No matter when: enough that moon and stars
Shone as they shine to-night;
That tales of desolation and of wars,
Of struggle and of blight,
Like the low mutterings of a troublous dream,
Flitting across the still and peaceful night,
Glanced o'er my heart and thine!
The music of the pine--
The silver, witching stream
An impress deeper, left upon our hearts.
The murmuring song fell soothing on our ears;
The silver stream with beauty charmed our eyes;
And so we bade the tales of spears and darts,
With all their train of agony and tears,
Go to the winds; and leave us golden skies,
And brooks, and reaching hills, and 'lovers' leaps,'
With bold and rugged steeps;
And all the romance of 'enchanting scenes;'
For thou and I were--midway in our teens!
Once! breathe it softly, softly, O my heart!
And thou--my waiting one!
My unforgotten! wheresoe'er thou art--
My heart's unfading sun!
My guiding light beneath the storms and clouds;
My solace when the woods and hills are lone;
And the dark pine breathes out its saddening moan;
And when the night the misty mountain shrouds,
Breathe it still gently, wheresoe'er thou art,
Light of my fainting heart!
'Once!' stop, O wheels of time! upon the word!
Gather it in a knot of silken blue;
Bind it all fondly--with a nuptial cord,
Unto the widowed present! bear it through
All change--all chance! Love, friendship! hold it fast:
Let it no more be wedded to the past!
And human hearts through all life's checkered scenes,
Shall ever tarry 'midway in their teens'!
We find the following paragraph floating through our exchanges:
'The venerable John J. Crittenden was in town to-day, preparing to
start for home. I am sorry to hear that he speaks, to intimate
friends, very despondingly of our future prospects. This is not as
it should be. Public men, occupying seats in the high councils of
the nation, ought never to despair of the republic.'--_N. Y.
Letter._
And _how_ else could the venerable compromiser be expected to speak? The
man who dallies with death and destruction to the last moment--who is
only anxious to yield to an insolent and unscrupulous foe, is just the
one of all others who, when the struggle comes, wails and howls despair.
Their hearts were always with Southern aristocracy, these venerable
Sweetsops who would have gladly compromised Northern dignity and
manliness down to its very face in the mud before the devil himself, and
then have explained their course by referring to Christian example, as
though Christ himself had not dared death time and again, and finally
suffered it as an example that there _is_ a limit where it is _better_
to perish than that evil should prevail over the truth.
They are all Southrons at heart. Did not the venerable John Bell, only
the other day, when he was offered a safe conduct by Federal forces out
of Dixie, prefer to remain there? Of course he did. _Ubi bene ibi
patria._ We feel and know instinctively where they belong and what they
are, these men whose inordinate vanity of respectability so far
outweighs their sense of truth, honor, and manhood. Very well taken off
are they in a happy hit--author to us unknown--setting forth what they
would have agreed on in convention had they lived at the time of the
first murder:
'_Resolved_, That we are equally opposed to the pretended piety and
evident fanaticism of Abel and the authorized violence of the
high-toned and chivalrous Cain.
'_Resolved_, That the 'Ultras' who are clamoring for the hanging of
Cain, which would only exasperate him, desire to destroy the
domestic happiness and peace of the family, and have no other
purpose in view.
'_Resolved_, That we are in favor of punishing both parties, and
invite all conservative men to unite with us in frowning down this
whole business.
'_Resolved_, That nobody has a right to provoke murder, and if Abel
had exhibited less fanaticism this one never would have occurred.'
* * * * *
_Apropos_ of which subject and which men, we are reminded of a rough and
ready poem by William Higgins: