up to God. She bends and moulds our tender minds to her purposes so
gently, that we are hardly aware of the pressure; but the father
admires, and praises, and waters the more vigorous branches of our
growth.
Our reading, our studies, sermons, nature, observation, tend to give
to the mother a poetical interest in our hearts, in after years,
when she is dead. She is the nucleus about which gather some of the
most beautiful associations of our manhood. When we ourselves have
children, we find out what is the nature of parental affection, and
we look back with regret that we did not know and estimate it better,
so that the homage of our love might have been more devoted, for what
is so worthy of being repaid.
THE RED MAN.
I LOVE the Indian. Ere the white man came,
And taught him vice, and infamy, and shame,
His soul was noble. In the sun he saw
His God, and worshipped him with trembling awe.
Though rude his life, his bosom never beat
With polished vices, nor with dark deceit.
A MOTHER'S GRIEF.
A SKETCH FROM LIFE.--BY THE REV. THOMAS DALE.
I.
TO mark, the sufferings of the babe
That cannot speak its wo;
To see the infant tears gush forth,
Yet know not why they flow;
To meet the meek, uplifted eye,
That fain would ask relief,
Yet can but tell of agony--
This is a mother's grief.
II.
Through dreary days and darker nights,
To trace the march of death;
To hear the faint and frequent sigh,
The quick and shortened breath;
To watch the last dread strife draw near,
And pray that struggle brief,
Though all be ended with the close--
This is a mother's grief.
III.
To see, in one short hour, decayed
The hope of future years;
To feel how vain a father's prayers,
How vain a mother's tears:
To think the cold grave now must close
O'er what was once the chief
Of all the treasured joys of earth--
This is a mother's grief.
IV.
Yet when the first wild throb is past
Of anguish and despair,
To lift the eye of faith to heaven,
And think 'My child is there!'
This best can dry the gushing tear,
This yields the heart relief,
Until the Christian's pious hope
O'ercomes a mother's grief.
EYES AND LIPS.
FROM THE COMMON-PLACE BOOK OF A WESTERN BACHELOR.
AN ingenious friend, who has a saturnine cast of complexion,
maintains with great zeal, that dark eyes are indicative of a higher
order of intellect than those of other colors. This doctrine meets
with great favor from every one whose eyes are black, while those
that are blue, hazel, or gray, kindle with indignation at such
monstrous absurdity. Our friend borrows a very happy illustration
from nature, and says, that as the wildest and most vivid flashes of
lightning burst from the blackest clouds, so do the most brilliant
emanations of mind glare from the darkest eyes. Whether there be any
truth in this doctrine, or not, it must be admitted, that our friend
has the authority of the poets on his side. From immemorial time,
they have been sonnetizing dark and black eyes, to the almost utter
neglect of all others. Your novelists never in painting a heroine,
say she has gray eyes; but all their poetical fictions see with those
that are large, languishing, lustrous, and dark.
The vividness of an eye's expression is not dependent on its color.
The eye is most expressive, whose owner has the most thought and
feeling. The eye expresses the language of the mind and heart; and
whether light or dark, wherever there is strong emotion, it manifests
it. A man is a better reader of the meaning of a woman's eye, than he
is of one of his own gender; and a lady discovers more indications in
the eyes of the opposite sex, than can the most scrutinizing man.
The eye is the most poetical of features; and ample testimony has
been borne, in all time, to its superiority in this particular.
There is much poetry in the smile of one we love; but there is more
in the gleaming kindness of an eye from which the concentrated
rays of feeling, thought, and sentiment, are looking forth. Did
you never look into the tranquil depths of an eye, and see the
shadows of thoughts winging their flight onward? Did you never read
whole chapters about the sympathy of souls in them? If not, your
observation has not been acute, nor your love very devout.
The sublime science of astrology, which once commanded the faith of
the learned, has been laughed at by the wisdom or scepticism of more
modern times. The doctrines and the devotion of those old readers of
the stars have been discarded; and to the human eye the only relict
of astrology now on earth has been confided. Lovers are the sole
inheritors of the romantic doctrines bequeathed by elder astrologers
to posterity. They do not cast devout looks toward the bespangled
firmament, at night; but to them, the brow of a beloved being is a
heaven, and the eye is the star that unfolds to them the shadows of
their coming destinies. Their ancestors read the decrees of fate in
the glittering watchers of the night-season, and they foresee the
mysteries of the future in the expressions which shift and play upon
the eye. If the eye of his mistress sparkles at his approach, it is
the precursor of after joy. If the murky shadow of a frown rests upon
it, it is the foreshadowing of the woe to come. To the lover, the
eye of his mistress is ever eloquent, of hope or fear, of triumph or
defeat. It is the polar star of his hope, the cynosure of his faith;
and the complexion of the future changes, as her eye wanes into
shadow, or waxes into the light of day.
