The Ontario Readers Part 23

"Boy, thou art right. She hath given many the slip. Ha! ha! Vex not, Jack, that I laugh at thee. She is like a sweetheart to me, and better than any of them be. It would have gone to my heart if thou hadst conquered. None but I can ride my Winnie mare."

R. D. BLACKMORE: "Lorna Doone."

Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

GRAY

THE ARAB AND HIS STEED

My beautiful! my beautiful! that standest meekly by, With thy proudly arched and glossy neck, and dark and fiery eye; Fret not to roam the desert now, with all thy winged speed, I may not mount on thee again--thou'rt sold, my Arab steed.

Fret not with that impatient hoof, snuff not the breezy wind, The further that thou fliest now, so far am I behind; The stranger hath thy bridle-rein--thy master hath his gold-- Fleet-limbed and beautiful! farewell! thou'rt sold, my steed, thou'rt sold!

Farewell! those free untired limbs full many a mile must roam, To reach the chill and wintry sky which clouds the stranger's home; Some other hand, less fond, must now thy corn and bed prepare; The silky mane I braided once must be another's care.

The morning sun shall dawn again, but never more with thee Shall I gallop through the desert paths, where we were wont to be: Evening shall darken on the earth; and o'er the sandy plain, Some other steed, with slower step, shall bear me home again.

Yes, thou must go! the wild free breeze, the brilliant sun and sky, Thy master's home--from all of these my exiled one must fly.

Thy proud, dark eye will grow less proud, thy step become less fleet, And vainly shalt thou arch thy neck, thy master's hand to meet.

Only in sleep shall I behold that dark eye glancing bright; Only in sleep shall hear again that step so firm and light; And when I raise my dreaming arm to check or cheer thy speed, Then must I, starting, wake to feel--thou'rt sold, my Arab steed!

Ah! rudely then, unseen by me, some cruel hand may chide, Till foam-wreaths lie, like crested waves, along thy panting side, And the rich blood that's in thee swells in thy indignant pain, Till careless eyes, which rest on thee, may count each startled vein.

Will they ill-use thee? If I thought--but no, it cannot be-- Thou art so swift, yet easy curbed; so gentle, yet so free.

And yet, if haply, when thou'rt gone my lonely heart should yearn, Can the hand which casts thee from it now, command thee to return?

Return! alas! my Arab steed! what shall thy master do, When thou who wert his all of joy, hast vanished from his view?

When the dim distance cheats mine eye, and through the gathering tears, Thy bright form for a moment, like the false mirage appears?

Slow and unmounted will I roam, with weary step alone, Where with fleet step and joyous bound thou oft hast borne me on!

And sitting down by that green well, I'll pause and sadly think: It was here he bowed his glossy neck when last I saw him drink!

When last I saw thee drink!--Away! the fevered dream is o'er; I could not live a day, and know that we should meet no more!

They tempted me, my beautiful! for hunger's power is strong, They tempted me, my beautiful! but I have loved too long.

Who said that I had given thee up, who said that thou wert sold?

'Tis false--'tis false, my Arab steed! I fling them back their gold.

Thus, thus I leap upon thy back, and scour the distant plains, Away! who overtakes us now shall claim thee for his pains!

THE HONOURABLE MRS. NORTON

THE POET'S SONG

The rain had fallen, the Poet arose, He pa.s.s'd by the town and out of the street, A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, And waves of shadow went over the wheat, And he sat him down in a lonely place, And chanted a melody loud and sweet, That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud, And the lark drop down at his feet.

The swallow stopt as he hunted the fly, The snake slipt under a spray, The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak, And stared, with his foot on the prey, And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay, For he sings of what the world will be When the years have died away."

TENNYSON

Never to tire, never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the budding flower, and the opening heart; to hope always, like G.o.d, to love always--this is duty.

