Newspaper Page Text
SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE:
A WEEKLY JOURNAL OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE AND ART.
m* C. RICHARDS, EDITOR.
©rigutal jOoetrrj.
For the Southern Literary Gazette.
THE STARS.
BY W. GILMORE SIMMS, ESQ.,
aL'THOR OF “GUY RIVERS,’ ‘YEMASSEE,’ ‘ATALANTIS,’ SiC.
The night has settled down. A dewy hush
Hangs on the forest, save when fitful gusts
Vex the tall pines with murmurs. Spring is here,
With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
And voice of many minstrels. Balmy airs
Creep gently to my bosom, and beguile
Each feeling into freshness. I will forth,
And gaze upon the stars —the uncounted stars
Holding high watch in Heaven—still high, still
bright,
Though the storm gathers round the sacred hill,
And shakes the cottage roof-tree. There they shine,
In well-remember’d youth. They hear me back,
With strange persuasiveness, to the old time
And happy hours of boyhood. There’s no change
In all their virgin glory. Clouds that roll,
And congregate in the azure deeps of heaven,
In wild debate and darkness, pass away,
Leaving them bright in the same beauty still,
Defying, in the progress of the years,
All change, and rising ever from the night,
In soft and dewy splendor, as at first,
When, golden foot-prints of the eternal steps,
They paved the walks of heaven, and grew to eyes
Beekoning the feet of man. Ah! would his eyes
Behold them, with meet yearning to pursue
The holy heights they counsel! Would his soul
Claim kindred with the happy forms that now,
Walk by their blessed guidance —walk in heaven,
la paths of the Good Shepherd ! Then were earth
Deserving of their beauty. Then were man,
Already following, step by step, their points,
To the one Presence : at each onward step
Leaving new lights that cheer his brother on,
In a like progress. Happily they shine,
As in his hours of music and of youth,
When every breath of the fresh-coming breeze,
And every darting vision of the cloud,
Gleam of the day and glimmer of the night,
Brought to the craving spirit harmony ;
And blessed each fond assurance of the hope
With sweetest confirmation Still they shine,
And dear t he story of their early prime—
And his—the conscious worshipper may read
In their enduring presence. Happiest tales
Os innocence and joy, events and hours,
That never more return. These they rocord,
Renew, and hallow, with their own pure rays,
When blight of age is on the frame —when grief
Weighs the vexed heart to earth—when all beside,
The father, and the mother, and the friend,
Speak in decaying syllables—dread proof
Os worse decay ! —and that sad chronicler,
Feeble and failing in excess of years,
Old Memory, tottering from his mossy cell,
with the imperfect legend on his lips,
And drowses into sleep. No change like this
Falls on their golden-eyed veracity—
Takes from the silvery truths that line their lips,
<>r stales their lovely aspects. Well they know
she years they never feel; see, without dread,
Fhe storm that rises, and the bolt that falls,
I be age that chills, the apathy that chokes,
l he death that withers all that blooms below,
V et smile they on as ever, sweetly bright,
Serene, in their security from all
she change that troubles man. Yet, hill and tree
Change with the season, with the altered heart,
And weak and withering muscle. Ancient groves
shat sheltered me in childhood, have given place
1 0 S a udy gardens; and the solemn oaks,
shat heard the first prayers of my youthful heart
for greatness, and a life beyond their own—
s !in their stead, a maiden’s slender hand
I utors green vines, and purple buds, and flow’rs,
As frail as her own fancies. At each step,
l miss some old companion of my walks,
Memorial of the happy hours of youth,
hose presence had brought hack a thousand joys,
And images that took the shape of jojTs—
l ho loveliest masquers, and all innocent —
1 hat vanish’d with the rest! And brooks that stole
rp
o greenest margins, and beguiled the ears,
l>°wu-trickling ceaseless, with low murmuring song,
i lave left their arid channels to the sun,
M ho, when the guardian forest was withdrawn,
R-isled their virgin sources.
