صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

between trim, flowery banks, which serve instead of fences to keep the cattle within bounds.

Cow stable is to us a name for an humble and unclean edifice, but a cow stable in Holland has 5 another meaning. No parlor is purer nor more carefully tended than the habitation of the muchloved kine. The busy Dutch farmer does not usually care to give any of his time to curiosity seekers, and it is not always easy for the stranger to gain 10 admission to his household; but we secured a letter to a farmer near Broek, in North Holland, which admitted us to his cow house and to his residence at the same time. Both were under one roof, and one was quite as clean as the other. We 15 were conducted to the stable first, which in reality was a wide hall with a strip of oilcloth down the center. Rows of tiny square windows, high up on both sides, were curtained with spotless lace or thin white net tied back with ribbon; pots of blooming 20 flowers were set on the sills of the windows looking south. Beneath each curtained window was a cow stall; there were twenty-six in all-such luxurious and dainty little places! On the floors, which were of porcelain, a thick layer of clean white sawdust 25 had been placed, and this was stamped into patterns

of stars and wheels and various geometrical designs.

[ocr errors]

Of course the return of the cows from the fields to their winter quarters breaks these pretty sawdust designs into a confused mass, but during the summer they are carefully preserved. Before and behind each row of stalls runs a trough of clear 5 water, the first for the cow to drink from, the second to wash away all impurities. In the ceiling behind every stall is fixed a kind of iron hook, whose strange and ludicrous office is to hold high in the air the cow's tail that she may not soil that 10 carefully combed member. One wonders that the cows' tails, after many generations of this tying-up process, do not grow straight up. One extravagant book of travels tries to make us believe that the tails are often tied with blue ribbons, but this we 15 found to be an exaggeration.

It is not, however, any exaggeration that the cattle every day during the winter are washed off with warm soapsuds, dried, rubbed, coddled, and talked to as if they were children, that the air of 20 the stable is as pure as the atmosphere outside, and that no pains are spared to keep them healthy and comfortable. Under such kind treatment they become plump, glossy, and gentle animals, and repay their owners by an enormous quantity of milk. 25

heraldic shield: a shield with a coat of arms on it.

-kine: cows.

THREE OF TENNYSON'S POEMS

ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892), poet laureate of England and spokesman for his people for forty-two years, was born at Somersby, Lincolnshire. He was the youngest of a trio of poetical brothers, Frederick, Charles, Alfred. At Cambridge Univer5 sity he gained the Chancellor's medal for a prize poem. While still an undergraduate he issued his first volume of verse, and followed this, in 1832, by another. These two volumes were so sharply criticised that Tennyson remained silent for ten years. These years he spent in untiring efforts to master the poet's art. How well he succeeded is shown by his two volumes of 1842. The poems in these took critics, poetry lovers, and general readers by storm. He combined in them variety, beauty, strength, and masterly art. He soon became to England what Victor Hugo was to France. In the long years allotted to him, he continued to 15 pour forth poetic treasures until his thoughts went into the very warp and woof of English thought.

10

Tennyson, although alive to all the issues of his day, was always fond of retirement. His life at Farringford, his home on the Isle of Wight, and at Aldworth, his lonely home in the hills 20 of Surrey, was an ideal one for a poet.

25

His words gleam like pearls and opals, like rubies and emeralds. BAYNE.

I have been reading Tennyson again and again. What a great creature he is! CHARLES DICKENS.

"Truly one of the great of the earth." It was so his friend described him in the first blush of his promise; it is so that he appears to-day. ARTHUR WAUGH.

[ocr errors]

Then a pretty drive over the Downs brought us to this house. Here the great poet lives. He is finer than his pictures, a man of 30 good six feet and over, but stooping as he walks, for he is seventyfour years old, and we shall stoop if we ever live to that age. A big dome of a head, bald on the forehead and the top, and very

fine to look at. A deep bright eye, a grand eagle nose, a mouth which you cannot see, a black felt hat, and a loose tweed suit.. These were what I noticed in the author of In Memoriam.". BISHOP BROOKS.

Tennyson is the wisest man I ever knew.

THACKERAY.

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK

Every one knows it; it is a piece of perfect work, fully felt

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

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

10

15

20

10

THE BUGLE SONG

And the third, known as the Bugle Song, seems to many the most perfect English lyric since the time of Shakespeare. EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying;
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,

And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: 15 Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.

20 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

« السابقةمتابعة »