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قراءة كتاب International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850
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International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850
said I to her. She blushed yet more.
"I have no husband, Monsieur. I am an unmarried woman."
"Ah! Mlle, will you be pleased to tell me why you have come so far, and why you waited so long to speak with me? Can I be useful to you in any manner? Have you any letter to give me from any one in your neighborhood?"
"Ah, Monsieur, I have no letter, I have nothing to ask of you, and the last thing in the world that I should have done, would have been to get a letter from any of the gentlemen in my neighborhood to you. I would not even have suffered them to know that I came to Marseilles to see you. They would have thought me a vain creature, who sought to magnify her importance by visiting people who are so famous. Ah, that would never do!"
"What then do you wish to say?"
"Nothing, Monsieur."
"How can that be? You should not for nothing have wasted two days in coming from Aix to Marseilles, and should not have waited for me here until sunset, when to-morrow you must return home."
"It is, however, true, Monsieur. I know you will think me very foolish, but ... I have nothing to tell you, and not for a fortune would I consent that people at Aix should know whither I am gone."
"Something however induced you to come—you are not one of those triflers who go hither and thither without a motive. I think you are intellectual and intelligent. Reflect. What induced you to take a place in the diligence and come to see me? Eh!"
"Well, sir," said she, passing her hands over her cheeks as if to wipe away all blushes and embarrassment, and at the same time pushing her long black curls, moist as they were with perspiration, beyond her ears, "I had an idea which permitted me neither to sleep by day nor night; I said to myself, Reine, you must be satisfied. You must say nothing to any one. You must shut up your shop on Saturday night as you are in the habit of doing. You must take a place in the night diligence and go on Sunday to Marseilles. You will go to see that gentleman, and on Monday morning you can again be at work. All will then be over and for once in your life you will have been satisfied without your neighbors having once fancied for a moment that you have passed the limits of the street in which you live."
"Why, however, did you wish so much to see me? How did you even know that I was here?"
"Thus, Monsieur: a person came to Aix who was very kind to me, for I am the dressmaker of his daughters, having previously been a servant in his mother's country-house. The family has always been kind and attentive, because in Provence, the nobles do not despise the peasants. Ah! it is far otherwise—some are lofty and others humble, but their hearts are all alike. Monsieur and the young ladies knew how I loved to read, and that I am unable to buy books and newspapers. They sometimes lent books to me, when they saw anything which they fancied would interest me, such as fashion plates, engravings of ladies' bonnets, interesting stories, like that of Reboul, the baker of Nimes, Jasmin, the hairdresser of Agen, or Monsieur, the history of your own life. They know, Monsieur, that above all things I love poetry, especially that which brings tears into the eyes."
"Ah, I know," said I with a smile, "you are poetical as the winds which sigh amid your olive-groves, or the dews which drip from your fig trees."
"No, Monsieur, I am only a mantua-maker—a poor seamstress in ... street, in Aix, the name of which I am almost ashamed to tell you. I am no finer lady than was my mother. Once I was servant and nurse in the house of M.... Ah! they were good people and treated me always as if I belonged to the family. I too thought I did. My health however, obliged me to leave them and establish myself as a mantua-maker, in one room, with no companion but a goldfinch. That, however, is not the question you asked me,—why I have come hither? I will tell you."
Truth is altogether ineffably, holily beautiful. Beauty has always truth in it, but seldom unadulterated.
The poet's soul should be like the ocean, able to carry navies, yet yielding to the touch of a finger.
Original Poetry
AZELA.
BY MISS ALICE CAREY.
From the pale, broken ruins of the heart,
The soul's bright wing, uplifted silently,
Sweeps thro' the steadfast depths of the mind's heaven,
Like the fixed splendor of the morning star—
Nearer and nearer to the wasteless flame
That in the centres of the universe
Burns through the o'erlapping centuries of time.
And shall it stagger midway on its path,
And sink its radiance low as the dull dust,
For the death-flutter of a fledgling hope?
Or, with the headlong phrensy of a fiend,
Front the keen arrows of Love's sunken sun,
For that, with nearer vision it discerns
What in the distance like ripe roses seemed
Crimsoning with odorous beauty the gray rocks
Are the red lights of wreckers!
Just as well
The obstinate traveler might in pride oppose
His puny shoulder to the icy slip
Of the blind avalanche, and hope for life;
Or Beauty press her forehead in the grave,
And think to rise as from the bridal bed.
But let the soul resolve its course shall be
Onward and upward, and the walls of pain
May build themselves about it as they will,
Yet leave it all-sufficient to itself.
How like the very truth a lie may seem!—
Led by that bright curse, Genius, some have gone
On the broad wake of visions wonderful
And seemed, to the dull mortals far below,
Unraveling the web of fate, at will.
And leaning on their own creative power,
As on the confident arm of buoyant Love.
But from the climbing of their wildering way
Many have faltered, fallen,—some have died,
Still wooing from across the lapse of years
The faded splendour of a morning dream,
And feeding sorrow with remembered smiles.
Love, that pale passion-flower of the heart,
Nursed into bloom and beauty by a breath,
With the resplendence of its broken light,
Even on the outposts of mortality,
Dims the still watchfires of the waiting soul.
O, tender-visaged Pity, stoop from heaven,
And from the much-loved bosom of the past
Draw back the nestling hand of Memory,
Though it be quivering and pale with pain;
And with the dead dust of departed Hope
Choke up and wither into barrenness
The sweetest fountain of the human heart,
And stay its channels everlastingly
From the endeavor of the loftier soul.
Nay, 'twere a task outbalancing thy power,
Nor can the almost-omnipotence of mind
Away from aching bind the bleeding heart,
Or keep at will its mighty sorrow down.
And, were the white flames of the world below
Binding my forehead with undying pain,
The lily crowns of heaven I would put back,
If thou wert there, lost light of my young dream!—
Hope, opening with the faint flowers of the wood,
Bloomed crimson with the summer's heavy kiss,
But autumn's dim feet left it in the dust,
And like tired reapers my lorn thoughts went down
To the gloom-harvest of a hopeless love,
For past all thought I loved thee: Listening close
From the soft hour when twilight's rosy hedge
Sprang from the fires of sunset, till deep night
Swept with her cloud of stars the face of heaven,
For the quick music, from the pavement rung
Where beat the impatient hoof-strokes of the steed,
Whose mane of silver, like a wave of light,
Bathed the caressing hand I pined to clasp!
It is as if a song-lark, towering high
In pride