Not with these —
• ees we the sweet memorials of our youth—
x he youth that seems immortal—youth that blooms
ATHENS, GEORGIA, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1848.
With hues and hopes of Heaven—proud youth that
burns
With aspirations for eternal life,
Perpetual triumph, and the ambitious thirst
For other worlds and waters of domain.
In tokens of the soul—that craving thirst
That earth supplies not —in the undying things
That man can never change, beyond his change,
Seek we the sweet memorials of our youth:
That season when the fancy is a god—
Hope an assurance—Love an instinct—Truth ’
The generous friend, that, ever by our side,
Hath still the sweetest story for the ear,
And wins us on our way. Ah, stars, ye bring
This happy season back, and in my heart,
Stand up the old divinities anew !
I hear their well-known voices, see their eyes
Shining once more in mine, and straight forget,
That I have wept their loss in many tears,
Mix’d with reproaches, bitter, sad regrets,
Self-chidings, and the memory of wrongs,
Endured, inflicted, suffered, and avenged!
As I behold ye now, yc bring me back
The treasures of my boyhood. All returns
That I had long forgotten. Scarce a scene
Os childish prank or merriment, but comes
With all the freshness of the infant time,
Back to my recollection. The old school,
The noisy rabble, the tumultuous cries—
The green, remember’d in the wintry day,
For the encounter of the flying ball—
The marble play, the hoop, the top, the kite,
And, when the ambition prompted higher games,
The battle-array and conflict —friends and foes
Mixed in the wild melee, with shouts of might
Triumphant o’er the clamors of retreat!
These, in their regular seasons, with their deeds,
Their incidents of happiness or pain,
In the revival of old memories,
Your lovely lights restore: nor these alone !
The chroniclers of riper years ye grew,
And loftier thoughts and fancies ; and my heart
Then took ye for sweet counsellors, and loved
To wander in your evening lights, and dream
Os other eyes that watched ye from afar,
At the same hour—and other hearts that gushed
In a sweet yearning sympathy with mine !
And as the years flew by —as I became
Warier, yet more devoted—fix’d and strong —
Growing in the affections and the thoughts
When growth had ceased in stature —then, when
life,
Wing’d with impetuous passions, darted by,
And voices grew into a spell that hung,
Through the dim hours of night, about the heart,
Making it tremble strangely ; —when dark eyes
Were stars that had a power over us,
As fated, dimly, at nativity ;
And older men were monitors too dull
For passionate youth ; and reason and all excellence,
(Falling in honied sentences from lips,
That, if they vied with coral, must have won.)
Were to be gathered from one source alone,
Whose thought and word were inspiration, life,
That we had barter’d life itself to win !
How sweet was then your language! what fond
strains
Os promise ye pour’d forth, in sounds that made
The impatient soul leap upwards into flight,
The skies stoop down and yield to every wish,
While earth, embraced by heaven, instinct with
love,
And blessing, had forgot all fears of death!
The brightness of your age in every change,
Mocks that which palsies man. Dim centuries
That saw your fresh beginnings with delight,
Are swallowed in the ocean-flood of years,
Or crowd with ruin the gray sands of Time,
Who still, with appetite and thirst unslaked—
Active but unappeased —voracious still,
Must swallow what remains. Sweet images,
Whose memories wake our song—whose forms abide—
The heart’s ideal standards of delight—
Are gone to people those dim lcalms of shade,
Where rules the past —that sovereign, single-eyed,
Whose back is on the sun!
Ah! when all these —
The joys we have recorded, and the forms
Whose very names were blessings—forms of youth,
Os childhood, and the hours we know not twice,
Which won us first, and carried us away
To strange conceits of coming happiness,
But to be thought on as delusions all,
Yet such delu.-ions as wo still must love !
