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EXERCISE XCVI.

ENIGMA is derived from a Greek word signifying to speak darkly, that is, to hint at. It is, therefore, applied to all compositions in which the language is designedly obscure and ambiguous, and is left to the reader to be made out by conjecture. The following are beautiful specimens of this kind of composition.

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'Twas whispered in heaven, and muttered in hell,
And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell;
On the confines of earth 'twas permitted to rest,
And the depths of the ocean its presence confessed;
'Twas seen in the lightning, and heard in the thunder;
"Twill be found in the spheres, when riven asunder;
'Twas given to man with his earliest breath,
Assists at his birth, and attends him in death;
Presides o'er his happiness, honor, and health,
Is the prop of his house, and the end of his wealth.

II.

It begins every hope, every wish it must bound,
And though unassuming, with monarchs is crowned.
In the heaps of the miser 'tis hoarded with care,
But is sure to be lost in his prodigal heir.
Without it the soldier and sailor may roam,
But woe to the wretch who expels it from home.
In the whispers of conscience its voice will be found,
Nor e'er in the whirlwind of passion be drowned.
It softens the heart; and, though deaf to the ear,
It will make it acutely and instantly hear.
But in shade let it rest, like a delicate flower-
O, breathe on it softly; it dies in an hour.*

*The letter H.

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V.

And there, with pearl and amber crowned,

I hold my gentler court,

While freshest breezes play around,

And merry mermaids sport;

And thousand graceful Naiads stand,
With streaming urns in either hand.

EXERCISE XCVII.

LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY was born at Norwich, Connecticut, in the year 1791. Early in the field of authorship and assiduous in its culture, she has continued to labor till some fifty or more volumes, it is said, stand forth to attest her claims to deserved distinction. She is known chiefly as a poetess; but she has written much in prose, and, thus, has richly earned the praise of having ministered gracefully and successfully to the well-being and well-doing of her fellow-creatures.

E PHEM' E RAL (EP, on, and HEMERAL, pertaining to a day) is a Greek word, meaning pertaining to, or lasting for a day; transitory; shortlived.

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Toil on! toil on! ye ephemeral train,

Who build on the tossing and treacherous main;
Toil on-for the wisdom of man ye mock,

With your sand-based structures and domes of rock:
Your columns the fathomless fountains lave,

And your arches spring up to the crested wave;
Ye're a puny race, thus to boldly rear

A fabric so vast, in a realm so drear.

II.

Ye bind the deep with your secret zone.
The ocean is sealed, and the surge a stone;

Fresh wreaths from the coral pavement spring,
Like the terraced pride of Assyria's king;
The turf looks green where the breakers rolled;
O'er the whirlpool ripens the rind of gold;
The sea-snatched isle is the home of men,

And the mountains exult where the wave hath been

III.

But why do ye plant 'neath the billows dark
The wrecking reef for the gallant bark?
There are snares enough on the tented field,
Mid the blossomed sweets that the valleys yield;
There are serpents to coil, ere the flowers are up;
There's a poison drop in the man's purest cup;
There are foes that watch for his cradle breath;
And why need ye sow the floods with death?

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IV.

With moldering bones the deeps are white,
From the ice-clad pole to the tropics bright;
The mermaid hath twisted her fingers cold
With the mesh of the sea-boy's curls of gold,
And the gods of ocean have frowned to see
The mariner's bed in their halls of glee;
Hath earth no graves, that ye thus must spread
The boundless sea for the thronging dead?

V.

Ye build-ye build--but ye enter not in,

Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their sin,
From the land of promise ye fade and die,
Ere its verdure gleams forth on your weary eye;
As the kings of the cloud-crowned pyramid,
Their noteless bones in oblivion hid,

Ye slumber unmarked 'mid the desolate main,
While the wonder and pride of your works remain.

EXERCISE XCVIII.

GEORGE TICKNOR was born in Boston, Massachusetts, August 1st, 1791. After ample study and travel abroad, he entered, in 1820, upon the Professorship of Modern Languages and Literature in Harvard University. In this position, he achieved a reputation for richness, variety, and depth of learning, and for extraordinary power and polish of diction, such as belongs only to merit of the highest order. For fifteen years he continued his labors in this connection. Then again he visited Europe. Nine years after his return, in 1840, he published his great work-"The History of Spanish Literature," which, with his other contributions to literature, immediately fixed his claims to distinction on the most enduring foundation.

THE AIM OF DON QUIXOTE.

GEORGE TICKNOR.

1. At the very beginning of his great work, Cervantes announces it to be his sole purpose to break down the Vogue and authority of books of chivalry, and at the end of the whole, he declares anew, in his own person, that "he had no other desire than to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories contained in books of chivalry;" exulting in his success, as an achievement of no small moment. And such, in fact, it was; for we have abundant proof that the fanaticism for these romances was so great in Spain, during the sixteenth century, as to have become matter of alarm to the more judicious.

2. To destroy a passion that had struck its roots so deeply in the character of all classes of men, to break up the only reading which, at that time, could be considered widely popular and fashionable, was certainly a bold undertaking, and one that marks anything rather than a scornful or broken spirit, or a want of faith in what is most to be valued in our common nature. The great wonder is, that Cervantes succeeded. But that he did, there is no question. No book of chivalry was written after the appearance of Don Quixote in 1605; and from that date, even those already enjoying the greatest favor ceased, with one or two unimportant exceptions, to be reprinted: so that, from that time to the present, they have been constantly disappearing, until they are now among the rarest of literary curiosities.

3. The general plan Cervantes adopted to accomplish this object, without, perhaps, foreseeing its whole course, and still

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