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قراءة كتاب The Knickerbocker, Vol. 22, No. 1, July 1843
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
injustice more poisonous than the bitterest potion of slavery.
TO PLEASURE.
Why so fleeting, answer, pray?
Lost as soon as found, thy treasure!
None can thy dear presence stay.
All the gods, love me alone;
Were I fashioned without pinions,
They would keep me for their own!
W. P. P.
THE TRYSTING HOUR.
BY MRS. R. S. NICHOLS.
I.
By meditation led,
I sit, when Sleep his pinion waves
Above each drooping head:
When all the shadowy forms that haunt
The bright abodes on high,
Steal softly forth, in silvery troops
From chambers of the sky.
II.
Upon celestial cars,
I turn me to a steady light
That gleams among the stars;
A prophet-light it is to me,
And shadows forth the hour
That calls my spirit there to meet
A seraph in its bower.
III.
When goes my spirit forth,
With waving plume, and rustling wing,
Up toward the blazing North:
While solemnly the stars look down,
And solemnly they seem
To shed a fair and brilliant light
On this, my waking dream.
IV.
Lifts up its crownéd head,
Like some tall, stately cenotaph
For nations of the dead!
The broad, blue river rolls as free
As waters in that clime
Which bends above these waves, that flow
Like some subduing rhyme.
V.
The zephyr finds me still,
When matin-hymns are gushing forth
From bird, and bee, and rill;
For not until the morning star,
That herald of the dawn,
Has flashed upon the eastern skies,
Are my sad eyes withdrawn.
VI.
The warm, sunshiny air.
And cling unto the solemn night,
When nature kneels at prayer;
For then my spirit wanders forth,
With a resistless power,
And, with its kindred spirit, holds
The midnight Trysting-Hour.
THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.
Harry Harson.
CHAPTER NINTH.
In the same room which has been already described, in Harry Harson's dwelling, and in one of the stout, plethoric chairs before mentioned as constituting a part of its furniture, and beneath the superintendence of the busy clock, and under the watchful eye of that respectable dog Spite, sat Jacob Rhoneland, with his elbow resting on the table, his cheek leaning on the palm of his hand, and his eyes half shaded by his long blanched locks, listening with deep anxiety to Harson, who occupied a chair opposite, and was speaking with an earnestness which showed that the subject on which he discoursed was one in which he felt no slight interest.
The manner of old Rhoneland would have attracted the notice of even a casual observer. He seemed restless and nervous; and at times even frightened. Occasionally he smiled faintly, and shaking his head, half rose from his seat, but sat down, scarcely conscious of what he did; and leaning his forehead on the palm of his hand, seemed to listen with breathless attention, as if dreading to lose a word of Harson's remarks, which were occasionally strengthened by his pressing his hand gently on Rhoneland's, as it rested on the table. At last, Harson, in conclusion, said in an earnest tone: 'Now tell me, Jacob, on your honor, do you love her?'
'Do I love her?' repeated Rhoneland; 'do I love my own little Kate, who slept in my arms when a child, and who, now that she has become quite a woman, and I am gray, and feeble, and broken down, still clings to me? Others found me a querulous, troublesome old man, and fell away from me; but she never did. Don't ask me if I love her, Harry, don't ask that again,' said he, shaking his head, and looking reproachfully at Harson. 'Do I think of any one else, or care for any one else? Dead and frosty as this old heart is, she has the whole of it; and she deserves it; God bless her! God bless her! It's not a little matter that would make me forget Kate.'
The old man raised his head; and his eye lighted up with an expression of pride, as he thought of his child. It was transient, and as it passed off he seemed to be absorbed in deep thought; and sat for some time with his eye resting on a small speck of blue sky which looked cheerily in at the open window. What strange things peopled those few moments of thought; for each moment in the memory of the old is teeming with phantoms of hopes and dreams, which once crowded about them; familiar things, part of themselves, of their very being, but now melted into air; faded and gone, they cannot tell when or whither; and of faces and forms long since shrouded in the tomb. And in the dim fancy of age, in faint whispers, speak voices whose tones are never to be heard again; awakening old affections for those at rest, subdued indeed by time, but yet unextinguished, and slumbering in hidden corners of memory, and appealing to the heart of the living, and begging still to be cherished there. Rhoneland sighed as he turned his eyes from the window, and looked down at his withered hands. 'They were not so when Kate was a child. He was far from young, even then, but not so old and shattered as now. Kate's mother was living too; she was much younger than he was; and he had hoped that she would have outlived him; but he had followed her to the grave, and he was left alone with his little girl.' His lip quivered; for he remembered her watchful kindness; her