And every wave and every blade of grass Doth know me as I pass; And me the western sloping mountains know, and me O sea, whereon the passing sun doth lie! O man, who watchest by that golden sea! Weep not,-O weep not thou, but lift thine eye And see me glorious in the sunset sky! I love not the night III. Save when the stars are bright, Or when the moon Fills the white air with silence like a tune. Yea, even the night is mine When the Northern Lights outshine, And all the wild heavens throb in ecstasy divine; Yea, mine deep midnight, though the black sky lowers, When the sea burns white and breaks on the shore in starry showers.. IV. I am the laughter of the new-born child On whose soft-breathing sleep an angel smiled. And I all sweet first things that are: First songs of birds, not perfect as at last,— But sweet, oh, sweet! And I the first faint glimmer of a star To the wrecked ship that tells the storm is past; The first keen smells and stirrings of the Spring; Of the new moon's ethereal ring; The song the morning stars together made, And the first kiss of lovers under the first June shade. V. My sword is quick, my arm is strong to smite In the dread joy and fury of the fight. I am with those who win, not those who fly; With those who live I am, not those who die. Who die? Nay-nay-that word Where I am is unheard; For I am the spirit of youth that cannot change, Nor cease, nor suffer woe; And I am the spirit of beauty that doth range Through natural forms and motions, and each show All gentleness and joy in all the earth. Raphael knew me, and showed the world my face; Me Homer knew, and all the singing race, For I am the spirit of light, and life, and mirth. ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. HIS bronze doth keep the very form and mould THIS Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he: That brow all wisdom, all benignity; That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold; That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea As might some prophet of the elder day,- WHAT THE SONNET. HAT is a sonnet? 'Tis the pearly shell A precious jewel carved most curiously; It is a little picture painted well. What is a sonnet? 'Tis the tear that fell From a great poet's hidden ecstasy; A two-edged sword, a star, a song-ah me! This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath; The solemn organ whereon Milton played, And the clear glass where Shakespeare's shadow falls: A sea this is-beware who ventureth! For like a fjord the narrow floor is laid Mid-ocean deep to the sheer mountain walls. Weep, weep, and scatter flowers Weep, weep-for when to-night To do our poet wrong— To break the sealèd tomb? Not the great world and gay That pities not, nor halts To whom his spirit moved; The woman that he loved. JUST George Washington Cable. BORN in New Orleans, La., 1844. MADAME DÉLICIEUSE. [Old Creole Days. 1883.] UST adjoining the old Café de Poésie on the corner, stood the little onestory, yellow-washed tenement of Dr. Mossy, with its two glass doors protected by batten shutters, and its low, weed-grown tile roof sloping out over the sidewalk. You were very likely to find the Doctor in, for he was a great student and rather negligent of his business-as business. He was a small, sedate, Creole gentleman of thirty or more, with a young-old face and manner that provoked instant admiration. He would receive you-be you who you may-in a mild, candid manner, looking into your face with his deep-blue eyes, and reassuring you with a modest, amiable smile, very sweet and rare on a man's mouth. To be frank, the Doctor's little establishment was dusty and disorderly— very. It was curious to see the jars, and jars, and jars. In them were serpents and hideous fishes and precious specimens of many sorts. There were stuffed birds on broken perches; and dried lizards, and eels, and little alligators, and old skulls with their crowns sawed off, and ten thousand odd scraps of writing-paper strewn with crumbs of lonely lunches, and interspersed with long-lost spatulas and rust-eaten lancets. All New Orleans, at least all Creole New Orleans, knew, and yet did not know, the dear little Doctor. So gentle, so kind, so skilful, so patient, so lenient; so careless of the rich and so attentive to the poor; a man, all in all, such as, should you once love him, you would love him forever. So very learned, too, but with apparently no idea of how to show himself to his social profit, two features much more smiled at than respected, not to say admired, by a people remote from the seats of learning, and spending most of their esteem upon animal heroisms and exterior display. "Alas!" said his wealthy acquaintances, "what a pity; when he might as well be rich." 66 66 Yes, his father has plenty." Certainly, and gives it freely. But intends his son shall see none of it." "His son? You dare not so much as mention him." "Well, well, how strange! But they can never agree-not even upon their name. Is not that droll?