Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Help! help! He's gone! Oh, fearful woe,
Such screams to hear, such sights to see!
My brain, my brain! I know, I know,

I am not mad, but soon shall be.

8. Yes, soon; for lo, you! while I speak,
Mark how yon demon's eyeballs glare;
He sees me now, with, dreadful shriek,
He whirls a serpent high in air.
Horror! the reptile strikes his tooth
Deep in my heart, so crush'd and sad:
Ay, laugh, ye fiends; I feel the truth;
Your task is done! I'm mad! I'm mad!

LESSON CXL.

OLD AGE.

BY THEODORE PARKER.

1. I CANNOT tell where childhood ends, and manhood begins; nor where manhood ends, and old age begins. It is a wavering and uncertain line, not straight and definite, which borders betwixt the two. But the outward characteristics of old age are obvious enough. The weight diminishes. Man is commonly heaviest at forty, woman at fifty. After that, the body shrinks a little; the height shortens as the cartilages become thin and dry. The hair whitens and falls away. The frame stoops; the bones become smaller, feebler, have less animal and more mere earthy matter. The senses decay slowly and handsomely. The eye is not so sharp; and, while it penetrates farther into space, it has less power clearly to define the outline of what it sees. The ear is dull; the appetite less. Bodily heat is lower; the breath produces less carbonic acid, than before.

2. The old man consumes less food, water, air. The hands grasp less strongly; the feet tread less firmly. The lungs suck the breast of heaven with less powerful collapse. The eye and ear take not so strong a hold upon the world :

"And the big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound."

The animal life is making ready to go out. The very old man loves the sunshine and the fire, the arm-chair and the shady nook.

A rude wind would jostle the full-grown apple from its bough,-full-ripe, full-colored, too. The internal characteristics correspond. General activity is less. Salient love of new things and new persons, which bit the young man's heart, fades away. thinks the old is better.

[ocr errors]

He

3. In intellectual matters, the venerable man loves to recall the old times, to revive his favorite old men,- -no new ones half so fair. So in Homer, Nestor, who is the oldest of the Greeks, is always talking of the old times, before the grandfathers of men then living had come into being,-"not such as live in these degenerate days. Verse-loving John Quincy Adams turns off from Byron, and Shelley, and Wieland, and Goethe, and returns to Pope, "who pleased his childhood and informed his youth." The pleasure of hope is smaller; that of memory greater. The venerable man loves to set Recollection to beat the roll-call, and summon up from the grave the old time," the good old time,”the old places, old friends, old games, old talk: nay, to his ear, the old familiar tunes are sweeter than any thing that Mendelssohn, or Strauss, or Rossini, can bring to pass. Elder Brewster expects to hear St. Martin's and Old Hundred chanted in heaven. Why not?

4. Then the scholar becomes an antiquary; he likes not young men unless he knew their grandfathers. The young woman looks in the newspaper for the marriages, the old man for the deaths. The young man's eye looks forward: the world is "all before him where to choose." It is a hard world: he does not know it; he works a little, and hopes much. The middle-aged man looks around at the present; he has found out that it is a hard world; he hopes less and works more. The old man looks back on the fields he nas trod,-"This is the tree I planted, this is my footstep," and he loves the old house, his old carriage, cat, dog, staff, and friend.

5. In lands where the vine grows, I have seen an old man sit all day long, a sunny autumn day, before his cottage-door, in a great arm-chair, his old dog crouched at his feet in the genial sun. The autumn wind played with the old man's venerable hairs; above him, on the wall, purpling in the sunlight, hung the full clusters of the grape, ripening and maturing yet more. The two were just alike; the wind stirred the vine-leaves and they fell; stirred the old man's hair, and it whitened yet more. Both were waiting for the spirit in them to be fully ripe. The young man looks forward; the old man looks back. How long the shadows lie in the setting sun; the steeple a mile long reaching across the plain, as the sun stretches out the hills in grotesque dimensions! So are the events of life in the old man's consciousness.

LESSON CXLI..

LOCHIEL'S WARNING.

BY THOMAS CAMPBELL.

Wizard. LOCHIEL! Lochiel! beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle-array!
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scatter'd in fight:
They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown;
Woe, woe to the riders that trample them down!
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.
But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?
'Tis thine, O Glenullin! whose bride shall await,
Like a love-lighted watchfire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning: no rider is there;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep, Albin! to death and captivity led!
Oh, weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead:
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,
Culloden, that reeks with the blood of the brave.

Lochiel. Go preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer!
Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,
Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight,

This mantle, to cover the phantom of fright!

Wizard. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?
Proud bird of the mountain,, thy plume shall be torn !
Say, rush'd the bold eagle exultingly forth

From his home in the dark-rolling clouds of the North?
Lo! the death-shot of foeman outspeeding, he rode
Companionless, bearing destruction abroad;

But down let him stoop from his havoc on high;
Ah! home let him, speed, for the spoiler is nigh.
Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast
Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast?
'Tis the fire-shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven
From his aerie, that beacons the darkness of heaven
O crested Lochiel! the peerless in might,
Whose banners arise on the battlement's hight,

Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn;
Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return!

For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.

Lochiel. False wizard, avaunt! I have marshal'd my clan ;
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!
They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And, like reapers, descend to the harvest of death.
Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock!
Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock!
But woe to his kindred, and woe to his cause,
When Albin her claymore indignantly draws;
When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd,
Clan Ronald the dauntless, and Moray the proud,
All plaided and plumed in their tartan array

Wizard. Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day!
For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal.
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring
With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.
Lo! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath,
Behold where he flies on his desolate path!

Now in darkness and billows he sweeps from my sight;
Rise, rise, ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!
"Tis finish'd. Their thunders are hush'd on the moors;
Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.

But where is the iron-bound prisoner,-where?
For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.
Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banish'd, forlorn,
Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?
Ah, no! for a darker departure is near;

The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier;
His death-bell is tolling: O mercy, dispel
Yon sight that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Accursed be the fagots that blaze at his feet,

› Where his heart shall be thrown ere it ceases to beat,
With the smoke of his ashes to poison the gale-

Lochiel. Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale;

For never shall Albin a destiny meet

So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat.

Though my perishing ranks should be strew'd in their gore,
Like ocean-weeds, heap'd on the surf-beaten shore,

Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,

While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,

Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,
With his back to the field and his feet to the foe!
And, leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame.

[blocks in formation]

1. NOON, by the north clock! Noon, by the east! High noon, too, by these hot sunbeams, which fall, scarcely aslope, upon my head, and almost make the water bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. Truly, we public characters have a tough time of it! And, among all the town officers chosen at March meetings, where is he that sustains, for a single year, the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed, in perpetuity, upon the Town Pump? The title of "town treasurer" is rightfully mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has. The overseers of the poor ought to make me their chairman, since I provide bountifully for the pauper, without expense to him that pays taxes.

2. I am at the head of the fire-department, and one of the physicians to the board of health. As a keeper of the peace, all water-drinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some of the duties of the town clerk, by promulgating public notices, when they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother officers, by the cool, steady, upright, downright, and impartial discharge of my business, and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain; for all day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike; and at night I hold a lantern over my head, both to show where I am and keep people out of the gutters.

« AnteriorContinuar »