood-growths you can, and you may find that you have been entertaining angels unawares. Find out about them all you can yourself, and then (in spite of a previous tirade against botany, be it said) go to BIGELOW'S "PLANTS OF BOSTON" and learn more.
A fatiguing journey up six long, winding flights of smoothly-waxed stairs carried me to the door of the room I occupied in the Place ——. But no matter for the name of the Place; no one, I am confident, will visit Paris for the express purpose of satisfying himself that I am to be depended upon, and that there is a house of so many stones in the Place Maubert. Here I lived,au premier au dessous du soleil, in the enjoyment of no end of fresh air, especially in winter, and a brilliant prospect up and down the street and over the roofs of the houses across the way, which reached from the Pantheon on the one side, to the peaked roofs and factory-like chimneys of the Tuileries on the other, the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides occupying the centre of the picture. I was studying painting at that time,—learning to paint the much-admired landscapes and figure-pieces which I produce with so much ease now and dispose of with so little,—and, as a general thing, was busy, (though I had my fits of abstraction, like other men of genius, during which I did nothing but lie on my bed and smoke pipes over French novels, or join parties of pleasure into the country or within the barriers,) through the day, and often till late in the evening, in the atelier of one or another of the most renowned artists of the city.
At the head of the last flight of stairs in this house was a narrow passage-way in which I was always obliged to stop and recover my breath, after finishing the one hundred and thirty-nine steps that led to my paradise, before I could get my key into its lock; and into this passage-way opened two doors, one of which, of course, belonged to my room, and the other to some one's else. But who this some one else was I was unable to find out. Wasit—and how convenient a word isçain such a case!—male or female? I was persuaded it must be a woman, and as a woman I always used to think of her and speak of her, to myself,—and I thought and spoke of her often enough. Of course, I could have settled the question at once by knocking at her door and asking for a match, but I scorned resorting to such weak subterfuges. But how quiet she was! Occasionally, when, contrary to my usual custom, I took another nap after waking in the morning, instead of going out for exercise and a glimpse of early Paris street-life,—occasionally I used to hear her moving about on the other side of the thin partition which separated our rooms, as stealthily as though she feared she might disturb me. She would light her charcoal-stove, and perhaps glide softly by my door and down stairs, to return soon with the paper of coffee, the, bit of bread, and the egg or two which were to serve her for breakfast, and now and then she would sing to herself, but so gently that I never could hear the words of her song, nor scarcely the air. An evil spirit put gimlets into my head, but I shook them out like so much powder, and resolved to be honorable, if I was an artist. I found, however, that my curiosity was an abominable nuisance, that my morning walks were almost entirely neglected, and that I could not bear to leave my room until I had heard her go out and lock her door behind her. Every day, after her departure, I resolved that she should not go out again without being seen by me, and every time I attempted to follow her in such a way as to escape detection I lost sight of her. I nearly fell into the street as I attempted to reach far enough out of my window to see her as she came out at the street-door.
At last, one morning, when it happened, that, just as I had finished dressing myself and was ready to go out, she opened her door and ran down stairs without closing it behind her, carried away by my curiosity, I stepped out into the narrow passage-way and looked into her sanctuary. The room was a smaller one than mine,—but how much neater! The muslin curtains in her window were as white as snow; her wardrobe, which hung against the wall, was protected from the dust by a linen cloth; the floor shone like a mirror. Her canary hung in the window, and greeted me with a perfect whirlwind ofrouladesas I stepped into the room. Her fire was burning briskly under a pot of water, which was just coming to the boiling-point, and singing as gayly and almost as loudly as her bird. Over the back of a chair was thrown the work she had been busied with; and on the bed, almost hid by the curtains, was a pair of the prettiest little blue garters I ever saw, even in Paris,—span-new they were, and had evidently been bought no longer ago than the evening before,—and some other articles of feminine apparel, which I will not attempt to describe. I looked into her glass, I really believe, with the hope of finding there a faint reflection of her face and figure. She must have looked into it but a minute before going out. A book, like a Testament, lay on the table. I knew I should find her name on the fly-leaf, and was just on the point of satisfying myself with regard to that particular when I heard her feet upon the stairs; and, with a start which nearly carried away the curtains of her bed, I rushed from her room into my own.
