that living one, and therefore did its echo seem so frightful!—If 'twere to do again, I would not kill thee: wilt thou not be contented? But thou sayest, "My father was a father to thee also, he watched thy infant years, he gave thee all that youth could ask, and scarcely manhood came than came a kingdom also; yet didst thou -Oh!—I am faint-they have not brought me food-how did I not perceive it until now? Gods-I'm in tears !-I did not think of weeping. Oh, Marius, wilt thou-ever feel like this ?-Ha! I behold the ruins of a city; and, on a craggy fragment, sits a form that seems in ruins also: how unmoved-how stern he looks! Amazement! it is Marius! Ha! Marius! think'st thou now upon Jugurtha ? He turns-he's caught my eye!--I see no more! XXXV. CATILINE'S DEFIANCE. CONSCRIPT FATHERS: I do not rise to waste the night in words; Let that Plebeian talk, 'tis not my trade; But this 1 will avow, that I have scorned To fling your offices to every slave ! Vipers, that creep where man disdains to climb, Come, consecrated Lictors, from your thrones ; [To the Senate.] Fling down your sceptres; take the rod and axe, "Tried and convicted traitor!" Who says this? Banished! I thank you for't. It breaks my chain! Smile on, my Lords! I scorn to count what feelings, withered hopes, To leave you in your lazy dignities. Hatred and full defiance in your face! Your Consul's merciful;-for this, all thanks. "Traitor!" I go; but I return! This-trial! Here I devote you Senate ! I've had wrongs To stir a fever in the blood of age. Or make the infant's sinews strong as steel. This day's the birth of sorrow; this hour's work Will breed proscriptions! Look to your hearths, my Lords! For there, henceforth, shall sit, for household gods, Shapes hot from Tartarus; all shames and crimes; I go; but not to leap the gulf alone. [To the Lictors.] I will return. XXXVI.-CATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. IT must be so;-Plato, thou reason'st well, Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror -'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us, Eternity!-thou pleasing-dreadful thought! Through what new scenes and changes must we pass ! The wide, th'unbounded prospect lies before me; But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it. Here will I hold :-If there's power above us (And that there is all Nature cries aloud Through all her works), he must delight in virtue; And that which he delights in must be happy : But-when-or where ?-This world was made for Cæsar. I'm weary of conjectures : This must end them. Thus I am doubly armed; my death and life, My bane and antidote are both before me. The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds. XXXVII.—RIENZI'S ADDRESS. M. R. MITFORD. RIENDS: I come not here to talk! Ye know too well JR The story of our thraldom ;—we are slaves ! The bright sun rises to his course, and lights But base, ignoble slaves-slaves to a horde Of petty tyrants, feudal despots, lords, Rich in some dozen paltry villages, Strong in some hundred spearmen--only great In that strange spell, a name! Eech hour, dark fraud, Cries out against them. But this very day, An honest man, my neighbor-there he stands— Was struck-struck like a dog-by one who wore The badge of Ursini! because, forsooth, He tossed not high his ready cap in air, Nor lifted up his voice in servile shouts, At sight of that great ruffian! Be we men, And sufier such dishonor? Such shames are common. I had a brother once, a gracious boy, Full of all gentleness, of calmest hope, Of sweet and quite joy; there was the look Of heaven upon his face, which limners give The corpse, the mangled sorpse, and then I cried That sat on her seven hills, and from her throne Of beauty, ruled the world! Yet we are Romans! Why, in that elder day, to be a Roman Was greater than a king!—and once again— XXXVIII. THE DEATH OF MINNEHAHA. H. W. LONGFELLOW. THE long and dreary Winter! O the cold and cruel winter! Ever thicker, thicker, thicker, froze the ice on lake and river; ever deeper, deeper, deeper, fell the snow o'er all the landscape. Hardly from his buried wigwam could the hunter force a passage; vainly walked he through the forest; sought for bird or beast, and found none; in the ghastly, gleaming forest fell, and could not rise from weakness perished there from cold and hunger. O the famine and the fever! O the wasting of the famine! O the blasting of the fever! O the wailing of the children! O the anguish of the woman! All the earth was sick and famished; hungry was the air around them, hungry was the sky above them, and the hungry stars in heaven, like the eyes of wolves, glared at them! Into Hiawatha's wigwam came two guests; and silent, gloomy, sat without a word of welcome in the seat of Laughing Water; Famine one, the other Fever; and the lovely Minnehaha shuddered as they looked upon her, lay down on her bed in silence; lay there trembling, freezing, burning, at the looks they cast upon her, at the fearful words they uttered. Forih into the empty forest rushed the maddened Hiawatha: "Gitche Manito, the Mighty!"' cried he with his face uplifted, in that bitter hour of anguish, "Give your children food, O Father! give us food, or we must perish! give me food for Minnehaha, for my dying Minnehaha !"Through the far resounding forest rang that cry of desolation; but there came no other answer than the echo of his crying, "Minnehaha! Minnehaha!" In the wigwam with Nokomis, with those gloomy 'guests that watched her, with the Famine and the Fever, she was lying, the beloved, she-the dying Minnehaha. "Hark!" she said, "I hear a rushing, hear a roaring and a rushing; hear the Falls of Minnehaha calling to me from a distance!" "No, my child!" said old Nokomis, "'tis the night-wind in the pine-trees!" "Look!'' she said; I see my father standing lonely at his doorway, beckoning to me from his wigwam, in the land of the Decotahs!" "No, my child!" said old Nokomis, "'tis the smoke, that waves and beckons !" "Ah!" she said, the eyes of Pauguk glare upon me in the darkness; I can feel his icy fingers clasping mine amid the darkness! Hiawatha! Hiawatha !"And the desolate Hiawatha, far away amid the forest, miles away among the mountains, heard that sudden cry of anguish, heard the voice of Minnehaha calling to him in the darkness, "Hiawatha ! Hiawatha !'' Over snow-fields waste and pathless, under snow-encumbered branches, homeward hurried Hiawatha, empty-handed, heavy-hearted; heard Nokomis moining, wailing :-"Wahonomin! Wahonomin! would that I had perished for you! would that I were dead as you are! Wahonomin! Wahonomin !" And he rushed into the wigwam: saw the old Nokomis slowly rocking to and fro, and moaning; saw his lovely Minnehaha lying dead and cold before him; and his bursting heart within him uttered such a cry of anguish, that the very stars in heaven shook and trembled with his anguish. Then he sat down, still and speechless on the bed of Minnehaha, at the feet of Laughing Water; at those willing feet, that never more would lightly run to meet him, never more would lightly follow. Seven long days and nights he sat there, speechless, motionless, unconscious of the daylight or the darkness. Then they buried Minnehaha in the forest deep and darksome, underneath the moaning hemlocks; wrapped her in her robes of ermine, covered her with snow, like ermine. On her grave a fire was lighted, for her soul upon its journey to the Island of the Blessed. From his doorway Hiawatha watched it burning in the forest, that it might not be extinguished, might not leave her in the darkness. "Farewell!" said he, "Minnehaha! Farewell! O my Laughing Water ! All my heart is buried with you, all my thoughts go onward with you! Come not back, again to labor, come not back again to suffer, where the Famine and the Fever wear the heart and waste the body. Soon my task will be completed, soon your footsteps I shall follow to the Islands of the Blessed, to the kingdom of Ponemah, to the Land of the Hereafter !" |