قراءة كتاب South-Sea Idyls

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‏اللغة: English
South-Sea Idyls

South-Sea Idyls

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 10

far from town that no one could possibly be shocked, even with the assistance of an opera-glass. He used to implore a daily repetition of these cautious and inoffensive recreations, though, once in the chilly current, he soon came out of it, shivering and miserable. Where were his warm sea-waves, and the shining beach, with the cocoa-palms quivering in the intense fires of the tropical day? How he missed them and mourned for them, crooning a little chant in their praises, much to the disparagement of our dry hills, cold water, and careful people!

In one of our singular walks, when he had been unusually silent, and I had sought in vain to lift away the gloom that darkened his soul, I was startled by a quick cry of joy from the lips of the young exile,—a cry that was soon turned into a sharp, prolonged, and pitiful wail of sorrow and despair. We had unconsciously approached an art-gallery, the deep windows of which were beautified with a few choice landscapes in oil. Kána-aná's restless and searching eye, doubtless attracted by the brilliant coloring of one of the pictures, seemed in a moment to comprehend and assume the rich and fervent spirit with which the artist had so successfully imbued his canvas.

It was the subject which had at first delighted Kána-aná,—the splendid charm of its manipulation which so affected him, holding him there wailing in the bitterness of a natural and incontrollable sorrow. The painting was illuminated with the mellowness of a tropical sunset. A transparent light seemed to transfigure the sea and sky. The artist had wrought a miracle in his inspiration. It was a warm, hazy, silent sunset forever. The outline of a high, projecting cliff was barely visible in the flood of misty glory that spread over the face of it,—a cliff whose delicate tints of green and crimson pictured in the mind a pyramid of leaves and flowers. A valley opened its shadowy depths through the sparkling atmosphere, and in the centre of this veiled chasm the pale threads of two waterfalls seemed to appear and disappear, so exquisitely was the distance imitated. Gilded breakers reeled upon a palm-fringed shore; and the whole was hallowed by the perpetual peace of an unbroken solitude.

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