How my heart beat, after I had gently closed my door and was sitting on the side of my bed, listening to the movements in the next room! It didn't seem to me as though I had been guilty of a high misdemeanor, and yet, though I had been prepared for her return, I was as much discomposed as though I had been caught peeping.
So far from being satisfied with this resolution of my doubts with regard to the sex of my neighbor, I now found myself more uneasy and curious than before. Was she young and pretty and good? and what did she do? and what was her name? My thoughts were perpetually running up those six flights and stopping baffled at her close-shut door. I drew ideal portraits of her, and introduced them into all my pictures as pertinaciously as Rubens did his wives, and would often finish out an accidental face in a study of rocks, much to my instructor's surprise and my fellow-students' amusement. It was very remarkable, however, that all these fancy sketches bore a striking resemblance to another acquaintance of mine, who will shortly be introduced, and in whom, until I moved into my now room, I had been exclusively interested,—so much so, in fact, that——But I will not anticipate.
Most of my days were spent on the opposite side of the Seine; and, as I crossed that river, by the Pont Royal, at about five o'clock, every evening, on my way to the Laiterie, at which I usually took what I called my dinner, I always stopped to buy a bunch of flowers, of violets in their season, of a charming little flower-girl, who had her stand, on the Quai Voltaire, and who, by the time my turn to be served came, had usually disposed of nearly her whole stock. Every one who looked at her bought of her. She possessed something that was more attractive even than her beauty; though I question, if, without her glossy brown hair, her soft, dark eyes, her glorious complexion, her round, dimpled cheek and chin, her gentle winning smile, and her exquisite taste in dress—I question, if, without all these, her quiet, modest demeanor and unaffected simplicity and propriety would have attracted quite as much attention as they always did.
I had not bought many bouquets of Thérèse before she began to recognize me as I came up, and to greet me with a smile and a"Bon jour, Monsieur,"sweeter in tone and accent than any I had ever heard before. What a voice hers was! Its tones were like those of a silver bell; and I found that she always had my bunch of violets or heliotrope ready for me by the time I reached her.
My frugal meal over, I was in the habit of visiting a neighboringcafé,where I read the papers, drank my evening cup of coffee, and, as I smoked my cigar or pipe and twirled my posies in my fingers or held them to my nose, would wonder who she was who sold them to me, if she ever thought of those who bought them of her, and if she distinguished me above her other customers. It seemed to me, that, if she had the same angelic smile and happy greeting for them as she always bestowed upon me, they must one and all be her slaves; and yet I couldn't decide whether I really loved her or was only touched by a passing fancy for her.
I looked forward, however, through the day, to my interview with her with a great deal of impatience, and found myself making short cuts in the long walk which led me to her. I used to arrange, on my way, well-turned sentences with which to please her, and by which I expected to startle her into some intimation of her feelings toward me. I was angry that she was obliged to stand in so public a place, exposed to the gaze and remarks of all who chose to stop and buy of her. In fine, I was jealous, or rather was piqued, that she should receive all others exactly as she received me, and almost flattered myself that necessity forced her to meet them with the same sweet smile inclination led her to bestow on me.
This was the state of affairs at the time I moved into my new lodgings, before referred to, in the Place Maubert, and I was suffering these mental torments for Thérèse's sake, when the appearance, or rather the non-appearance, of my mysterious neighbor aggravated and complicated the symptoms and converted my slow fever into an intermittent. I had called my fair unknown Hermine;—the pronounshe, as it applied equally to every individual of the female sex, and in the French language to many things besides, soon became insufficient, and I took the liberty of calling her Hermine. I was so ashamed of my foolish passion, that I could not make up my mind even to question the porter at the door with regard to her, nor to consult any of my better initiated acquaintances as to the proper course to be pursued, but lived out a wretched succession of days and nights of feverish anxiety and expectation,—of what I knew not.
I was on my way over the Pont Royal, one evening, at my usual hour, and was just coming in sight of my bewitching flower-merchant, when a sudden, and, as I believed, a happy thought occurred to me, and I resolved to put it into instant execution. I am sure I blushed and stammered wofully as I asked fortwobunches of flowers instead of my usual one, and I was confident, that, as she handed them to me without a word, but with such a look, Thérèse's brow was shaded by something more than the dark bands of her brown hair or the edge of her becoming cap, and that her lip quivered rather with a suppressed sigh than with her usual happy smile. I didn't stop to speak with her that night, but hurried away towards my room, conscious—for I did not dare to look behind me, or I am sure I should have relinquished my design—that her large, sorrowful eyes were full of the tears she had kept back while I had stood before her.
I reached my room as soon as possible, and, after assuring myself that my neighbor was still absent, carefully inserted my second nosegay into her keyhole, and rushed from the house as though I had committed burglary.
I was very young then, very romantic, and wholly wanting in assurance. I must have been, or I should never have regarded it as a crime, not against myself, but others, that I was making my days miserable and my nights sleepless on account of two young girls, one of whom I had never seen, and the other of whom was merely a flower-merchant.
When I clambered up to my room late that night, the flowers were no longer where I had put them. I had been torturing myself all the evening with the thought that Hermine might have felt offended, and that I should find them torn in pieces and thrown down at my door, or that she would be waiting for me with a severe reprimand for my boldness and impertinence. But I could find no trace of them, and went to sleep, soothed by the conviction that they had been carefully put by in a glass of water, or were occupying a place on her pillow by the side of her dainty cheek. I feared to meet Thérèse's sorrowful face again the next night, and was troubled so much by the thought of it through the day, that I fairly deserted her that evening and bought my two bouquets elsewhere. With one of these, which I had taken care should be of a finer quality than before, I repeated my experiment of the preceding night and with the same gratifying result. But the day after, forgetting, until it was too late, that I had given Thérèse fair cause to be seriously angry with me, habit carried me to my old resort again, though I had fully determined to reach home by another way, and to patronize, for the future, my newbouquetière,who was not only old and ugly, but of the masculine gender. Habit—and perhaps wish had something to do with it—was too strong, however, and I found myself turning down the Quai Voltaire at the customary hour the next evening.
Much to my surprise, and somewhat to my mortification, Thérèse greeted me with her old sunny smile. Her"Bon jour, Monsieur,"was as cordial as ever; and it even seemed to me—and that didn't in the least tend to compose me—that her eyes sparkled with an archness which I had never seen in them before, and that her voice had in it a tinge of malice, as she held out to me two of her finest bunches, saying,—
"Est-ce que, Monsieur en desire deux encore ce soir?"
I was very angry with her for being in such good-humor, and believe I was anything but aimable or polite with her. Why did she not look hurt or offended and reproach me for my desertion, instead of almost disarming my senseless anger by her gentleness?
"It seems that Monsieur forgets his old friends, sometimes," she continued, as I took the flowers she had been holding towards me, and was fumbling in my pocket for the change.
"Forget!" I stammered; for the temper I found her in had so completely ruffled mine, that I was hardly sufficiently master of myself to be able to answer her at all,—"what makes you think I forget? Am I not here this evening, as usual?"
"This evening, yes,—but last night you did not come; or were you here too late to find me? I"——she paused, and, with her color a little heightened, as though she had narrowly escaped making a disclosure, looked another way,—"Monsieur must have bought his flowers elsewhere, yesterday. Were they as fresh and sweet as mine?"
"But how do you know, Mademoiselle,"—I answered, after I had given her a long opportunity to add what I had hoped would follow that long-drawn-out "I"; (she was going to say, I was sure, that she had waited for me to come as long as was possible;)—"How do you know that I bought my flowers elsewhere, or that I bought any? And where can I find finer ones than you give me?"
"Monsieur is kind enough to say so," she returned. "Can you excuse my indiscretion? I only thought, that, as you never miss carrying a bunch of flowers home with you, and sometimes two," she added, with a wicked twinkle in the corner of her mouth, "you must have found some better than mine, last night. But Monsieur will, of course, act his own pleasure."
Thérèse had never appeared to me more charming than at that moment. I wondered afterwards how I had been able to tear myself away from her, and was almost angry that I had not thrown down my second bunch, had not vowed to her that I would never desert her again, and had not confessed that the pain I had suffered from my folly had more than equalled hers, since I was never so happy as when I could be near and see her and hear the music of her voice.
And this was my life, and these the pains I used to suffer. Two tender passions held alternate possession of my fickle heart, and a constant struggle was always waging between them for the mastery; and the impossibility of deciding in favor of either of them, which to accept and which deny, prevented my yielding to either. Thérèse, however, whose real presence I could enjoy, upon whose delicious beauty I could feast my eyes whenever the fancy seized me, and whose voice I could hear, even when separated from her, possessed a fearful advantage over her invisible rival, who maintained her position in my interest only by preserving her incognito and maintaining my curiosity strained to the highest pitch. My acquaintance with Thérèse became daily more intimate, and was soon upon such a footing as seemed to authorize my asking her to accompany me on a Sunday jaunt to one of the thousand resorts of Parisian pleasure-seekers just beyond the barriers of the city.
She accepted,—of course she did,—and the matter was finally arranged one Saturday evening for the next day. I was to find her at the house of her aunt, who lived in my neighborhood, and who, to my surprise, turned out to be the proprietress of the Laiterie I frequented. Here we were to breakfast, and afterwards take the proper conveyance to our destination, which I think was Belleville.
Sunday came, and with it came such weather as the gods seldom vouchsafe to mortals who contemplate visiting the country. It was one of those cloudless days in early June when all Nature, and yourself more than anything else in Nature, seems as though it had been taking Champagne,—not too warm, but sufficiently so to make out-of-door life a luxury, and an excursion like ours into the country almost a necessity.
Thérèse, like everything else in Nature on that summer's day, was more gloriously beautiful, in my eyes, than ever before. Hermine's ideal beauty, and with it her chance of success, faded out from my memory like an unfixed photograph, before this charming reality, and Thérèse ruled supreme. She had dressed herself with a taste which surprised even me, who had so long regarded her as irreproachable, as she was unapproachable, in that particular; and the joy she felt at the thought of a whole day's ramble in the country showed itself in every feature of her countenance, in every movement, and in every tone of her voice. There didn't live a prouder or a happier man than I was, as we made our way arm in arm towards the Place Dauphine, where we were to take the omnibus for Belleville.
We ran wild in the woods and fields all that day, we fed the fishes in the ponds, we made ourselves dizzy on the seesaws and merry-go-rounds, and at last, fairly tired out, and feeling desperately and most unromantically hungry, turned into the neatest and least frequented restaurant we could find and ordered our dinner.
Thérèse was nogourmande, luckily. Her tastes were simple and harmonized admirably with my slender means. We dined, however, like princes, and drank a bottle ofChâteau Margeaux, instead of thevin ordinaire, which was my ordinary wine. Thérèse's gayety had fairly inoculated me, and, forgetting my usual reserve, we laughed and chatted as noisily as a couple of children.
"Upon my word," cried I, as I caught sight of a bouquet of flowers in the room we occupied, "what a couple of ninnies we have been! We have forgotten to get any flowers to carry home with us. But I suppose you see too many of them through the week to care for them to-day."
"Oh, no!" replied Thérèse. "I could never see too much of flowers; and besides, you must have a bunch to carry home to Mademoiselle this evening. She will never forgive you, if you neglect her to-day. And what would she think or say, if she knew where you are now and whom you are with? She is very fond of flowers,—when they come from you, I mean."
"Well," I stammered, and my face burned like fire. "What Mademoiselle? And what makes you think that I make presents of the flowers I get of you? I only get them for myself, and as an excuse for seeing you."
"Ah! menteur!" cried Thérèse, shaking her finger at me with mock solemnity. "Fi donc! c'est vilain.Do you think I have no eyes, or that you have none that speak as plainly as your mouth, and more truly? You try to deceive me, Monsieur!" and the little hypocrite assumed so injured and heart-broken an expression and tone, that I was almost wild with remorse, and cursed the wretch who had placed the flowers in the room, and myself for having noticed them. I should have been hurried into I don't know what expressions of attachment to her and of indifference towards every other individual of her sex, if she had not prevented me by the following startling remark.
"I know to whom you give the flowers you value so much as coming from me. It is to your next-door neighbor, who pleases you more than I do, and whom you have known, perhaps, longer than you have me. Why didn't you invite her, and not me, to come with you to-day? It would have been better."
"Ah!" cried I, "do you know her? She told you about it? Why doesn't she let me see her? Is her name Hermine?"
And almost before I knew it, I had told her the whole story of my passion for my invisible neighbor.
Thérèse pouted, and turned her back. She put her handkerchief to her face, and called me all sorts of hard names for having brought her there to listen to the confession of my love for another; and turned a deaf ear, or I thought she did, to my expostulations and my protestations that I didn't really care for Hermine,—that it was only a passing fancy, more curiosity than anything else,—and that I really loved no one but her.
She began to relent at last, though I was half inclined to be sorry, for her resentment became her even better than her good-humor.
"Well," she said, finally, "it is too tiresome to quarrel, and I will forgive; for, although you say you have never seen Hermine,—(that is a prettier name than Thérèse, isn't it?)—she has, perhaps, seen you, and may really love you "—
"But I don't love her," I cried. "I don't want to love her. I don't want to see her. Her name isn't Hermine, I know. I will never think of her again, nor make a fool of myself by putting nose-gays into her keyhole, if you will only not look so sober any more."
"She will be very sorry for that, I am sure," returned Thérèse, with a smile I could not translate; "and she will miss them very much. I judge her by myself. I always find a bunch at my door when I go home at night"—
"You! You find flowers at your door? And who puts them there?" And I took my turn at being provoked. "You haven't used me fairly, Thérèse, to make me understand all this time that you cared for no one but me. There is some one, then, whom you love and who loves you?"
"Oh, yes!" she answered, her whole face beaming with a pleasure which made me feel like committing a murder or a suicide; "oh, yes! I believe he does; he has almost told me so. And—and I know that I do. But he is so droll! He is my next-door neighbor, and has never seen me yet, and has never tried to, I believe; but he leaves a bunch of flowers at my door every evening, and calls me—Hermine."
"Hermine! You Hermine? Hurrah!"
And before she could prevent me, I held her in my arms, and, in spite of her struggles, had kissed her forehead, eyes, hair, nose, and lips before she could extricate herself, and then went round the room in a wild dance of perfect joy and relief.
"I knew I could love no one else, Thérèse-Hermine, or Hermine-Thérèse! I knew there must be some good and sufficient reason for the unaccountable attraction my neighbor was exercising over me. Why didn't you tell me sooner,méchante? I suppose you never would have done so at all, if we had not come out here to-day. Suppose I had not asked you to come with me?"
"Wouldn't you have asked me?" she answered, with so much winning grace and in such a pleading tone that I found myself obliged to repeat the operation of a few lines above. "Wouldn't you have asked me? I don't know what I should have done," she continued, sadly and thoughtfully. "Oh, yes!" she exclaimed, jumping up and clapping her hands, while her whole face was radiant with triumph. "Oh, yes! then I should have been Hermine, and you would have asked her."
Two happier young people than Thérèse and myself never, I am confident, returned by rail from a day's excursion in the country. Our happy faces, our rapid talking, and our devotion to each other, which we took no pains to conceal, attracted the attention of all about us,—and I heard one father of a family, who was returning to Paris with a half score of cross, tired, and crying children, whisper to his wife, as he pointed towards us,—"That is a couple in their honey-moon, or else lovers; how happy they are!"
And that is the way in which I stumbled into wedlock. How many others, in their pursuit of what has seemed to them the substance, have failed to discover, perhaps too late, that they were following a flitting shadow,—while I, favored mortal, in my chase of a dream, stumbled upon the greatest real good of my whole life!
* * * * *
There's a by-road to Saint Peter's. First you swing across the TiberIn a ferry-boat that floats you in a minute from the crowd;Then through high-hedged lanes you saunter; then by fields and sunnypastures;And beyond, the wondrous dome uprises like a golden cloud.
And this morning,—Easter morning,—while the streets were throngedwith people,And all Rome moved toward the Apostle's temple by the usual way,I strolled by the fields and hedges,—stopping now to view thelandscape,Now to sketch the lazy cattle in the April grass that lay.