* * * * *
A WHOLESOME lip is a thing to be loved. People are too much in
the habit of regarding lips as mere appendages to the 'human face
divine'--ornaments, like ear-rings, to set off its beauty. This is
to detract from their true use and excellence. They serve other
purposes, and are indices of character.
A wholesome lip is of the complexion of a morello cherry. It pouts
like a rosebud, and might lead a bee astray, as the grapes of Zeuxis
did the birds. When kissing was in fashion, gallants of taste showed
a flattering preference for lips of this kind. There was a flavor
about them--ambrosia, on which young Love fed and grew fat. The
disciple of Socrates was feminine in the matter of lips, for bees
hovered over them; and the judgment of a bee, in this respect, is
scarcely inferior to that of a bachelor under thirty.
In general, people are disposed to think their noses of more
importance than their lips, and many saucy noses seem to be of the
same way of thinking; since we see them turning up with an expression
of high disdain, as if the lips were so inferior as to merit scorn.
No 'genteel,' well-behaved nose, is guilty of such dastardly
effrontery. Such an one, it is true, may at times flap its nostrils,
and crow lustily over its neighbors, as if it were 'cock of the
walk;' but there is a soft insinuation about an eloquent lip, that
cuts the comb of the braggart, and tames the monarch down to a mere
republican.
Our maiden aunt Sally wore a lip, which, like her matrimonial
chances, was rather shrivelled. It was a mere streak along the
horizon; an indistinct margin along an ocean of mouth; a strip to
tell you where her teeth were. My aunt died husbandless. If she had
wedded, her bridal kiss would have been interesting. She saluted
my cheek once, when, like Fanny, I was 'younger than I am now, and
prettier--of course!' I thought the sensation like a gentle bite.
Instead of soft, spongy flesh, her lips seemed like scraps of flesh,
iron-bound. Sometimes she puckered them up like the orifice of her
reticule; and this was an infallible precursor of a coming storm.
Xantippe had a thin, bluish, unwaving lip. Beware of such!
My nurse was a grizzly-headed negro woman; and her gift of underlip
was stupendous. It poured down, a real cataract of lip. It was
without model, although not without shadow. She was deficient in
chin, and her lip circled over her lower jaw-bone, in shape and size
resembling a half-grown grey-hound's ear. At a distance, you might
have mistaken it for an extra allowance of tongue, which her mouth
could not contain. It was awful! That is, to think of kissing such
a thing! When the old woman bustled about, it shivered like a sheep
in shearing-time; and when she jumped, it flapped over her under-jaw
like the wing of a squat pigeon.
Among the ladies, there are two orders of lips--the nectarine and
the vinegarish. The former swell out like the heave of a deep sigh;
the latter are sharp, and make you smack your mouth when you look on
them. The first denotes amiability, the second acidity. Everlasting
spring lives in the blossoms of a nectarine lip, and eternal winter
dwells upon the vinegarish, along which no rill of blood ever strays.
The lips of one's sweet-heart are a volume of poetry. Smiles fling
a ray like the flush of morning upon them, and they are glorious
in their brightness. They are an oracle, and from them comes the
voice of destiny. They are a shrine, and around them the breath of
inspiration ever lingers. It would be vain to talk of kissing any
thing so sacred, when the mere thought overwhelms one in unspeakable
bliss!
T. H. S.
AN ALBUM FRAGMENT.
WHAT is life, but a vision! The forms which have spread
Their enchantment around us, and gladdened our day,
Like the vanishing vapors of morning have fled,
Or like eve's sun-gilt clouds, they are passing away.
And when Youth's cherished hopes shall have faded and gone,
And this turbulent dream of existence is o'er--
When life's sparkling current hath ceased to flow on,
And the place which now knows me will know me no more--
Then bright on this page be engraven my name,
And long may it live, when my being is past;
Let others contend for a loftier fame,
No nobler, no dearer, no _other_, I ask.
Here perchance shouldst thou see it, forgotten, unknown,
Oh! hallow that name with the dew of a tear!
Far sweeter the tribute, than tale-telling stone,
Which Pride, or Ambition, or Folly might rear.
J. H. B.
SONNETS: BY 'QUINCE.'
ABSENCE.
EARTH owns no smiles in absence of the sun;
Dark mourns the night when chambered is her queen;
The sweet flowers wither when Sol's spring is run;
Nor fairies dance but in chaste Luna's sheen.
Nothing but mourns from that it loves apart:
The lone bird sorrows from its sever'd mate;
And pines and withers the fond human heart,
When those it worshipped leave it desolate.
Thus in earth, night, flower, bird, creation's lord,
The sweetest, dearest bond, is sympathy;
Which sever'd, snaps the close-entwining chord
That all things binds in some fond unity.
Life-killing Absence, 'neath thy curse I pine,
Affection's Upas tree--that name be thine!
AGE.
AGE is the winter season of man's life,
The last dim flickering of the taper's ray;
'Tis the last act that closes earthly strife;
The latest character that he may play.
Yet here, i' the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With rev'rend hair, white as the drifted snow,
We madly mock our fate--play the buffoon,
And self-deceiving to the dark grave go.
The withered leaf clings latest to the tree,
Hope vainly builds itself on dark despair;
The shipwreck'd mariner buffets with the sea,
And vainly strives for life, though death be there.
So age, with palsied hand, to life doth cling
Most fondly, as from age life taketh wing.
AMBITION.
THE waxen wing that strove t' empierce the sky,
The daring hand that fired the Ephesian dome,
The Spirit's strife with God for mastery,
Which made the burning depths of hell its home,
Were fell Ambition's. In that one word lies
All that is greatly good or greatly ill;
'Tis best of friends--'tis worst of enemies--
Honey and poison it doth both distil.
With vice enleagued, it sinks our spirit's down,
Till lust and murder gorge their fierce desire;
But virtue weaves for it a deathless crown,
Which teaches noble natures to aspire.
Honor and fame soar on its wingéd breath,
Hurl'd in its downward flight lie sin and death.
AUTHORS.
AUTHORS are beings only half of earth--
They own a world apart from other men:
A glorious realm! giv'n by their fancy birth,
Subjects, a sceptre, and a diadem;
A fairy land of thought, in which sweet bliss
Would run to ecstasy in wild delight,
But that stern Nature drags them back to this,
With call imperious, which they may not slight:
And then they traffic with their thoughts to live,
And coin their laboring brains for daily bread:
Getting scant dross for the rich ore they give,
While often with the gift their life is shed:
And thus they die, leaving behind a name,
At once their country's glory and her shame.
A FEW THOUGHTS ON FUNERALS.
----''Tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathéd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death!'
SHAKSPEARE.
IN my morning walk in the country, the other day, a common poor-house
hearse passed me. It was a long box, painted black, covered with a
scant piece of dark cloth of some kind, hardly large enough to allow
the tassels to dangle down its sides, in imitation of more gorgeous
drapery. The little door at the hind-end of it looked as if it might
open into the infernal regions. This dismal box, mounted nakedly
on four frail wheels, was drawn along by a pale, lean horse, and
the driver sat severe in his shirt-sleeves and tattered hat, like
some desperate blackguard driving a night-cart. As he passed the
cottages on the road-side, I observed anxious faces following its
course; and particularly that of one poor woman, with an infant in
her arms, whose poverty-stricken cheek was blanched still whiter,
for the moment, as she contemplated the probable picture of her own
humble obsequies. I imagined her as thinking of the time when she
should leave her unprotected little ones to the chance charities of
a heartless world--heartless to her--and herself be carried in this
same vehicle to a stoneless grave.
I felt indignant at this unnecessary harrowing up of her feelings,
and my own were not pleasantly affected; and then, and since, I have
thought much upon the subject of funerals.
What moral purpose is answered in thus thrusting the thought of
their dissolution upon the poor and miserable, amid their labors
and wants? Is not life hard enough for them to bear, burthened with
hunger and no food, with ignorant vice--habitual and early inculcated
vice--which, in their view, is almost virtue, and certainly, is
second nature? Must they turn horror-struck from the neglect, even to
the remains of the poor beings who, like themselves, are not freed by
death from the selfish contempt of their fellows? Why must the bell
send forth those tones that seem to the sick and weak nerves of the
feeble like a summons from the grave? Why this sickening array in
musty black, this dressing up a banquet for the worm, with terrific
ceremonies? Death is less awful to all, on account of the departure
from life, than because of the black badges, the dark and gloomy
retinue, that are associated in our minds with the event of it. When
we think of dying, it is of being put in a coffin, the white shroud
setting off, in loathsome contrast, the yellow palor of the face, and
the indescribable expression of the human features without a soul;
and then comes the black carriage, and that decaying pall, which has
served so many like occasions, and which will itself, though with
the sexton it looks as if it had a terrestrial immortality, finally
perish, and be cast aside to rot, but with no ostentatious funeral.
The motion, too, of this procession is slow; and our torture is felt
as lingering and fated. At last, we rest in the dark earth--we are
lonely and out of hearing--pinioned for ever! It would seem that
human ingenuity had contrived a tissue of horrors to close the
troubles of a human life.
Death is serious business, to be sure, and our passage through its
shadows is a fearful journey. Yet it is an entrance to immortality.
The entrance to magnificent temples, and brilliant theatres, is
through dark portals--necessarily dark to be firm; and nothing human
can add to the solemnity of death; but we may, by our sympathetic
attempts at the terrible-sublime, change what is solemn and salutary
into a source of disgust and aversion.
We come into a world of care, and want, and affliction, and our
unconscious ears are struck with sounds of rejoicing. We enter upon
an immortality of bliss, and around the self-same body there are
wailing and lamentation.
I was perplexing myself for a solution of this strange inconsistency
in our customs, when chancing to meet a philosophic friend, he
relieved my perplexity, by saying: 'Oh, people are afraid of going
to hell, and that their friends are gone there, and so they make all
this sad array. They usher their relations into eternity--for the
soul in our associations ever accompanies the body--as criminals are
led to execution. Their awful fate thus finds an awful language.'
If these be the true reasons of the gloomy ceremonies of death,
it is devoutly to be hoped that the fears of this result may in
some cases be unfounded. We do not wish to controvert the idea of
rewards and punishments hereafter, for they belong to the nature of
the soul, whether in this world or in the next; but it seems rather
extra-judicial, a plain case of supererogation, to bestow upon _all_
the marks of divine justice before hand.
In case of executions in human justice, if they take place _in
terrorem_, to awe the multitude into obedience, it is very well to
dress the hangman in the probable habiliments of the devil, and to
ride the culprit through the streets as a show, upon a pine coffin.
There should be as little romance, as few flowers in his way, as
possible. It is gross inconsistency, certainly, to introduce any
softening circumstances into public executions, as well as mistaken
mercy to the passions of men. In saying this, we suppose it is not
pretended that the execution of human beings is authorized upon any
other ground than support of the law. To execute privately, or with
as little terror as possible, is to enact over again the trick of
Nero to ensnare his subjects: for surely, the penalty is part of the
law, and the execution of it should be as open as the condemnation,
or the people are robbed of these horrid privileges of assisting
their virtue.
But to return to our subject. We dislike our funerals, because they
seem to be one of the remains of the many attempts to subject the
people to the control of the priests. And now, we blush to write
it, we fear the influence of the clergy in some churches is mainly
dependent upon a certain idea people have, that their future destiny
is somewhat in such hands. It is a poor compliment to our religious
nature, to suppose we are most fit to give our hearts to God, when
under an abject fear of death; that
'When thoughts of the last bitter hour
Come like a blight over our spirits,
And the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make us to shudder, and grow sick at heart,'
we are best prepared to pay that voluntary homage, to feel that free
devotion, which can alone be pleasing to our Creator.
Funeral occasions have been hailed as special seasons for operating
upon the nervousness of people. Every poor body is dragged about, and
exposed to the public gaze, in the church or meetinghouse, upon the
same principle that a recruiting sergeant drums his gaily-attired
soldiers about a town. Public men, the property of the people,
should be buried publicly, for all are supposed to sympathize in
the loss; all feel a personal interest in the ceremony. But it is
otherwise with private individuals. Then it is death we see, and not
a departed friend. But a still stronger objection lies against this
display of corpses, and these _very_ public burials, and it is, that
the poor are encouraged to indulge in mourning apparel, which they
often can ill afford. The salutary terror upon the wicked is more
than counteracted by the want and criminal shifts induced by this
unnecessary extravagance.
