Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

Haply of those mountains grand
That produce alas! but mice;
Castles in Spain; a Prince's hand;
Bon-bons, lovers, or cream-ice.

Haply of soft whispers breathed
'Mid the mazes of a ball;
Robes, or flowers, or hair enwreathed;
Me; or nothing, Dear, at all.

PALE STAR OF EVEN.

Pale star of even, on thy distant quest
Lifting thy radiant brow from twilight's veil,
From out thy azure palace in the west,

What seest thou in the dale?

The storm recedes, the winds are lulled to rest,
The shivering trees weep on the grass beneath,
The evening butterfly, with gilded crest,

Flits o'er the fragrant heath.

What seekest thou on Nature's sleeping breast?
Down toward the mountains thou art sinking fast,
Sinking and smiling, sweet and pensive guest;
Thy tremulous gaze has almost looked its last.
Sad, silvery tear on evening's mantle brown,
Slow gliding downward to the verdant steep.
The shepherd sees thee, as across the down

He homeward leads his lingering flock of sheep.
Star, at this silent hour so strangely fair,

Through boundless night, oh, whither dost thou go To seek beside the shore a reedy lair,

Or, like a pearl, sink in the gulf below?

Oh, if thy glowing tresses thou must wet

In ocean's brine, fair star, if thou must die,

Ere thou forsake us, stay a moment yet;
Sweet star of love! ah, do not leave the sky.

VERGISS MEIN NICHT.

Remember! when the morn with sweet affright
Opens her portals to the king of day;

VOL. XVII.-17

Remember! when the melancholy night

All silver-veiled, pursues her darkling way;
Or when thy pulses wake at pleasure's tone;
When twilight shades to gentle dreams invite,
List to a voice which from the forest lone
Murmurs, Remember!

Remember! when inexorable fate

Hath parted finally my lot from thine,

When absence, grief, and time have laid their weight
With crushing power on this heart of mine,
Think of my love, think of my last farewell,

Absence nor time can constancy abate.
While my heart beats its every throb shall tell
Remember!

Remember! when beneath the chilly ground
My weary heart has found a lasting sleep,
And when in after time, above the mound,
The pale blue flower its gentle watch doth keep,
I shall not see thee more, but ever nigh,

Like sister true, my soul will hover round,
List to a voice which through the night will sigh.
Remember!

THE PIEDELEUS.

The good man Piédeleu was from the province of Beauce. There he had spent his life, and there he fully intended to die. He was the old and honest farmer of the estate of la Honville, near Chartres, an estate belonging to Madame Doradour. He never in his life had seen either a forest or a mountain, having left his farm only to visit the neighboring city; and Beauce, as every one knows, is but one immense plain. It is true that he had seen a river, the Eure, which flowed near his house. As for the sea, he believed in it as he did in Paradise - that is to say, he thought one must first go and see it.

Thus did he find in this world but three things worthy of admiration: The Cathedral-steeple at Chartres, a handsome girl, and a fine wheat-field. His erudition con

sisted simply in knowing that it is warm in summer, cold in winter, and that the market price of grain is subject to fluctuation. But when, in the midday sun, at the hour when the husbandmen take their rest, the worthy farmer left his broad farm-yard to speak a few kind words to his crops, it was a great treat to see his massive form stand out against the horizon. It seemed then that the blades of wheat stood up straighter and prouder than before, that the ploughshares shone more brilliantly. At his coming, the farm-boys, stretched in the shade eating their dinner, uncovered their heads respectfully while biting into the broad slices of bread and cheese; the oxen ruminated in a good-humored way; the horses pranced under the hand of the master patting their rounded flanks. "Our country is the granary of France," the good man often said; then he lowered his head, marching, looked at his straight-cut furrows, and lost himself in contemplation. Mistress Piédeleu, his wife, had given him. nine children, of whom eight were boys, and, if each of the eight were not six feet high, he lacked but little of it. It is true that such was the size of the good man, and the mother was five feet five inches: she was the handsomest woman thereabouts.

