Hushed were the winds, the clouds rolled back, And on that lonely dell, Revealing clear a blood-marked track, The cold, pale starlight fell; Ah! light the old man did not lack, His handiwork to tell.
He had loved full long and well the youth, So cold and quiet lain, But what to him was love or truth? For bitter words and vain Had passed that day; and now, in sooth, He ne'er might love again!
Morn came; and on one fearful bed, In that dark, lonely wild, With sere brown leaves of autumn spread, The sun looked down and smiled; But there they lay, stiff, cold, and dead-- The old man and his child!
THERE are places, and there are passages, in life that keep bright in all weathers. They improve just in proportion as we have been able to contrast them with others, and change, if at all, only to come a little closer to the heart. I beg Tom Moore's pardon; he says something about 'growing brighter and brighter,' but he was thinking of a first kiss, or a last one, which perhaps hangs the most; or at the moment of that writing, he may have had a side-thought for the choice wine that smoothed his inspiration; all which are very charming, bewitching, and all-possessing to those who affect that sort of thing----But I was only thinking of St. Augustine, East-Florida. I may live to feel a stronger pull at the heart; but so far, St. Augustine is my particular passion. And what the deuce is the reason? It is not my home, for my first step 'forward and back' was in the face of a cold wind; high mountains on either side, and the only gap in them opened to the north-east. All winds north of the sun's track had to bend around and come in by that gap. Of course, every thing in that country has a north-east cast, and perhaps this is why I love the south, for it's hard loving any thing that is forced upon you with the pertinacity of a high wind. Men running after hats, women holding their skirts down, toppling chimneys, and faces tied up with the tooth-ache, prevail in all that region; wherefore it is, that those who cannot learn to love the place, for these privileges, will (if only to be obstinate) love so much the more the warm sun and air of the south, and the quiet, the repose, the opiate of the southern climate. But I do not mean the south-west. I was once crossing the Alleghanies, on my way to the south-west, when, fortunately, it occurred to me that the south-west was only a north-easterly continuation, and I immediately struck off at right angles, or rather left angles, and landed in Florida. That, Sir, is the exact spot, where the hat takes care of itself.