—a man named General Villivicencio, and his son, Dr. Mossy!" "Oh, that is nothing; it is only that the Doctor drops the de Villivicencio." "Drops the de Villivicencio? but I think the de Villivicencio drops him, ho, ho, ho,-diable!" Next to the residence of good Dr. Mossy towered the narrow, red-brickfront mansion of young Madame Délicieuse, firm friend at once and always of those two antipodes, General Villivicencio and Dr. Mossy. Its dark, covered carriage-way was ever rumbling, and, with nightfall, its drawing-rooms always sent forth a luxurious light from the lace-curtained windows of the second-story balconies. It was one of the sights of the Rue Royale to see by night its tall, narrow outline reaching high up toward the stars, with all its windows aglow. The Madame had had some tastes of human experience; had been betrothed at sixteen (to a man she did not love, "being at that time a fool," as she said); one summer day at noon had been a bride, and at sundown—a widow. Accidental discharge of the tipsy bridegroom's own pistol. Pass it by! It left but one lasting effect on her, a special detestation of quarrels and weapons. The little maidens whom poor parentage has doomed to sit upon street door-sills and nurse their infant brothers have a game of "choosing" the beautiful ladies who sweep by along the pavement; but in Rue Royale there was no choosing; every little damsel must own Madame Délicieuse or nobody, and as that richly adorned and regal favorite of old General Villivicencio came along they would lift their big, bold eyes away up o her face and pour forth their admiration in a universal-" Ah-h-h-h!" But, mark you, she was good Madame Délicieuse as well as fair Madame Délicieuse her principles, however, not constructed in the austere AngloSaxon style, exactly (what need, with the lattice of the Confessional not a stone's-throw off?). Her kind offices and beneficent schemes were almost as famous as General Villivicencio's splendid alms; if she could at times do what the infantile Washington said he could not, why, no doubt she and her friends generally looked upon it as a mere question of enterprise. She had charms, too, of intellect-albeit not such a sinner against time and place as to be an "educated woman"-charms that, even in a plainer person, would have brought down the half of New Orleans upon one knee, with both hands on the left side. She had the whole city at her feet, and, with the fine tact which was the perfection of her character, kept it there contented. Madame was, in short, one of the kind that gracefully wrest from society the prerogative of doing as they please, and had gone even to such extravagant lengths as driving out in the Américain faubourg, learning the English tongue, talking national politics, and similar freaks whereby she provoked the unbounded worship of her less audacious lady friends. In the centre of the cluster of Creole beauties which everywhere gathered about her, and, most of all, in those incomparable companies which assembled in her own splendid drawing-rooms, she was always queen lily. Her house, her drawing-rooms, etc.; for the little brown aunt who lived with her was a mere piece of curious furniture. There was this notable charm about Madame Délicieuse, she improved by comparison. She never looked so grand as when, hanging on General Villivicencio's arm at some gorgeous ball, these two bore down on you like a royal barge lashed to a ship-of-the-line. She never looked so like her sweet name as when she seated her prettiest lady adorers close around her and got them all a-laughing. Of the two balconies which overhung the banquette on the front of the Délicieuse house, one was a small affair, and the other a deeper and broader one, from which Madame and her ladies were wont upon gala days to wave handkerchiefs and cast flowers to the friends in the processions. There they gathered one Eighth of January morning to see the military display. It was a bright blue day, and the group that quite filled the balcony had laid wrappings aside, as all flower-buds are apt to do on such Creole January days, and shone resplendent in spring attire. The sight-seers passing below looked up by hundreds and smiled at the ladies' eager twitter, as, flirting in humming-bird fashion from one subject to another, they laughed away the half-hours waiting for the pageant. By and by they fell a-listening, for Madame Délicieuse had begun a narrative concerning Dr. Mossy. She sat somewhat above her listeners, her elbow on the arm of her chair, and her plump white hand waving now and then in graceful gesture, they silently attending with eyes full of laughter and lips starting apart. "Vous savez," she said (they conversed in French of course), "you know it is now long that Dr. Mossy and his father have been in disaccord. Indeed, when have they not differed? For, when Mossy was but a little boy, his father thought it hard that he was not a rowdy. He switched him once because he would not play with his toy gun and drum. He was not so high when his father wished to send him to Paris to enter the French army; but he would not go. We used to play often together on the banquette—for I am not so very many years younger than he, no indeed--and, if I wanted some fun, I had only to pull his hair and run into the house; he would cry, and monsieur papa would come out with his hand spread open and" Madame gave her hand a malicious little sweep, and joined heartily in the laugh which followed. "That was when they lived over the way. But wait! you shall see; I have something. This evening the General " The houses of Rue Royale gave a start and rattled their windows. In the long, irregular line of balconies the beauty of the city rose up. Then the houses jumped again and the windows rattled; Madame steps inside the win |
