The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859

You see, my excellent Robert, that, by some hocus-pocus which I do not exactly comprehend, myself, I have introduced a wheel within a wheel, a letter within a letter, a play within a play, after the manner of the old dramatists; and I beg you to make a note that the foregoing admonitions and most sapient counsels are not addressed to you. You are something of a philosopher; but you are not, like Mr. Stephen Duck, "something of a philosopher and something of a poet"; for I do not believe, O fortunate youth, that you ever invoked the ten ladies minus one in your life; and I shrewdly suspect, that, so far from knowing the difference between a male and a female rhyme, you are unfamiliar with the close family connection between "trees" and "breeze," or between "love" and "dove." My episodical remarks are for the benefit of young Dolce Pianissimo, who has taken, I am sorry to say, to gin, shirt-collars prodigious, and the minor magazines, and whose friends are standing aghast and despairing at his lunacy. But, after all, 'tis my best irony quite thrown away; for the foolish boy will believe me quite in earnest, and will still be making love to that jade, Mistress Fame, although he knows well enough how many she has jilted. But as he grows in stature, he may grow in sense. If you see him very savagely cut up in "The Revolver," you will recognize the kindly hands which held the bistoury, scalpel, and tenaculum, and the gentleman who wept while he wounded.

But I have long enough, I fear too long, tormented you with my drivel. It must be your consolation, that, in spirit, you have been with me to-night, as I have thought of the old days, pausing for a moment over these mute but eloquent companions, to dream or to sigh, and then once more turning the old familiar pages as I try to forget, for just a little while, that dear familiar face. If something of indifference has tinctured these hurried lines, if I have been unjust in my estimate of the world's honors and the rewards of the Muses, you will forgive me, if you will remember how the great Burke reduced the value of earthly honors and emoluments to less than that of a peck of wheat. My fire is gone out. My candle is flickering in the socket. There is light in the cold, gray East. Good-morning, Don Bob!—good-morning!

AFTER THE BALL

They sat and combed their beautiful hair,
Their long, bright tresses, one by one,
As they laughed and talked in the chamber there,
After the revel was done.

Idly they talked of waltz and quadrille,
Idly they laughed, like other girls,
Who over the fire, when all is still,
Comb out their braids and curls.

Robe of satin and Brussels lace,
Knots of flowers and ribbons, too,
Scattered about in every place,
For the revel is through.

And Maud and Madge in robes of white,
The prettiest night-gowns under the sun,
Stockingless, slipperless, sit in the night,
For the revel is done,—

Sit and comb their beautiful hair,
Those wonderful waves of brown and gold,
Till the fire is out in the chamber there,
And the little bare feet are cold.

Then out of the gathering winter chill,
All out of the bitter St. Agnes weather,
While the fire is out and the house is still,
Maud and Madge together,—

Maud and Madge in robes of white,
The prettiest night-gowns under the sun,
Curtained away from the chilly night,
After the revel is done,—

Float along in a splendid dream,
To a golden gittern's tinkling tune,
While a thousand lustres shimmering stream,
In a palace's grand saloon.

Flashing of jewels, and flutter of laces,
Tropical odors sweeter than musk,
Men and women with beautiful faces
And eyes of tropical dusk,—

And one face shining out like a star,
One face haunting the dreams of each,
And one voice, sweeter than others are,
Breaking into silvery speech,—

Telling, through lips of bearded bloom,
An old, old story over again,
As down the royal bannered room,
To the golden gittern's strain,

Two and two, they dreamily walk,
While an unseen spirit walks beside,
And, all unheard in the lovers' talk,
He claimeth one for a bride.

Oh, Maud and Madge, dream on together,
With never a pang of jealous fear!
For, ere the bitter St. Agnes weather
Shall whiten another year,

Robed for the bridal, and robed for the tomb,
Braided brown hair, and golden tress,
There'll be only one of you left for the bloom
Of the bearded lips to press,—

Only one for the bridal pearls,
The robe of satin and Brussels lace,—
Only one to blush through her curls
At the sight of a lover's face.

Oh, beautiful Madge, in your bridal white,
For you the revel has just begun;
But for her who sleeps in your arms to-night
The revel of Life is done!

But robed and crowned with your saintly bliss,
Queen of heaven and bride of the sun,
Oh, beautiful Maud, you'll never miss
The kisses another hath won!

ROCK, TREE, AND MAN

It is an interesting thought, that will occur to a contemplative mind, that the world contained, from the time when it was a nebulous mass, all the materials of the future individuals of the animate and inanimate creation,—that the elaborate creatures of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, as well as every mineral, were floating in amorphous masses through space. Human beings, like genius that was condensed from vapor at the rubbing of Aladdin's lamp, were diffused in gases, waiting the touch of the Great Magician's wand to bring them into form and infuse them with life. In all the distinct creations of God, from the time when the waters first subsided and the dry land appeared, in everything organized and inorganized, earth, air, sea, and their inhabitants, there is no element which was not in existence when the earth was without form and void.

Philosophers tell us that three hundred and fifty millions of years elapsed after the globe began to solidify, before it was fitted for the lowest plants. And more than one million years more were necessary, after the first plants began to grow upon its young surface, to bring it forward to the condition which the Divine Father deemed suitable for the reception of man. If the days of Cain and Abel were the infancy of the world,—as we have sometimes heard,—when will it come to maturity? Its divisions of life cannot follow the plan of animated beings; for, with an embryonic condition of an indefinite period, and an infancy of three hundred and fifty millions of years, more or less, we can hardly expect that it will really have begun to enjoy the freedom of adult life, before the human race will have attained to its earthly limit of perfectibility, or have so overstocked the surface of the globe as to make it necessary to remove to some larger sphere.

It is curious, we say, to think that everything now on the earth or composing its substance was present, though in far different form, at the beginning,—that the Almighty gathered together in this part of the universe all the materials out of which to create all the forms of things which it was his pleasure to evolve here through all time,—that in that nebulous mass were revolving, not only the gases which were at last to combine in various manners and proportions to form the rocky crust and the watery investment of the earth, but that in that dense and noisome cloud floated also the elements of all the beautiful objects that furnish the daily enchantments of life. Flowers and trees, birds and fishes, locusts and mastodons, all things, from the tiniest animalcule to man, were there, unmodelled, not even in embryo,—their separate existences then only in the mind of God. There, Christian and Saracen, Jew and Gentile, Caucasian and Negro, Hindoo and Pariah, all the now heterogeneous natures which are as oil and water, were blended in one common vapor.

Finally the condensation of all the gaseous elements began, and the aëriform masses became liquid, and the waters,—what mineral waters they were, when they were saturated with granite and marble, diamonds, rubies, arsenic, and iron!—thus deposited by the vapor, left a gas above them light enough to bear some faint resemblance to our air. Still this atmosphere was surcharged with vapors which no lungs could tolerate, whether of man or reptile; and other steps must be taken to clear it of its unwholesome properties. Then did the Almighty will introduce, one after another, the germs of plants,—first of all, the lower orders, the ferns, which seek the shade, and the lichens, which grow in damp and dark recesses, mosses, which cling to bare rocks, living almost on air and water alone,—everything which needed not bright sunlight to invigorate it nor soil to cling to. Year by year and age by age did these humble plants extract their nourishment from the murky vapors that shrouded the earth, and, after fashioning those gases into a living tissue of stems and leaves, year after year did they die and lay their remains upon the rocks, accumulating by slow steps a soil which would in time be capable of giving holding-ground to mightier plants. The trees came,—and gigantic they must have been; and every species of tree, shrub, and herb now upon the earth, and of all animals that walk, fly, or swim, was introduced before the creation of man.