When these have parted from us —when the sky
Hath lost the charm of its ethereal blue,
And the nights lose their freshness —and the trees
No longer have a welcome shade for love—
And the xaooa wanci into a pa’er bright,
And all the poetry that s tirr’d the leaves,
And all the perfume that was on the flow’rs—
Music upon the winds —wings in the cloud—
The carpeted vallies wealth of green—the dew
That morning flings on the enamell’d moss—
The hill-side, the acclivity, the grove—
Sweeter than solitude is sleeping there! —
Are gone, as the last hope of misery:
When the one dream of thy deluded life
Hath left thee, to awaken —not to see
The golden morning, but the heavy night,
When sight itself is weariness, and hope
No longer rifles from the barren path
One flow’r of promise!—when disease is nigh,
And all thy bones are racking, and thy thought
Is of dry, nauseous, ineffectual drugs,
Which thou wilt painfully swallow —hut in Amin—
And not a hand is nigh to quench thy thirst
With one poor cup of water ; and thine eye
Strains for the closing heavens, and the sweet sky
Which thou art losing—and dread images,
Meetly successive, of the sable pall,
And melancholy carriage, crowd around,
And make thee shudder with a stifling fear; —
When thou hast bid adieu to earthly things,
Fought through the long, worst struggle with thy
self,
Os resignation to that sovereign will,
Thou may’st no longer baffle or delude—
And offer’d up thy prayer of penitence,
Doubtful of its acceptance, yet prepared
As well as thy condition will admit,
For the last change in thy unhappy life 1—
Bid them throw wide thy casement, and look forth,
And take thy last gaze at the placid sky,
And all the heavenly watchers which have seen
Thy fair beginning, and thy rising youth,
And thy tall manhood. They will bear thee back.
With all the current of thy better thoughts,
To the pure practice of thy innocent years ;
Repentant, then, of errors, evil deeds,
Imaginings of darkness, thou wilt weep
Over thy recollections, and thy tears,
The purest tribute of thy contrite heart,
Will be as a sweet prayer sent up to heaven !
Popular Sales.
A LEGEND FROM ANTWERP:
A CAPITAL STORY FROM BLACKWOOD.
I scarcely know why, upon my last pas
sage through Antwerp, I took up my quarters
at the Park Hotel, instead of alighting, ac
cording to my previous custom, at the sign of
the blessed Saint Anthony. The change
was, perhaps, owing to my hackney coach
man, who, seeing me fagged and bewildered
by a weary jolting on the worst of European
railroads, affected to mistake my directions—
a misunderstanding that possibly resulted
from his good understanding with mine host
of the “ Park.” Be that as it may, my bag
gage, before I could say nay, was in the em
braces of a cloud of waiters, who forthwith
disappeared in the recesses of the inn, whith
er I was fain to follow. It was a bright
May day, and I felt no way dissatisfied with
the change of hostelry, when, on looking
from the window of my exquisitely clean
Flemish bed-room, I saw the cheerful boule
vard crowded with comely damsels and uni
formed idlers, and the spring foliage of the
lime-trees fluttering freshly in the sunshine.
And having picked up the commencement of
a furious appetite during my rickety ride from
Hergesthal, I replied, by a particularly wil
ling affirmative, to the inquiry of a spruce
waiter, whether Monsieur would be pleased
to dine at the table d'hote , at the early hour
of three o’clock.
The excellent dinner of the Park Hotel w T as ;
served up that day to unusually few guests:
so at least it appeared to one accustomed to
the numerous daily congregations at the pub
lic tables of France and Germany. Twelve
persons surrounded the board, or, 1 should
rather say, took post in two opposite rows at
one extremity of the long dresser-like table,
whose capacity of accommodating six times
the number was tacit evidence that the inn
■was not w r ont to reckon its dinners by the
single dozen. Os these twelve guests, three
or four were of the class commis-voyageur —
Anglice , bagmen, whose talk, being as usual
confined to the rail and the road, their gri
settes and their samples, I did my best not to ;
hear. There was a French singer, then star
ring at the Antwerp theatre : a plump, taci
turn, respectable-looking man, in blue spec- !
VOLUME I.—NUMBER 27.
taeles and a loose coat, whom I had difficulty
in recognising that evening when I saw’ him
trip the boards in the character of the gay
Count Almaviva. Next to the man of notes
sat a thin, sun-burned, middle-aged German,
who informed us, in the course of conversa
tion, that after spending twenty years on a
cochineal farm in Mexico, he was on his way
back to his native land, to pass the latter por
tion of his life in the tranquil enjoyment of
pipe, beer, and competency, in the shadow of
his village steeple,, and possibly—although
of this he said nothing—in the peaceful com
panionship of a placid stocking-knitting,
child-bearing Frau, There was another Ger
man at table, a coarse, big-headed baron from
Swabia, who ate like a pig, used his fork as
a toothpick, and indulged, to a most disgust
ing extent, in the baronial and peculiarly
Teutonic amusement of hawking. These
persons were all foreigners; but the remain
der of the party, myself excepted, consisted
of natives, belonging to the better class oi
Antwerp burghers. With one of these, next
to whom I sat, I got into conversation; and
finding him courteous, intelligent, and good
humored, I was glad to detain him after din
ner over the best bottle of Bordeaux the
“ Park” cellars could produce. This opened
his heart, and he volunteered to act as my
cicerone through Antwerp. Although 1 had
seen, upon former visits, all the “ lions” of
the place, it had been under the guidance of
those odious animals called valets-de-place;
and I now gladly availed myself of my new
friend’s offer, and walked out to the citadel.
He had lived in Antwerp all his life ; conse
quently had been there during the siege, in
reminiscences of whose incidents and episodes
he abounded—so much so, that the invalid
soldier who exhibits the fortress was kind
enough to spare us his monotonous elucida
tions, and, whilst opening gates, to keep his
mouth closed. I lingered willingly on the
scene of that unjust aggression and gallant
defence, and saw everything worth seeing,
including the identical arm-chair in which, as
the story goes, old Chasse, gouty as he w r as
brave, eat and smoked and gave his orders,
unruffled by the thunder of French batteries
Stud the storm of French shot. Daylight be
gan to fade as we re-entered the town, and
passed, at my request, through some of its
older portions, where I begged my Antwerper
to point out to me any house of particular
antiquity, or notable as the residence of re
markable persons. He showed me the dwel
lings of more than one of those great artists
of whom Flanders is so justly proud; also
several mansions of Spanish grandees, dating
from the days of Alva’s rule, and built in
Spanish style, with abundant and massive
balconies, and the patio, or inner court. At
last 1 thought of returning to my hotel, and
was meditating an invitation to supper to my
obliging acquaintance, when, as we passed
through a narrow and sequestered street, he
suddenly stood still.
“See there!” he said; “that house, al
though of great age, has apparently little to
distinguish it from others, equally ancient,
scattered through Antwerp; nevertheless, to
us Flemings it possesses powerful and pecu
liar interest. Aad truly no residence of
painter or grandee could tell stranger tales,
were its walls to speak all that had passed
within them.”
I looked curiously at the house, but could
see nothing remarkable about it, except that
it was visibly very old—to all appearance
one of the oldest in the town. It was of
moderate dimensions, built of mingled stone
and brick, to which time and damp had given
one general tint of dingy greenish black. Its
door was low, and of unusual strength; its
windows were narrow, and defended here
and there by iron bars. Formerly these bars
had been much more numerous, but many
had been sawn off close to the stone-work, in
which their extremities still remained deeply
set. A shallow niche in the wall contained
one of those rudely-carved images of the Vir
gin and Child, once deemed an indispensable
appendage to Antwerp houses as a protection
against evil spirits, and especially against
one—a sort of municipal brownie, the scare
crow of the honest and credulous burgesses.
The features of the images, never very deii
cate’y chiselled, were obtuse and scarcely dis
tinguishable with age and dirt, but vestiges
of blue and crimson were still discernible on
the Virgin’s garments. I observed that the
house had the appearance of having once
stood alone—perhaps in the middle of a gar
den, or, more probably, of a paved court—