Page images
PDF
EPUB

blemished character and the devoted respect I entertain for your sex will plead as some slight excuse for this-"

But before Mr. Pickwick could conclude the sentence the lady had thrust him into the passage and locked and bolted the door behind him. Whatever grounds for self-congratulation Mr. Pickwick might have for having escaped so quietly from his late awkward situation, his present position was by no means enviable. He was alone in an open passage in a strange house in the middle of the night, half dressed; it was not to be supposed that he could find his way in perfect darkness to a room which he had been wholly unable to discover with a light; and if he made the slightest noise in his fruitless attempts to do so, he stood every chance of being shot at, and perhaps killed, by some wakeful traveller. He had no resource but to remain where he was until daylight appeared. So, after groping his way a few paces down the passage, and, to his infinite alarm, stumbling over several pairs of boots in so doing, Mr. Pickwick crouched into a little recess in the wall, to wait for morning as philosophically as he might. He was not destined, however, to undergo this additional trial of his patience; for he had not been long ensconced in his present concealment when, to his unspeakable horror, a man bearing a light appeared at the end of the passage. His horror was suddenly converted into joy, however, when he recognized the form of his faithful attendant. It was indeed Mr. Samuel Weller, who after sitting up thus late in conversation with the Boots, who was sitting up for the mail, was now about to retire to rest. "Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, suddenly appearing before him, "where's my bedroom?"

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]

"That's the very prudentest resolution as you could come to, sir," replied Mr. Weller. You rather want somebody to look arter you, sir, wen your judgment goes out awisitin'."

"What do you mean by that, Sam?" said Mr. Pickwick. He raised himself in bed and extended his hand, as if he were about to say something more, but, suddenly checking himself, turned round and bade his valet "Good-night."

"Good-night, sir," replied Mr. Weller. He paused when he got outside the door, shook his head, walked on, stopped, snuffed the candle, shook his head again, and finally proceeded slowly to his chamber, apparently buried in the profoundest meditation.

[blocks in formation]

THANATOPSIS.

TO him who in the love of Nature holds

Turns with his share and treads upon. The

oak

Communion with her visible forms she Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy speaks

[blocks in formation]

mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish

Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant world, with

kings,

The powerful of the earth, the wise, the

good,

Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past-
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,

Make thee to shudder and grow sick at Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the

heart,

Go forth under the open sky and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around— Earth and her waters and the depths of air

Comes a still voice: Yet a few days and thee

The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,

vales

Stretching in pensive quietness between ;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and poured
round all

Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-
Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets-all the infinite host of heaven-

Where thy pale form was laid with many Are shining on the sad abodes of Death

tears,

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall
claim

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering

up

Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,

Through the still lapse of ages. All that
tread

The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, traverse Barca's desert-sands
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings, yet the dead are
there;

And millions in those solitudes, since first

And to the sluggish clod which the rude The flight of years began, have laid them

[blocks in formation]
[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

In their last sleep. The dead reign there

alone:

STORY OF A FAWN.*

So shalt thou rest. And what if thou with- DOWN from a mountain's craggy brow

draw

[blocks in formation]

His homeward way a hunter took
By a path that wound to the vales below
At the side of a leaping brook.
Long and sore had his journey been,
By the dust that clung to his forest-green,
By the stains on his broidered moccasin ;

And over his shoulder his rifle hung,
And pouch and horn at his girdle swung.

The eve crept westward; soft and pale
The sunset poured its rosy flood,
Slanting over the wooded vale;
And the weary hunter stood
Looking down on his cot below,

Watching his children there at play,
Watching the swing on the chestnut bough
Flit to and fro through the twilight gray
Till the dove's nest rocked on its quivering
spray.

Faint and far through the forest wide

Came a hunter's voice and a hound's deep

cry;

Silence, that slept in the rocky dell,

So live that when thy summons comes to Scarcely waked as her sentinel

join

The innumerable caravan which moves

To that mysterious realm where each shall

take

His chamber in the silent halls of Death,

Thou
go not like the quarry-slave at night
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and

soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Challenged the sound from the mountain-side.
Over the valleys the echo died,

And a doe sprang lightly by

And cleared the path, and panting stood With her trembling fawn by the leaping flood.

She spanned the torrent at a bound,

And swiftly onward, winged by fear, Fled as the cry of a deep-mouthed hound Fell louder on her ear;

* A true narrative.

[blocks in formation]

to mourn;

And over the pathway the brown fawn Oh, soothe him whose pleasures like thine

[blocks in formation]

And naught but the nightingale's song in the I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »