"When I sailed: when I sailed."
_Ballad of Robert Kidd._
With the opening of spring my heart opens. My fancy expands with the
flowers, and, as I walk down town in the May morning, toward the dingy
counting-room, and the old routine, you would hardly believe that I
would not change my feelings for those of the French Barber-Poet
Jasmin, who goes, merrily singing, to his shaving and hair cutting.
The first warm day puts the whole winter to flight. It stands in front
of the summer like a young warrior before his host, and,
single-handed, defies and destroys its remorseless enemy.
I throw up the chamber-window, to breathe the earliest breath of
summer.
"The brave young David has hit old Goliath square in the forehead this
morning," I say to Prue, as I lean out, and bathe in the soft
sunshine.
My wife is tying on her cap at the glass, and, not quite disentangled
from her dreams, thinks I am speaking of a street-brawl, and replies
that I had better take care of my own head.
"Since you have charge of my heart, I suppose," I answer gaily,
turning round to make her one of Titbottom's bows.
"But seriously, Prue, how is it about my summer wardrobe?"
Prue smiles, and tells me we shall have two months of winter yet, and
I had better stop and order some more coal as I go down town.
"Winter--coal!"
Then I step back, and taking her by the arm, lead her to the window. I
throw it open even wider than before. The sunlight streams on the
great church-towers opposite, and the trees in the neighboring square
glisten, and wave their boughs gently, as if they would burst into
leaf before dinner. Cages are hung at the open chamber-windows in the
street, and the birds, touched into song by the sun, make Memnon
true. Prue's purple and white hyacinths are in full blossom, and
perfume the warm air, so that the canaries and the mocking birds are
no longer aliens in the city streets, but are once more swinging in
their spicy native groves.
A soft wind blows upon us as we stand, listening and looking. Cuba and
the Tropics are in the air. The drowsy tune of a hand-organ rises
from the square, and Italy comes singing in upon the sound. My
triumphant eyes meet Prue's. They are full of sweetness and spring.
"What do you think of the summer-wardrobe now?" I ask, and we go down
to breakfast.
But the air has magic in it, and I do not cease to dream. If I meet
Charles, who is bound for Alabama, or John, who sails for Savannah,
with a trunk full of white jackets, I do not say to them, as their
other friends say,--
"Happy travellers, who cut March and April out of the dismal year!"
I do not envy them. They will be sea-sick on the way. The southern
winds will blow all the water out of the rivers, and, desolately
stranded upon mud, they will relieve the tedium of the interval by
tying with large ropes a young gentleman raving with delirium
tremens. They will hurry along, appalled by forests blazing in the
windy night; and, housed in a bad inn, they will find themselves
anxiously asking, "Are the cars punctual in leaving?"--grimly sure
that impatient travellers find all conveyances too slow. The
travellers are very warm, indeed, even in March and April,--but Prue
doubts if it is altogether the effect of the southern climate.
Why should they go to the South? If they only wait a little, the South
will come to them. Savannah arrives in April; Florida in May; Cuba and
the Gulf come in with June, and the full splendor of the Tropics
burns through July and August. Sitting upon the earth, do we not
glide by all the constellations, all the awful stars? Does not the
flash of Orion's scimeter dazzle as we pass? Do we not hear, as we
gaze in hushed midnights, the music of the Lyre; are we not throned
with Cassiopea; do we not play with the tangles of Berenice's hair, as
we sail, as we sail?
When Christopher told me that he was going to Italy, I went into
Bourne's conservatory, saw a magnolia, and so reached Italy before
him. Can Christopher bring Italy home? But I brought to Prue a branch
of magnolia blossoms, with Mr. Bourne's kindest regards, and she put
them upon her table, and our little house smelled of Italy for a week
afterward. The incident developed Prue's Italian tastes, which I had
not suspected to be so strong. I found her looking very often at the
magnolias; even holding them in her hand, and standing before the
table with a pensive air. I suppose she was thinking of Beatrice
Cenci, or of Tasso and Leonora, or of the wife of Marino Faliero, or
of some other of those sad old Italian tales of love and woe So easily
Prue went to Italy!
Thus the spring comes in my heart as well as in the air, and leaps
along my veins as well as through the trees. I immediately travel. An
orange takes me to Sorrento, and roses, when they blow, to Pæstum.
The camelias in Aurelia's hair bring Brazil into the happy rooms she
treads, and she takes me to South America as she goes to dinner. The
pearls upon her neck make me free of the Persian gulf. Upon her
shawl, like the Arabian prince upon his carpet, I am transported to
the vales of Cashmere; and thus, as I daily walk in the bright spring
days, I go round the world.
But the season wakes a finer longing, a desire that could only be
satisfied if the pavilions of the clouds were real, and I could stroll
among the towering splendors of a sultry spring evening. Ah! if I
could leap those flaming battlements that glow along the west--if I
could tread those cool, dewy, serene isles of sunset, and sink with
them in the sea of stars.