And yet I know for a truth, there's none of them left alive;
For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty-five: And Willy, my eldest born, at nigh threescore and
I knew them all as babies, and now they're elderly
For mine is a time of peace, it is not often I grieve;
I am oftener sitting at home in my father's farm at
And the neighbors come and laugh and gossip, and so do I;
I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by.
To be sure the preacher says, our sins should make us sad:
But mine is a time of peace, and there is Grace to
And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall cease;
And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of Peace.
And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain,
And happy has been my life; but I would not live it again.
I seem to be tired a little, that's all, and long for
Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with
So Willy has gone, my beauty, my eldest-born, my flower;
But how can I weep for Willy, he has but gone for an hour,
Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next;
I, too, shall go in a minute. What time have I to be vext?
And Willy's wife has written, she never was overwise.
Get me my glasses, Annie: thank God that I keep
There is but a trifle left you, when I shall have past
But stay with the old woman now: you cannot have long to stay.
A CITY clerk, but gently born and bred; His wife an unknown artist's orphan child- One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old; They, thinking that her clear germander eye Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom,
Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea; For which his gains were dock'd, however small : His gains were small, and hard his work; besides, Their slender household fortunes (for the man Had risk'd his little), like the little thrift, Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep: And oft, when sitting all alone, his face Would darken, as he cursed his credulousness,
And that one unctuous mouth which lured him,
To buy wild shares in some Peruvian mine. Now seaward-bound for health, they gain'd a coast,
All sand, and cliff, and deep inrunning cave, At close of day; slept, woke, and went the next, The Sabbath, pious variers from the church, To chapel; where a heated pulpiteer, Not preaching simple Christ to simple men, Announced the coming doom, and fulminated Against the scarlet woman and her creed: For sideways up he swung his arms, and shriek'd "Thus, thus with violence," ev'n as if he held The Apocalyptic millstone, and himself Were that great Angel; "Thus with violence Shall Babylon be cast into the sea;
Then comes the close." The gentle-hearted wife Sat shuddering at the ruin of a world;
He at his own: but when the wordy storm
Had ended, forth they moved and paced the sand, Ran in and out the long sea-foaming caves, Drank the large air, and saw, but scarce believed (The sootflake of so many a summer still Clung to their fancies) that they saw, the sea. So now on sand they walk'd, and now on cliff, Lingering on all the thymy promontories, Until the sails were darken'd in the west
And rosed in the east: then homeward and to
Where she, that kept a tender Christian hope Haunting a holy text, and still to that
Returning, as the bird returns, at night,
"Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,"
Said, "Love, forgive him :" but he did not speak: Then all in silence for an hour she lay,
Remembering our dear Lord who died for all, And musing on the little lives of men,
And how they mar that little with their feuds.
But after these were sleeping, a full tide
Rose with ground-swell, which, on the foremost rocks Touching, upjetted in spirts of wild sea-smoke, And scaled in sheets of wasteful foam, and fell In vast sea-cataracts-ever and anon
Dead claps of thunder from within the cliffs Heard through the living roar. At this the child,
Their little Margaret, cradled near them, made A wail which, howsoever slight, aroused
The mother, and the father suddenly cried,
"A wreck, a wreck!" then turn'd, and groaning said:
"Forgive! How many will say, 'Forgive,' and find A sort of absolution in the sound
To hate a little longer! No; the sin That neither God nor man can well forgive, Hypocrisy, I saw it in him at once.
It is not true that second thoughts are best, But first, and third, which are a riper first, Too ripe, too late! they come too late for use. Ah, love, there surely lives in man and beast Something divine to warn them of their foes: And such a sense, when first I lighted on him, Said, trust him not;' but after, when I came To know him more, I lost it, knew him less; Fought with what seem'd my own uncharity; Sat at his table, drank his costly wines, Made more and more allowance for his talk, Went further, fool! and trusted him with all, All my poor scrapings from a dozen years Of dust and desk work: there is no such mine, None; but a gulf of ruin, swallowing gold, Not making. Ruin'd! ruin'd! the sea roars Ruin a fearful night!"
"Not fearful; fair," Said the good wife, "if every star in heaven Can make it fair: you do but hear the tide. Had you ill dreams?"
"O yes," he said, "I dream'd
Of such a tide swelling toward the land, And I from out the boundless outer deep Swept with it to the shore, and enter'd one Of those dark caves that run beneath the cliffs. I thought the motion of the boundless deep Bore through the cave, and I was heaved upon it In darkness: then I saw one lonely star Larger and larger. 'What a world,' I thought, To live in;' but in moving on I found Only the landward exit of the cave, Bright with the sun upon the stream beyond: And near the light a giant woman sat, All over earthy, like a piece of earth, A pickaxe in her hand: then out I slipt Into a land all sun and blossom, trees As high as heaven, and every bird that sings: And here the firelight flickering in my eyes Awoke me."
"That was then your dream," she said; "Not sad, but sweet."
"So sweet, I lay," said he, "And mused upon it, drifting up the stream In fancy, till I slept again, and pieced The broken vision; for I dream'd that still The motion of the great deep bore me on, And that the woman walk'd upon the brink: I wonder'd at her strength, and ask'd her of it: 'It came,' she said, 'by working in the mines:' Oh, then, to ask her of my shares, I thought; And ask'd; but not a word; she shook her head. And then the motion of the current ceas'd, And there was rolling thunder; and we reach'd A mountain, like a wall of burs and thorns; But she, with her strong feet, up the steep hill Trod out a path; I follow'd; and at top She pointed seaward: there a fleet of glass, That seem'd a fleet of jewels under me, Sailing along before a gloomy cloud
« VorigeDoorgaan » |