Ten Books on Architecture, Vitruvius [great novels to read .txt] 📗
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Let us once again the mysteries of that haunted room explore—
Hear once more that friend infernal—that grim visiter nocturnal!
Earnestly we long to learn all that befalls that bird of yore:
Oh, then, tell us something more!
To that deep sepulchral utterance like the oracles of yore?
In the same place is he sitting? Does he give no sign of quitting?
Is he conscious or unwitting when he answers "Nevermore?"
Tell me truly, I implore!
Knows he never need of slumber, fainting forces to restore?
Stoops he not to eating—drinking? Is he never caught in winking
When his demon eyes are sinking deep into thy bosom's core?
Tell me this, if nothing more!
Did he not give friendly answer when thy speech friend's meaning bore?
When thy sad tones were revealing all the loneness o'er thee stealing,
Did he not, with fellow-feeling, vow to leave thee nevermore?
Keeps he not that oath he swore?
To forget some matchless mate, beloved yet lost for evermore.
He hath donned a suit of mourning, and, all earthly comfort scorning,
Broods alone from night till morning. By thy memories Lenore,
Oh, renounce him nevermore.
Ah, perhaps the world has scorned him for that luckless hue he wore,
No such narrow prejudices can he know whom Love possesses—
Whom one spark of Freedom blesses. Do not spurn him from thy door
Lest Love enter nevermore!
From that much-mourned matchless maiden—from that loved and lost Lenore.
In a pilgrim's garb disguiséd, angels are but seldom prizéd:
Of this fact at length adviséd, were it strange if he forswore
The false world for evermore?
Wildered wanderer from the eternal lightning on Time's stormy shore!
Tell us of that world of wonder—of that famed unfading "Yonder!"
Rend—oh rend the veil asunder! Let our doubts and fears be o'er!
Doth he answer—"Nevermore?"
When the night-bird sings in her lonely bower,
When beetle and cricket and bat are awake,
And the will-o'-the-wisp is at play in the brake,
Oh then do we gather, all frolic and glee,
We gay little elfins, beneath the old tree!
And brightly we hover on silvery wing,
And dip our small cups in the whispering spring,
While the night-wind lifts lightly our shining hair,
And music and fragrance are on the air!
Oh who is so merry, so happy as we,
We gay little elfins, beneath the old tree?
Whose windows looking o'er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and day.
The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,—
The light-house,—the dismantled fort,—
The wooden houses, quaint and brown.
Descending filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
Our voices only broke the gloom.
Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead.
When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
And never can be one again.
That words are powerless to express,
And leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.
Had something strange, I could but mark;
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
As suddenly, from out the fire
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
The flames would leap, and then expire.
We thought of wrecks upon the main,—
Of ships dismasted, that were hailed,
And sent no answer back again.
The ocean, roaring up the beach—
The gusty blast—the bickering flames—
All mingled vaguely in our speech;
Of fancies floating through the brain—
The long lost ventures of the heart,
That send no answers back again.
They were indeed too much akin—
The drift-wood fire without that burned,
The thoughts that burned and glowed within.
And tell your gladness to the listening skies;
Come out forgetful of the week's turmoil,
From halls of mirth and iron gates of toil;
Come forth, come forth, and let your joy increase
Till one loud pæan hails the day of peace.
Sing trembling age, ye youths and maidens sing;
Ring ye sweet chimes, from every belfry ring;
Pour the grand anthem till it soars and swells
And heaven seems full of great celestial bells!
Behold the Morn from orient chambers glide,
With shining footsteps, like a radiant bride;
The gladdened brooks proclaim her on the hills
And every grove with choral welcome thrills.
Rise ye sweet maidens, strew her path with flowers,
With sacred lilies from your virgin bowers;
Go youths and meet her with your olive boughs,
Go age and greet her with your holiest vows;—
See where she comes, her hands upon her breast
The sainted Sabbath comes, smiling the world to rest.
In noisome cities, whence Thy sacred works
Are ever banished from my sight; where lurks
Each baleful passion man has ever felt.
Here human skill is shown in shutting out
All sight and thought of things that God hath made;
Lest He should share the constant homage paid
To Mammon, in the hearts of men devout.
O, it was fit that he [2] upon whose head
Weighed his own brother's blood, and God's dread curse,
Should build a city, when he trembling fled
Far from his Maker's face. And which was worse,
The murder—or departing far from Thee?
Great God! impute not either sin to me!
THE CRUISE OF THE GENTILE. BY FRANK BYRNE.
When I came on deck the next morning, I found that the mate's prediction had proved true. A norther, as it is called in the Gulf, was blowing great guns, and the ship, heading westward, was rolling in the trough of the tremendous sea almost yard-arm under, with only close-reefed top-sails and storm foretopmast-staysail set. We wallowed along in this manner all day, for we were lying our course, and the skipper was in a hurry to bring our protracted voyage to an end. We made much more leeway than we reckoned, however, for just at sunset the high mountains of Cuba were to be seen faintly looming up on the southern horizon.
"Brace up, there," ordered Captain Smith, when this fact was announced. "Luff, my man, luff, and keep her as near it as you may."
The old ship came up on the wind, presenting her front most gallantly to the angry waves, which came on as high as the fore-yard, threatening to engulf her in the watery abyss. We took in all our top-sails but the main, and with that, a reefed fore-sail and foretopmast-staysail set, the old ship shook her feathers, and prepared herself for an all-night job of clawing off an iron-bound lee-shore.
The hatches were battened down, the fore-scuttle and companion closed, and all the crew collected aft on deck and lashed themselves to some substantial object, to save themselves from being washed over-board by the immense seas which constantly broke over our bows, and deluged our decks. The night closed down darker than pitch, and the wind increased in violence. I have scarcely ever seen so dismal a night. Except when at intervals a blinding flash of lightning illumined the whole heavens and the broad expanse of raging ocean, we could distinguish nothing at a yard's distance, save the glimmer of the phosphorescent binacle light, and the gleam which flashed from the culmination of the huge seas ahead of us, resembling an extended cloud of dull fire suspended in the air, and blown toward us, till, with a noise like thunder, as it dashed against the bows, it vanished, and another misty fire was to be seen as if rising out of some dark gulf. At midnight it blew a hurricane; the wind cut off the tops of the waves, and the air was full of spray and salt, driving like sleet or snow before the wintry storm. I had ensconced myself under the lee of the bulwarks, among a knot of select weather-beaten tars, and notwithstanding the danger we were in, I could not help being somewhat amused at their conversation.
"Jack," said Teddy, an Irish sailor, to the ship's oracle, old Jack Reeves, "do you think the sticks will howld?"
"If they don't," growled Jack, "you'll be in h—l before morning."
"Och, Jasus!" was the only reply to this consolatory remark—and there was an uneasy nestling throughout the whole circle.
"Well, Frank," said old Jack to me, after a most terrific gust, during which every man held his breath to listen whether there might not be a snapping of the spars, "well, Frank, what do you think of that?"
"Why, I think I never saw it blow so hard before," I replied. "'Tisn't a very comfortable berth, this of ours, with a lee-shore not thirty miles off, and a hurricane blowing."
"No danger at all, Frank, if them spars only stay by us—and I guess they will. They're good sticks, and Mr. Brewster is too good a boatswain not to have 'em well supported. The old Gentile is a dreadful critter for eatin' to windward in any weather that God ever sent; but I hope you don't call this blowin' hard, do you? Why, I've seen it blow so that two men, one on each side of the skipper, couldn't keep his hair on his head, and they had to
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