FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131  
132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   >>   >|  
hose works, despite all suppression, will never die. J. W. CHARLES BLOUNT. Look with me through the dark vista of 150 years of clouded history. Throw your mind across the bridge of time, for we are about to visit a tragic scene--a scene which might be depicted by a poet--so much of beauty, of truth, and of goodness, all blasted by the perjuries of the priest. Yonder, in the dim library of an ancestral mansion, embowered amid the woods of the south, close by the gurgling waters which beat an echo to the stormy breezes--those breezes which will never more fan his cheek--that water where he has often bathed his limbs will be his rippling monument. The shady moonlight of an August evening is gilding the rich pastures of Hertfordshire; the gorse bushes have not yet lost their beauty, the pheasants are playing in the woods--woods that so lately resounded with laughter--laughter ringing like a bell--the music of a merry heart. Withdraw those curtains which hide the heart-struck and the dead. Above you is the exquisite picture of Eleanora, gazing into the very bed at that form which lay shrouded in nothingness. You see the broad manly brow--even now the brown hair rises in graceful curls over that damp forehead. The lips are locked in an eternal smile, as if to mock the closed eyes and the recumbent form. Is it true that pictures of those we love are endowed with a clairvoyant power of gazing at those who have caressed them in life? If it is, then on that August night the wife of Charles Blount was watching over his bier. But who is that pale form, with dishevelled hair and weeping eyes, with an alabaster skin stained with the blue spots of grief? The rapid upheaving swells of that fair bosom tell of affection withered, not by remorse, but by superstition? See her how she nervously grasps that dead man's hand, how she imprints kisses on his lips! Her hair, which yesterday was glossy as the raven's, is now as bleached as the driven snow; to-day she utters her plaintive cries, to-morrow she hastens to join her lover in the tomb. This is a sad history. It should be written with the juice of hemlock, as a warning to Genius of impatient love. While the fair girl watches by the couch of the suicide, while from the painted canvass Eleanora gleams on the living and the dead, while the clouds of night gather silently over that ancestral hall, around the drooping com on the bold sloping park, and the clear blue river--all
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131  
132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
breezes
 

August

 

ancestral

 

Eleanora

 

laughter

 
gazing
 
history
 

beauty

 
swells
 

affection


upheaving

 

stained

 
withered
 

remorse

 
nervously
 

grasps

 
suppression
 
superstition
 

alabaster

 

BLOUNT


CHARLES

 

endowed

 

caressed

 

Charles

 

dishevelled

 

weeping

 

pictures

 

Blount

 

watching

 

clairvoyant


painted

 
canvass
 

gleams

 

suicide

 

impatient

 
watches
 

living

 
clouds
 

sloping

 
drooping

gather
 

silently

 
Genius
 
warning
 

driven

 

utters

 
plaintive
 

bleached

 
kisses
 

yesterday