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About Southern literary gazette. (Athens, Ga.) 1848-1849 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 30, 1848)
SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE: (!. RICHARDS, EDITOR. ©riginal |Joctrii. For the Southern Literary Gazette. OH. WEEP FOR THE LOVELY ! IN MEMORY OF MARY* by WILLIAM C . RICHARDS. Oh weep ! for the lovely lies low in the tomb— In the morning oflife and in beauty's fresh bloom, Kre a tint of the rose on her cheek had grown pale, Or the bright “ silver cord ” was beginning to fail. Oh, weep! foi the cold hand of Death has been laid On a form where the graces were sweetly display’d; A bright eye, that beam’d with affection, is sealed, And Life’s crimson tide is forever congealed. ihreet lips, that ne’er opened in anger or pride, Are mute, and forever, now Mary hath died ; A heart that ne’er throbb’d with unkindness or strife, Shall beat nevermore to the music of life! Like a leaf on a torrent borne hastily by, Like a star that hath gone from its place in the sky, ,<he hath vanish’d as quickly, and darkness alone, Fills the home where the charm of her loveliness shone! From that home, and those hearts in whose love she was blest, She passed, as a bride, to a true, manly breast: Their vows on the altar with “Farewells” were blent, And far from the homes oftheir childhood they went. AH buoyant with hope and elated with love, Through still shifting scenes of enjoyment they move ; Hut the arrows of Death at a “ shining mark ” fly— A ml she, amid strangers, must lie down and die. Oh, poor stricken heart! with thy anguish alone— Have her beautiful form whence the spirit had flown — llow feeble is language to reach thy despair— God help thee ! and pity thy agony there ! Clod help thee, poor sufferer! while baek to her home, Thou bearest the lost who if living—bad come To be folded with rapture to hearts now as dead To joy, as thy bride in her cold narrow bed. Oh, weep ! for sad tears are fit tribute to pay To beauty, and goodness and truth passed away : \ et weep not as those who must sorrow in vain, For in mansions of bliss ye shall meet her again ! Athens Sept. 13. 1848. * Mary, thedaughter of Rev. Samuel Anthony, wae mar ried on the 3th of Aitguet, to Mr. Rufus L. Moss. Whfle ’ihseat on the bridal tour, she was seized with an illness ibat terminated her life almost suddenly—in the nine teenth year of her age. The Editor of the “ Gazette” had sufficient personal acquaintance with the departed to know and appreciate her loveliness, and the above verses were a spontaneous tribute of Ills heart to her memory. They are published here in accordance with the wish of the be reaved father and friends of the departed Mary. For the Southern Literary Gazette. MARTYRDOM OF THE PATRIOTS, [ITALY, 1830.] Ay, t,o the rack, the scaffold and chain— To all your cruel tortures, bear them on, ‘ie foul and coward hangmen—but in vain ! L? cannot touch the glory they have won— And win—thus yielding up the martyr’s breath lor Freedom ! Their’s is a triumphant death! A sacred pledge from Nature that her womb Btill keeps some holy fires that shall burst Lven from the reeking relics of their doom, As glorious, ay, more glorious than the first ! And in your cells of carnage—in your sfreets — I hat reek with blood and stream with winding sheets, Jn which all vainly have your felon hands Striven to strangle infant Liberty. A bloody retribution Heaven demands — And the dread hour of vengeance shall we see, When, in his might, the Giant now in chains, rapt in his thousand terrors, o’er ye stands — And on the shrines—the hearthstones of the free, The slumbering of long ages—snaps bis bands, Avenging in the black blood of the oppressor, His limbs’ long thraldom, his free nature’s stains! ■bhall such as ye be Liberty’s confessor, And, at your feet, shall men be taught to bow long established schools of slavery,— i e ld up the richest gem in nature’s bravery,— 2ln illustrated iUccklg Journal of J3ellcs-Ccttres, Science and tl)e 2trts. Her spirit—God’s own spirit!—while they vow Allegiance to your rank and monstrous knavery 1 Ye deadly charlatans, who school the heart To its perdition,—crushing Heaven’s goodlie t guise, Throned in man’s form, andspeaking in his spirit, With the fell chains of soul which ye devise:— In very recklessness of crime, deny To that pure essence, of Heaven’s self, a part, Those high estates, God-chartered in the sky, And that first boon—great birth-right!—all in herit ! Ye slaughter,—do ye triumph ! Ask your chains \ e sodom-hearted butchers! Turn your eyes, Where reeks yon bloody scaffold ; and the pains, Ungroan’d, of a true martyr, as he die3, Attest the damned folly of your crime, Now at its carnival! Ilis spirit flies, Unscathed by all your fires, through every clime, Into the world’s wide bosom ! Men arise, . Prompt at its call, and principled to strike, The tyrant and the tyranny alike ! Voices, against ye, speak in all your deeds, And cry to Heaven, arm Earth, and kindle Hell! A thousand freemen, where one martyr bleeds, Spring from his place of death, and make his knell The chorus of a Jubilee. Your streets, — Where freedom, robed in grandeur, in long hours, Held her proud sway, but now, where all she meets, Are chains, and a fierce fury that devours ; Upon the high walls of your palaee towers, The spatter’d brains of the slain cilizen, The fresh blood sprinkled marble, and the crie3 Os spine-distorted, and limb riven men, Pound on the revolving wheel, or in cold den. Dying of thirst and famine—have their tongue, Whose accent elemental—wing’d, still flies, Crying for vengeance on the infernal W'rong! And in the bloody drops, that, from their brows, Your racks wring forth in life’s last agonies ; The carnage of your foul and rotten house, Whose scarlet is a name for infamy,— Freedom hath put a tongue, that still must cry, W i!h bitter taunt, unto each passer by,— Point to the chains he wears,—the blood thus spilt, The guilt of looking quietly on guilt, Rolling in riot, while the good and brave Scaffold the gory homes they died to save! The curse, —the swollen curse of the long ages Ye have dishonored ; —Heaven’s curse; —the curse of man— The generations gone, and those whose pages Are yet unwritten, yield their sulphury ban, And blight ye into blisters! May ye live, Immortal, in that Hell of imprecation, The angry elements, invoked, must give, In their full-roured, ne’er dying indignation ! For ye arc nature’s bye-word and her terror. Ye monster-spawned creations of her error: Fashion’d in crime, with hearts and hopes asrotten, As the foul sins in which ye were begotten! Ye souls that gender snakes, and do not perish, As ye are deadlier than the things ye cherish, Though venomous and loathsome. Be the doom, Os life, in torture, on ye! May ye live, To seek, but never find, the sheltering tomb, — Beholding the fair elements expire. The earth that ye have sought to blast, survive, To light and watch, as ye have built, her pyre;— And not permitted, in that final fire, To purge ye of your poison.—but to stand, Man’s night—ye were his night-shade—with a brand That puts ye on the verge of your own crime, Beacons betwixt eternity and time ! We mourn not for the patriots! They have per ished As the good perish, for a deathless faith ! Their memories, with their cause, must still be cherish’d Beyond the dread of overthrow or scath. Their blood hath grown a principle, to guide, Onward—still onward—in continuous flow. Restless, resistless, as the Mexique tide, The spirit Heaven yields Freedom here below ! llow should we mourn them who as stars now shine, And light the groping nations! ’Twere as wise, To weep that other patriot of our line, — The rock and vulture-iortured Titan sire, Whose crime, and its stern penalty alike, Were his proud spirit’s glory. It denies All homage but in triumph—all triumph, save That single one, which, —standing o’er the grave, And on the scaffold, —to the nations cries, Even in its latest agonies,—to strike! WILFRED. ATHENS, GEORGIA, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1848. popular STalcs. THE TWO KATES. i BY THE AUTHOR OF “ THE BUCCANEER,” ETC. “I cannot help observing, Mr. Seymour, that I think it exceedingly strange in you to interfere with the marriage of my daughter : marry your sons, sir, as you please—but my daughter! that is quite another matter.” And Airs. Seymour, a stately, sedate mat ron, of the high-heeled and hoop school, drew herself up to her full height, which (without the heels) was five foot seven—and fanning herself with a huge green fan, more rapidly than she had done for many months, looked askance upon her husband, a pale, delicate man, who seemed in the last stage of a con sumption. “ A little time, Mary!” (good Jack ! could such a person as Mrs. Seymour bear so sweet a name I) “a little time, Mary, and our sons may marry as they list for me. But I have yet to learn, why you should have more con trol over our Kate than I. Before I quit this painful world, I should like the sweet child to be placed under a suitable protector.” “ You may well call her child, indeed—lit tle more than sixteen. Forcing the troubles of the world upon her, so young. I have had my share of them. Heaven knows, al though I had nearly arrived at an age of dis cretion, before 1 united my destiny to yours.” “So you had, my dear—you were, I think, close upon forty!” It is pretty certain that a woman who num bers thirty, without entering “the blessed state,” had better deliberate whether she is able to take up new ideas, forego “her own sweet will,” and sink from an independent to a dependent being; but a woman of forty, who is guilty of such an absurdity, merits the punishment she is sure to receive. And though Mr. Seymour was a kind, amiable, and affectionate man, his lady was far from being a happy woman : she had enjoyed more of her own way than geffcrally falls to the lot of her sex, and yet not near so much as she desired or fancied she deserved. If Mr. Seymour would have held his tongue, and done exactly as she wished, it would have been all well; but this course he was not ex actly prone to —he having been, at least ten years before his marriage, what is general!}’ termed an old bachelor. Let it not be ima gined that Mrs. Seymour was one of your “ shall and will” ladies—no such thing : she was always talking of “female duties,” of “gentle obedience.” of “amiable docility:” and, with her eyes fastened upon a piece of tent-stitch, which she had worked in her ju venile days, representing Jacob drinking from Rebecca’s pitcher, she would lecture her hus band by the long winter hours, and the mid summer sunshine, as to the inestimable trea sure he possessed in her blessed self. “Think, Mr. Seymour, if you had married a gad-about who would have watched over my children!” (she never by any chance said our children.) “I have never been outside the doors (except to church) these four years! If you had married a termagant, how she w'ould have flown at, and abused all your little—did I say little ? I might, with truth, say, your greal peculiarities. I never inter fere, never; I only notice—for your own good —that habit for instance, of always giv ing Kate sugar with her strawberries, and placing the tongs to the left instead of the right of the poker—it is very sad I” “ My dear,” Mr. Seymour would interrupt “ what does it signify whether the tongs be to the right or left!” “Bless me, dear sir, you need not fly out so; I was only saying that there are some women in the world who would make that a bone of contention—l never do, much as it annoys we, —much.as it leads the servants into careless habits, much as it and other things grieve and worry my health aud spir its, —I never complain! never. Some men are strangely insensible to their domestic bles sings, and do not know how to value earth’s greatest treasure —a good wife! but I am dumb; I am content tosufler, to melt away in tears —it is no matter.” Then, after a pause to recruit her breath and complainings, she would rush upon another grievance the abominable whine of an aggrieved and much injured person,—a sort of mental and mono tonous wailing, which, though nobody mind- VOLUME I.—NUMBER 21. ed, annoyed every body within her sphere. Her husband was last sinking into his grave; her sons had gone from Eton to Cambridge ; and, when they \v%re at home, took good care to be continually out of earshot of their mo thers lamentations; the servants changed places so continually, that the door was never twice opened by the same footman; and the only fixture at Seymour Hall, where servants and centuries, at one time, might be almost termed synonymous, was the old deaf house keeper, who, luckily for herself, could not hear her mistress’s voice. To whom then had Airs. Seymour to look forward, as the future source of her comforts, —(i. e.) of her tormenting? —even her daughter Kate, —the bonny Kate—the merry Kate, the thing of smiles and tears, who danced the sha dow of the old trees, who sang with the birds, who learned industry from the bees and cheer fulness from the grasshopper,—whose voice told in its rich full melody of young Joy and his laughing train, —whose step was as light on the turf as the dew or the sunbeam, whose shadow was blessed as it passed the window of the poor and lowly cottager, her alding the coming of her, who comforted her own soul by comforting her fellow creatures. “. How can it be possible,” said every body, “that such a lovely, cheerful, cheering crea ture can be the child of Mr. and Airs. Sey mour ?—the father, dear man, kind and gen tle, but so old; the mother!” and then fol lowed a look and a shrug, that told of much disapprobation, and yet not half as much as was most generously bestowed on the melan choly-dealing Airs. Seymour. Kate’s father well knew that his days were numbered; and he looked forward with no very pleasurable feeling to his daughter’s health and happiness being sacrificed at the shrine whereon he had offered up his own. Kate, it is true, as yet had nothing suffered; she managed to hear and laugh at her moth er’s repinings, without being rendered gloomy thereby, or giving offence to her mournful and discontented parent. She would, in her own natural and unsophisticated manner, lead her forth into the sunshine, sing her the gay est songs, read to her the most cneerful books, and gather for her the freshest flowers; and sometimes, even Airs. Seymour would smile, and be amused, though her heart quickly re turned to its bitterness, and her soul to it* discontent; but Mr. Seymour knew that this buoyant spirit could not endure for ever, anc he sought to save the rose of his existence from the canker thathad destroyed him. Sh was earnestly beloved by a brave and intelli gent officer, who had already distinguished himself, and who hoped to win fresh laurels whenever his country needed his exertions It would be difficult to define the sort of feel ing with which Kate received his attentions: like all young, very young girls, she thought that affection ought to be kept secret from the world, and that it was a very shocking thing to fall in love; she consequently vowed and declared to every body, that “ she had no idea of thinking of Major Cavendish; that she was too young, much too young to marry ; that her mamma said so.” She even steeped her little tongue so deeply in love’s natural hypocrisy, as to declare, but only once y “ that she hated Major Cavendish.” If he address ed her in company, she was sure to turn away, blush, and chatter most inveterately to her cousin, long Jack Seymour; if he asked her to sing, she had invariably a sore throat; and if he asked her to dance, she had sprained her ankle: it was quite marvellous the quan tity of little fibs she invented, whenever Ma jor Cavendish was in the way; and it is pro bable that the calm, dignified and gentlemanly soldier would never have declared his prefer ence for the laughter-loving and provoking Kale, but for one of those little episodes which either make or mar the happiness of life. 1 must observe that Kate’s extreme want of resemblance to either her mournful mother or her pale and gentle father, was not more ex traordinary than that Major Cavendish, as we have said, —the calm and dignified Major Cavendish, at six-and-twenty,—should evmce so great an affection for the animated and girlish creature, whom four years before his ” declaration.” he had lectured to, and romped with, but no, not romped—Major Cavendish was too dignified to romp, or to flirt either; what shall I call it then?—laughed!—yes, he certainly did laugh, generally after the most approved English fashion: his lips sep arated with a manifest desire to unite again as soon as possible, and his teeth, white and even, appeared to great advantage during the
