Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

I can see her bending o'er me,
As I listen to the strain
Which is played upon the shingles
By the patter of the rain.

Then my

little seraph sister,

With her wings and waving hair,
And her bright-eyed cherub brother,
A serene, angelic pair,

Glide around my wakeful pillow,
With their praise or mild reproof,
As I listen to the murmur

Of the soft rain on the roof.

There is naught in art's bravuras
That can work with such a spell,
In the spirit's pure, deep fountains,
Whence the holy passions swell,
As that melody of nature,

That subdued, subduing strain,
Which is played upon the shingles
By the patter of the rain.

-COATES KINNEY.

I stood to hear — I love it well

The rain's continuous sound;

Small drops, but thick and fast they fell,

Down straight into the ground.

-CAROLINE SOUTHEY.

12. SAYINGS OF RUSKIN.

WATER.

Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. If we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen; then as it exists in the foam of the torrent, —in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep, crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal element for glory and for beauty?

RIVERS.

All rivers, small or large, agree in one character; they like to lean a little on one side; they cannot bear to have their channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, have one bank to sun

themselves upon, and another to get cool under; one shingly shore to play over where they may be shallow, and foolish, and childlike; and another steep shore, under which they can pause and purify themselves; and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasions. Rivers, in this way, are just like wise men, who keep one side of their life for play, and another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering, and transparent, when they are at ease, and yet take deep counsel on the other side, when they set themselves to the main purpose. And rivers are just in this divided, also, like wicked and good men; the good rivers have serviceable deep places all along their banks that ships can sail in, but the wicked rivers go scoopingly, irregularly, under their banks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no boat can row over without being twisted against the rocks, and pools like wells which no one can get out of but the water-kelpie that lives at the bottom; but, wicked or good, the rivers all agree in having two sides.

SUNSET.

Nature has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability of color are in the sunsets among the high clouds. I speak especially of the moment before the sun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-color, and when this light falls upon

a zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapor which would, in common daylight, be pure snowwhite, and which give, therefore, fair field to the tone of light. There is then no limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity of the hues assumed. The whole sky, from the zenith to the horizon, becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language and no ideas in the mind, — things which can only be conceived while they are visible, the intense, hollow blue of the upper sky melting through it all,-showing here deep and pure and lightless, there modulated by the filmy, formless body of the transparent vapor, till it is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

13. THE PRAIRIES.

These are the gardens of the desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name -
The prairies. I behold them for the first,

And

my heart swells, while the dilated sight Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch

In airy undulations far away,

As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,

Motionless?

Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless forever.
No- they are all unchained again.

The clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges. Breezes of the south!
Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,
And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,
Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not- ye have
played

Among the palms of Mexico and vines

Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks
That from the fountains of Sonora glide
Into the calm Pacific - have ye fanned.

A nobler or a lovelier scene than this?

Man hath no part in all this glorious work :
The hand that built the firmament hath heaved
And smoothed those verdant swells, and sown their
slopes

With herbage, planted them with island groves,
And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor
For this magnificent temple of the sky-
With flowers whose glory and whose multitude
Rival the constellations! The great heavens
Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love—
A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,

« VorigeDoorgaan »