w close
together seem, with their almost meeting shadows, the two opposite
shores! But we wish you to look at BELLE ISLE, though we ourselves are
almost afraid to do so, so transcendently glorious is the sight that we
know will disturb us with an emotion too deep to be endured.--Could you
not think that a splendid sunset had fallen down in fragments on the
Isle called Beautiful, and set it all ablaze! The woods are on fire, yet
they burn not; beauty subdues while it fosters the flame; and there, as
in a many-tented tabernacle, has Colour pitched his royal residence, and
reigns in glory beyond that of any Oriental king. What are all the
canopies, and balconies, and galleries of human state, all hung with
the richest drapery that ever the skill of Art, that Wizard, drew forth
in gorgeous folds from his enchanted loom, if ideally suspended in the
air of imagination beside the sun-and-storm-stained furniture of these
Palaces of Autumn, framed by the Spirit of the Season, of living and
dying umbrage, for his latest delight, ere he move in annual migration,
with all his Court, to some foreign clime far beyond the seas! No names
of trees are remembered--a glorious confusion comprehends in one the
whole leafy race--orange, and purple, and scarlet, and crimson, are all
seen to be there, and interfused through the silent splendour is aye
felt the presence of that terrestrial green, native and unextinguishable
in earth's bosom, as that celestial blue is that of the sky. That trance
goes by, and the spirit, gradually filled with a stiller delight, takes
down all those tents into pieces, and contemplates the encampment with
less of imagination, and with more of love. It knows and blesses each
one of those many glorious groves, each becoming, as it gazes, less and
less glorious, more and more beautiful; till memory revives all the
happiest and holiest hours of the Summer and the Spring, and re-peoples
the melancholy umbrage with a thousand visions of joy, that may return
never more! Images, it may be, of forms and faces now mouldering in the
dust! For as human hearts have felt, and all human lips have
declared--melancholy making poets of us all, ay, even prophets--till the
pensive air of Autumn has been filled with the music of elegiac and
foreboding hymns--as is the Race of Leaves--now old Homer speaks--so is
the Race of Men! Nor till time shall have an end, insensate will be any
creature endowed "with discourse of reason" to those my