By CHARLOTTE E. LEAVITT.
The clock strikes four;
Glitter the stars, the waning moon hangs low,
The breath of night is chill, as soft I go
From out the door.
In all the air
The living silence of the morning broods,
So deep, so still, that every sound intrudes
Discordant there.
A nameless change
Makes unfamiliar all the well-known street,
And mocking echoes ’neath my stealthy feet,
Wake weird and strange.
On either hand,
Mysterious, with Argus eyes shut fast,
Dumb and unchanging as a hopeless past,
The houses stand.
Athwart the sky
Blazes the comet with its streaming hair,
Fleeing through space in passionate despair,
As doom were nigh;
While grand and grim,
Warlike Orion from his gleaming height
Dares this intruder, in its awful might,
To cope with him.
Intent I gaze:
And, half unheeded, swells through heart and brain
A solemn wonder that is almost pain—
A song of praise.
Lo! far away,
The first faint flashes of the coming morn
Herald triumphantly a king new-born,
A golden day.
* * * * *
DR. THOMAS SHERIDAN, who lost all chance of further preferment by
choosing an unlucky text on the anniversary of George I, was an
excellent scholar, but an indolent, good-natured, careless man. He was
slovenly, indigent, and cheerful; ill-starred, improvident, but not
unhappy. He was a fiddler, punster, quibbler, and wit; not a day passed
without a rebus, a madrigal, or an anagram, and his pen and fiddlestick
were in continual motion. Of the state of his house, at Quilca, his
intimate friend and choice companion has left us the following lively
picture: