The shadows lay along Broadway, 'Twas near the twilight tide-- And slowly there a lady fair Was walking in her pride. Alone walked she; but, viewlessly, Walked spirits at her side.
Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, And Honor charmed the air; And all astir looked kind on her, And called her good as fair-- For all God ever gave to her She kept with chary care.
She kept with care her beauties rare From lovers warm and true; For her heart was cold to all but gold, And the rich came not to woo, But honored well are charms to sell, If priests the selling do.
Now walking there was one more fair-- A slight girl, lily-pale; And she had unseen company To make the spirit quail-- 'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn, And nothing could avail.
No mercy now can clear her brow For this world's peace to pray; For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, Her woman's heart gave way! But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven By man is cursed alway.
Here we are, then, in the "Swallow's Cave." The floor descends by a gentle declivity to the sea, and from the long dark cleft stretching outward you look forth upon the Atlantic--the shore of Ireland the first _terra firma_ in the path of your eye. Here is a dark pool, left by the retreating tide for a refrigerator; and with the champagne in the midst we will recline about it like the soft Asiatics of whom we learned pleasure in the East, and drink to the small-featured and purple-lipped "Mignons" of Syria--those fine-limbed and fiery slaves adorable as peris, and by turns languishing and stormy, whom you buy for a pinch of piastres (say 5L 5s.) in sunny Damascus. Your drowsy Circassian, faint and dreamy, or your crockery Georgian--fit dolls for the sensual Turk--is, to him who would buy _soul_, dear at a penny the hecatomb.
We recline, as it were, in an ebon pyramid with a hundred feet of floor and sixty of wall, and the fourth side open to the sky. The light comes in mellow and dim, and the sharp edges of the rocky portal seem let into the pearly heaven. The tide is at half-ebb, and the advancing and retreating waves, which at first just lifted the fringe of crimson dulse at the lip of the cavern, now dash their spray-pearls on the rock below, the "tenth" surge alone rallying as if in scorn of its retreating fellow, and, like the chieftain of Culloden Moor, rushing back singly to the contest. And now that the waters reach the entrance no more, come forward and look on the sea! The swell lifts! Would you not think the bases of the earth rising beneath it? It falls! Would you not think the foundation of the deep had given way? A plain, broad enough for the navies of the world to ride at large, heaves up evenly and steadily as if it would lie against the sky, rests a moment spell-bound in its place, and falls again as far--the respiration of a sleeping child not more regular and full of slumber. It is only on the shore that it chafes. Blessed emblem! it is at peace with itself! The rocks war with a nature so unlike their own, and the hoarse din of their border onsets resounds through the caverns they have rent open; but beyond, in the calm bosom of the ocean, what heavenly dignity! what godlike unconsciousness of alarm! I did not think we should stumble on such a moral in the cave!