Galaxies of buttercups and daisies ran along the meadows,—Rosy flushes of red clover,—blossoming shrubs and sprouting vines;Overhead the larks were singing, heeding not the bells a-ringing,—Little knew they of the Pasqua, or the proud Saint Peter's shrines.
Contadini, men and women, in their very best apparel,Trooping one behind another, chatted all along the roads;Boys were pitching quoits and coppers; old men in the sun were basking:In the festive smile of Heaven all laid aside their weary loads.
Underneath an ancient portal, soon I passed into the city;Entered San Pietro's Square, now thronged with upward crowding forms;Past the Cardinals' gilded coaches, and the gorgeous scarlet lackeys,And the flashing files of soldiers, and black priests in gloomy swarms.
All were moving to the temple. Push aside the ponderous curtain!Lo! the glorious heights of marble, melting in the golden dome,Where the grand mosaic pictures, veiled in warm and misty softness,Swim in faith's religious trances,—high above all heights of Rome.
Grand as Pergolesi chantings, lovely as a dream of Titian,Tones and tints and chastened splendors wreathed and grouped in sweetaccord;While through nave and transept pealing, soar and sink the choralvoices,Telling of the death and glorious resurrection of the Lord.
But, ah, fatal degradation for this temple of the nations!For the soul is never lifted by the accord of sights and sound;But yon priest in gold and satin, murmuring with his ghostly Latin,Drags it from its natural flights, and trails its plumage on the ground.
And to-day the Pope is heading his whole army of gay puppets,And the great machinery round us moving with an extra show:Genuflexions, censers, mitres, mystic motions, candle-lighters,And the juggling show of relics to the crowd that gapes below,
Till at last they show the Pontiff, a lay figure stuffed and tinselled;Under canopy and fan-plumes he is borne in splendor proudTo a show-box of the temple overlooking the Piazza;There he gives his benediction to the long-expectant crowd.
Benediction! while the people, blighted, cursed by superstition,Steeped in ignorance and darkness, taxed and starved, looks up and begsFor a little light and freedom, for a little law and justice,—That at least the cup so bitter it may drain not to the dregs!
Benediction! while old error keeps alive a nameless terror!Benediction! while the poison at each pore is entering deep,And the sap is slowly withered, and the wormy fruit is gathered,And a vampire sucks the life out while the soul is fanned asleep!
Oh, the splendor gluts the senses, while the spirit pines and dwindles!Mother Church is but a dry-nurse, singing while her infant moans;While anon a cake or rattle gives a little half-oblivion,And the sweetness and the glitter mingle with her drowsy tones.
But the infant moans and tosses with a nameless want and anguish,While, with coarse, unmeaning bushings, louder sings the hirelingnurse,—Knows no better, in her dull and superannuated blindness,—Tries no potion,—seeks no nurture,—but consents to worse and worse.
If such be thy ultimation, Church of infinite pretension,—Such within thy chosen garden be the flowers and fruits you bear,—Oh, give me the book of Nature, open wide to every creature,And the unconsecrated thoughts that spring like daisies everywhere!
Send me to the woods and waters,—to the studio,—to the market!Give me simple conversation, books, arts, sports, and friends sincere!Let no priest be e'er my tutor! on my brow no label written!Coin or passport to salvation, rather none, than beg it here!
Give me air, and not a prison,—love for Heart, and light for Reason!Let me walk no slave or bigot,—God's untrammelled, fearless child!Yield me rights each soul is born to,—rights not given and not taken,—Free to Cardinals and Princes and Campagna shepherds wild.
Like these Roman fountains gushing clear and sweet in open spaces,Where the poorest beggar stoops to drink, and none can say him nay,—Let the Law, the Truth, be common, free to man and child and woman,Living waters for the souls that now in sickness waste away!
Therefore are these fields far sweeter than yon temple of Saint Peter;Through this grander dome of azure God looks down and blesses all;In these fields the birds sing clearer, to the Eternal Heart are nearer,Than the sad monastic chants that yonder on my ears did fall.
Never smiled Christ's holy Vicar on the heretic and sinnerAs this sun—true type of Godhead—smiles o'er all the peopled land!Sweeter smells this blowing clover than the perfume of the censer,And the touch of Spring is kinder than the Pontiff's jewelled hand!