Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

Lady.

Knight.

Lady.

Knight.

Lady.

Knight.

Lady.

Knight.

THE SPANISH LADY AND THE ENGLISH KNIGHT.

Is charges great at every resting-place
Between this and the rocky English coast.

And what of that? I've jewels, rings, and chains,
And thou shalt have them all; besides, I've pounds
Of gold full fifty score-these shalt thou have.

Know'st thou the dangers of the stormy sea?
Hast ever seen the lurid lightning leap
O'er the black billows? Hast thou ever heard.
The thunder rolling through their awful dash ?
Hast ever been within the fragile ship,

When on the curl'd crest of the mounting wave
She slowly rises, and then downward darts
Like a swift meteor, in the yawning gulf?
Hast ever heard the horrid cries of fear
Uttered by sailors old, when the mast falls

And whips the uncurbed sea, that still bounds on
Like a wild steed? Lady, would'st dare all this
To be my bride?

Oh yes! in truth I will

Abide all these extremities and more;
For I could find in heart to lose my life
For thee-so thou wilt take me to thy home.
Alas! most lovely maid,-thou must forego
This fancy strange: I cannot, if I would,
Be thine

for I've a trusting wife at home,
A sweet dear woman in my English land,
To whom I vowed the sacred marriage-vow,
Which I'll not falsify for gems or gold,
Or all Spain's star-eyed daughters!
Happy wife!

Thrice happy is her fortune to possess

So true a lord! God send thee blissful days!
I will not woo thee farther, faithful knight :
But pardon crave for my unthought offence
In asking that which was another's boon.
Commend me, oh, commend me to thy wife;
Give her this chain of gold, these bracelets twain—
Tokens I grieved because I was so bold!—
And all my store of jewels take with thee;
For more than me they will befit thy wife.
Now will I spend my days in prayerful fasts
In some lone cell's impenetrable gloom ;—

Hearing no music save the holy hymns

Of sister nuns, by dawn and twilight sung:

And I shall die of unrequited love!

Nay-droop not thus-droop not, my own dear bride!
Thy bride! What means-

Yes! thou shalt be my bride

Within the hour. My heart runs o'er with rapture!
All that I've told thee, love, was but to prove
Thy sweet sincerity. Come to these arms,
Thou dearest! and forgive my stratagem.
From the first moment I beheld thy charms

11

Lady.
Knight.

Lady.
Knight.

I felt their dangerous power, and strove to quell
The rebel, Love, which strove with kingly Reason.
Think of my deep delight to hear thee say
Thou lov'dst me-think of my o'erflowing joy
To find thy love less warm than firm and true!
Hast thou indeed no wife at home?

Ah, no!
My life spent in the wars-I never dreamed
To wed for long, long years; but now the wars
Are ended-and Spain's vallies smile again,
And vines grow green in peace, I shall return
Home to my happy England, not alone!
For thou shalt be companion of my journey.
Nor will I trust my treasure to the sea;

But bear thee homeward o'er the Pyrenees,

Through the sweet vales of France, where Plenty smiles.
Thence, will our voyage be short upon the wave
That severs France from England. Wilt thou go ?
Oh yes! through life, through life-my dearest lord!
Thy gold and gems I need not. I have lands,
Broad, fertile, rich-that stretch for miles around
My old, ancestral castle-revenues

Have I, that would enrich twenty hidalgos!
Thou shalt be mistress of them. Come! away!
Our light-plumed loves shall waft us on, like birds,
Till we're at home upon our English ground.
And English lords thy beauty shall extol,

And ladies own thy bright, surpassing charms:

Nor shall the lilies of the land be vain

When they have seen my blushing rose of Spain!

P. B.

"OH THINK OF ME."

OH think of me, my love, oh, think of me—
When first the dewy light of thy blue eyes

Meeteth the Morning's glance-and bright things be
Brighter because from sleep thou dost arise!

Oh think of me, my love, oh, think of me--
When Evening's planets see thine eyelids close
On sweeter beams than theirs-and dark things be
Darker because thou'rt gone to thy repose!

HERMION.

ADVENTURES OF A MIDSUMMER TOURIST.

CHAPTER I.

It was on a sultry afternoon in August that I was sitting in my office in Court street, poring over the last number of the Jurist. My solitude had a short time before been invaded by an irruption of Irish clients, who, after boring me with a long detail of grievances, had left me without a fee. I was out of humour, and heartily tired of my briefless fate, and of my barren, musty, and unavailing studies.

"I must have some recreation," I exclaimed, flinging the Jurist into a corner-"some respite from this continued drudgery-some rebound from this unremitted tension of the faculties. Here have I been pent up the whole summer in this miserable twelve by fourteen apartment, with a bruised bust of Cicero over my desk, and a box of cigars with Lucifer matches on my mantel-piece. Here have I been cabined, cribbed, confined; while the foam and the sparkles upon the bright goblet of existence have been fast subsiding and disappearing! The wild roses have bloomed, but not for me. The forests have heaped high their masses of foliage, but not to bless my sight. The streams have flashed, and the cataracts have roared, and the great sea has rolled its serried waves and tossed their white feathers upon the beach; but-God of Nature !— I have missed them all. I have lived as if they were not. And how inadequate has been the reward of my abstinence !"

As I turned round suddenly after this sensible monologue, Cicero appeared to be looking at me with such an impertinent sneer upon his lip, that I incontinently dashed my fist in his face, thereby breaking his head, and strewing my floor with the fragments. I then threw my principes out of the window; sent the Lucifer matches to the devil; kicked Chitty on Bills into the chimney corner; threw Coke into the coal-hole; and finished my extravagancies by striking together my hands, clasping them over my head à la Kean, pacing my room at long strides, and soliloquizing aloud:

"Yes I will leave this fetid atmosphere-these paved and dusty streets-this black hole of Calcutta. I will go off on a pleasant tour. I will. My mind is made up. But whither shall I go? To the White Hills? No-they are too familiar. To Lake

George? I may take it in my way. To the Sulphur Springs? Not the season. To Saratoga? Decidedly too rowdyish. To Winnipiseogee Lake? Beautiful, but unfrequented. To Niagara? Perhaps so. What think you of Quebec? Capital! I have never been there! Wolfe, Montcalm, Montgomery-what associations are connected with the place! And then the St. Lawrence, and Montmorenci, and the Falls of the Chaudière! And I can visit Niagara on my way home. O, the exhilaration of freedom! I already revive. My bosom's lord sits lightlier on its throne. My brain expands-my veins thrill with

"

My rhapsody was interrupted. As I turned abruptly round, I came in collision with one of my Irish barbarians, who coolly wished the "top of the morning" to me, though it must have been perfectly apparent to him that the sun had long since past its meridian. This was beyond human endurance. Fortunately the door was open and the stairs were near. I am not an indifferent boxer-thanks to John Hudson, the prince of American pugilists. The next moment my unfortunate client took leave of me in a very precipitate manner, performing a rotatory motion down stairs which seemed to facilitate his departure.

Early in the morning I quitted Boston for Concord, from which place I passed through Vermont to the delightful village of Burlington on Lake Champlain. Commend me to Vermont for magnificent scenery. There is a stream which runs into the Connecticut, known on the map as White river; and the scenery along this beautiful tributary is of the most imposing description. The banks are hedged in on either side by an immense range of stupendous hills, some rock-ribbed, frowning, and crowned with sombre pines; but many of them cultivated to the very top, verdant, fertile, and so precipitous and high, that it is with the utmost difficulty the ploughman pursues his hazardous task upon the almost impending slope. The road at the base of these hills and along the margent of the White river, (which is appropriately named, for its waters are like crystal,) is extremely narrow, and in many places formed by the timber hurled down from the hills and imbedded in the edge of the stream. Shall I ever forget that delicious journey through the gorge of those green mountains on that still slumberous afternoon, when the forests were mutely undergoing the resplendent transmutation caused by that successful alchemist, the frostwhen the blue sky was unfleckered, save by a few pearly, translucent clouds, majestic in their repose-when the river poured its silver tribute at my feet, and the diversified hills passed like a glorious pageant before my view-and nature, animate and inanimate,

seemed instinct with the subdued joy of passive existence-shall I forget it?

But a truce to rhapsody, which when the fit is over strikes me as very inane stuff. I crossed Lake Champlain in the night-time—— gazed on the British encampment of Isle aux Noyes at sunriselanded soon afterwards at the little Canadian town of St. Johnsand before evening was safely deposited at Goodenough's Hotel in Montreal. I did not remain here long. That same night I embarked on board the noble steamboat St. George for Quebec; and when I issued suddenly from the cabin the next day about noon, behold! we were overshadowed by Cape Diamond, which rose with its impregnable battlements like an exhalation from the edge of the river. The effect was decidedly melodramatic.

CHAPTER II.

It was the third day of my residence in Quebec, and one of those balmy, sunshiny days with blue skies and soft airs, when the man, who does not instinctively bless his Creator, has no music in his soul. I hired a calèche, and rode to the Falls of Montmorenci. My first view of the cascade was from the platform on the right side before crossing the bridge. From this height the effect is grand and imposing, and it makes the brain giddy to look down upon the foaming abyss, where the precipitated waters strike upon the jagged rocks, rolling up a cloud of fine white mist, on whose front a rainbow coronet is set by the sunshine. The falls of Montmorenci are higher by seventy feet than Niagara, but they are much narrower, and the volume of water that sweeps over is of course vastly inferior. Near the foot of the cataract, the whole foam of the falling waters appears to meet like drifting snow, and forming two immense revolving wheels, to be scattered thence into spray or sent lashed into froth over the bed of the torrent.

Crossing the bridge, I hastened to take a view of the falls from the opposite side; and here the smooth bold sweep of the river, and the terrific plunge of its waters over the precipice, may be seen to great advantage. "The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below" is no where more beautifully exemplified.

The path to the foot of the falls is extremely steep and precipitous; and as there are few bushes or shrubs to break your descent, ten chances to one, if you have the temerity to make the attempt, you will pitch down the declivity head over heels into the river. By dint of great precaution I descended in safety-got drenched

« PředchozíPokračovat »