The eight boys, strong as bullocks, the terror and admiration of the village, obeyed their father as slaves. They were, so to speak, the first and most zealous of his servants, doing in turn the work of carters, ploughmen and threshers. It was a fine sight to see those eight sturdy fellows, either when, with sleeves tucked up, the two-pronged fork in their hands, they would build up a haystack, or, when marching to Mass on Sunday, arm-in-arm, the father heading the procession; or, finally, when at nightfall, the work done, they sat around the long kitchen-table exchanging remarks over their smoking soup and merrily touching their big tin cups.

In the midst of that family of giants had come into the world a small creature, full of health, but quite petite. It was the ninth child of Mistress Piédeleu, Marguerite, whom they called Margot. Her head hardly reached the elbow of any of her brothers, and when her father wanted to kiss her he never failed to lift her from the ground and

place her on the table. Little Margot was hardly sixteen; her turned-up nose, her well-cut mouth, neatly filled and always smiling, the sun-warmed hue of her complexion, her chubby arms and her delicately rounded figure, gave her the look of cheerfulness itself; in truth she was the joy of the family. Seated among her brothers, she shone and pleased the sight as a blue-bell in the midst of a bouquet of wheat-ears. "My faith," the good man would say, "I don't know how my wife managed to get me that child; she is a real gift of Providence; all the same, that little bit of a girl will make me laugh all my life."

Already Margot managed the household; Mother Piédeleu, though still quite hale and hearty, had confided those duties to her, so as to accustom her early to order and economy. Margot arranged and locked up the linen and the wine, and had the care of the pots and pans, which, however, she did not deign to wash; but she laid the covers, poured the drink, and sang a song when asked. The maid-servants of the house never spoke of her but as Mademoiselle Marguerite, for she had her little, proud ways. Moreover, as people say, she was as good as a picture. I do not mean that she was not coquettish; she was young, pretty, and a daughter of Eve. But woe to the boy, were he one of the village cocks, that would have dared to press her waist too hard; it would have fared ill with him; the son of a farmer, named Jerry a bad case they called him - having kissed her one day at the dance, had been rewarded with a sounding slap.

His Reverence the "Curé" showed Margot a marked esteem. When he had an example to quote, he always chose her. He even did her the honor to mention her name in the sermon, pointing her out as a model to his flock. If the so-called progressive enlightenment of the Nineteenth Century had not suppressed the rosièresthat old and honest custom of our ancestors - Margot would have worn the garland of white roses, and that alone would have been worth a dozen sermons; but our gentlemen of '89 have suppressed that with the rest. Margot knew how to sew, and even to embroider; her father wished her, besides, to learn how to read and

[ocr errors]

write, and she had also been taught spelling, a little grammar, and some geography. A Carmelite nun had had charge of her education. So Margot had become the oracle of the place; as soon as she opened her mouth the peasants would gape. She told them that the earth was round, and they took her word for it. They gathered about her on Sundays, when she danced on the green, for she had had a dancing-master, and her pas de bourrée threw everyone in ecstasies. In a word, she managed to be beloved and admired at the same time- a difficult feat, indeed.-Margot.

YERS, FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY, an English poet, essayist and critic; born at Keswick, February 6, 1843; died at Rome, Italy, January 17, 1901. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he was made a Fellow in 1865. He published St. Paul, a poem (1870); Poems (1871); Wordsworth, in the English Men of Letters series (1881); The Renewal of Youth and Other Poems (1882); Essays Modern and Essays Classical (2 vols., 1883); Science and a Future Life (1893), and Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (1901).

THE CONSOLING POWER OF POETRY.

It is the especial privilege of poetry that by her close intermingling of ethical and artistic sentiment she can bring definite consolation to some of the deepest sorrows of men. Paintings can fill our minds with ennobling images, but in the hour of our tribulation these are apt to look coldly at us, like dead gods. Music can exalt us into an unearthly and illimitable world, but the

« ElőzőTovább »