Talk with any man who is not a slave to custom, upon the subject of
burning the dead, and he will, with few exceptions, express a liking
of it for his own body. If we retain the portraits of our friends
as sacred treasures, nay, if a lock of hair, even, be held as a
precious memento, why not retain their very ashes embalmed in fire?
Who that has beheld the play of Virginius--we are glad to connect a
fine feeling with the stage--and seen the urn of Virginia, has not
felt a thrill of pleasure that so much is left to the fond father to
hug to his bosom? (How Cooper played Virginius!) Who has not felt a
wish, then, to have the ashes of some departed friend, to embrace in
like manner in his arms? Suppose a father, a brother, a husband, a
lover, to return, after long absence; death has cut down his darling
child, his saint-like sister, his wife; perhaps, what is hardest to
bear, because never thought of as possible, his only love; perhaps
pestilence has swept away all of these. He is pointed to their
graves, or to the common tomb of his kindred. A slight mound of earth
is all that is left him to associate with the loved object; or what
is worse, he goes to the tomb, and there is no charm in his sorrow
to heal itself, for it has lost all individuality: he looks upon an
array of coffins, and they all look alike; he cannot separate his
own sacred sorrow from the intrusive presence of that of others. But
place in his hands the ashes of those he loved; let him be alone with
the embalmed dead. He will kiss the cold urn; imagination will place
the cold corse in his arms, and he will take his last embrace, and
serenity will begin to dawn upon his mind. As he replaces the urn in
its sacred deposit, he will feel, 'She is not dead, but sleepeth!'
The headless trunk of the great Pompey was not left to decay upon the
sea-shore. How it rejoices us to learn, after following his fortunes
to his unhappy death, when he is cast upon the sand, neglected and
uncoffined, that his faithful slave gathered a small pile of wood,
and burned his body, carefully collecting the ashes. As soon as the
task is done, Pompey is great again; and we close his history with
satisfaction, for he is buried with affection. Far better is such a
fate, than the freezing ceremony of a modern funeral.
J. N. B.
YESTERDAY.
I.
AND where are now thy sunny hours,
Fond man, which shone but yesterday?
Perchance thy path was rich with flowers,
That glittered in thy joyous way;
Perchance the Day's pure eye of light
Was one interminable smile,
And visions eloquent and bright
Stirred thy wrapt soul with bliss the while.
II.
And where are they? The sweeping tide
Of onward and resistless time
Is strewn with wrecks of baffled pride--
Conceptions high, and hopes sublime!
Dreams, that have shed upon the earth
The gladdening hues of paradise;
Their charm is flown, hush'd is their mirth,
And all their kindling exstasies.
III.
It may be that the heart was sad,
And wrapt in sorrow, yesterday;
Perchance the scenes that once could glad
Thy spirit, passed like spring away;
That on the waste of years was seen
Nought that might cheer the gloomy breast--
No sunny spot of vernal green,
On which the thoughtful eye could rest.
IV.
What recks it now, that then a cloud
Was dimly brooding o'er thy head;
That to the tempest thou hast bowed,
When joy's ephemeral beams had fled?
That day hath gone--its care is o'er--
Its shadows all have passed away;
Time's wave hath murmur'd by that shore,
And round thee now is but to-day.
V.
Then what is yesterday?--a breath,
A whisper of the summer breeze;
A thing of silent birth and death,
Colored by man's fond sympathies.
It had its buds--they all are gone;
Its fears--but they are now no more:
Its hopes--but they were quickly flown--
Its pure delights--and they are o'er!
VI.
Look ye not back, save but to glean
From the deep memories of the past--
From the illusions of each scene,
The thought that time is flying fast:
That VANITY on things of earth
Is by a pointed diamond writ;
Its hours of wild and transient mirth
Are midnight skies by meteors lit.
VII.
Oh, what is yesterday?--a ray
Which burst on being's troubled wave;
Which passed like a swift thought away
Unto eternity's wide grave!
A star whose light hath left the sky--
But for a little moment given;
Scarce gleaming on the gladdened eye,
Ere it hath left the vault of heaven!
VIII.