AMIEL

ADVENTURE WITH A WHALE

I gaily flung myself into my place in the mate's boat one morning, as we were departing in chase of a magnificent cachalot that had been raised just after breakfast. There were no other vessels in sight,--much to our satisfaction,--the wind was light, with a cloudless sky, and the whale was dead to leeward of us. We sped along at a good rate towards our prospective victim, who was, in his leisurely enjoyment of life, calmly lolling on the surface, occasionally lifting his enormous tail out of water and letting it fall flat upon the surface with a boom audible for miles.

We were, as usual, first boat; but, much to the mate's annoyance, when we were a short half-mile from the whale our main-sheet parted. It became immediately necessary to roll the sail up, lest its flapping should alarm the watchful monster, and this delayed us sufficiently to allow the other boats to shoot ahead of us. Thus the second mate got fast some seconds before we arrived on the scene, seeing which, we furled sail, uns.h.i.+pped the mast, and went in on him with the oars only.

At first the proceedings were quite of the usual character, our chief wielding his lance in most brilliant fas.h.i.+on, while not being fast to the animal allowed us much greater freedom in our evolutions; but that fatal habit of the mate's--of allowing his boat to take care of herself so long as he was getting in some good home-thrusts--once more a.s.serted itself. Although the whale was exceedingly vigorous, churning the sea into yeasty foam over an enormous area, there we wallowed close to him, right in the middle of the turmoil, actually courting disaster.

He had just settled down for a moment, when, glancing over the gunwale, I saw his tail, like a vast shadow, sweeping away from us towards the second mate, who was lying off the other side of him. Before I had time to think, the mighty ma.s.s of gristle leaped into the suns.h.i.+ne, curved back from us like a huge bow. Then with a roar it came at us, released from its tension of Heaven knows how many tons. Full on the broadside it struck us, sending every soul but me flying out of the wreckage as if fired from catapults. I did not go because my foot was jammed somehow in the well of the boat, but the wrench nearly pulled my thighbone out of its socket. I had hardly released my foot when, towering above me, came the colossal head of the great creature, as he ploughed through the bundle of _debris_ that had just been a boat. There was an appalling roar of water in my ears, and darkness that might be felt all around.

Yet, in the midst of it all, one thought predominated as clearly as if I had been turning it over in my mind in the quiet of my bunk aboard--"What if he should swallow me?" Nor to this day can I understand how I escaped the portals of his gullet, which, of course, gaped wide as a church door. But the agony of holding my breath soon overpowered every other feeling and thought, till just as something was going to snap inside my head, I rose to the surface. I was surrounded by a welter of b.l.o.o.d.y froth, which, made it impossible for me to see; but oh, the air was sweet!

I struck out blindly, instinctively, although I could feel so strong an eddy that voluntary progress was out of the question. My hand touched and clung to a rope, which immediately towed me in some direction--I neither knew nor cared whither. Soon the motion ceased, and, with a seaman's instinct, I began to haul myself along by the rope I grasped, although no definite idea was in my mind as to where it was attached.

Presently I came b.u.t.t up against something solid, the feel of which gathered all my scattered wits into a compact k.n.o.b of dread. It was the whale! "Any port in a storm," I murmured, beginning to haul away again on my friendly line. By dint of hard work I pulled myself right up the sloping, slippery bank of blubber, until I reached the iron, which, as luck would have it, was planted in that side of the carca.s.s now uppermost.

Carca.s.s I said--well, certainly I had no idea of there being any life remaining within the vast ma.s.s beneath me; yet I had hardly time to take a couple of turns round myself with the rope (or whale-line, as I had proved it to be), when I felt the great animal quiver all over, and begin to forge ahead. I was now composed enough to remember that help could not be far away, and that my rescue, providing that I could keep above water, was but a question of a few minutes. But I was hardly prepared for the whale's next move. Being very near his end, the boat, or boats, had drawn off a bit, I supposed, for I could see nothing of them. Then I remembered the flurry.

Almost at the same moment it began; and there was I, who, with fearful admiration had so often watched the t.i.tanic convulsions of a dying cachalot, actually involved in them. The turns were off my body, but I was able to twist a couple of turns round my arms, which, in case of his sounding, I could readily let go. Then all was lost in roar and rush, as of the heart of some mighty cataract, during which I was sometimes above, sometimes beneath, the water, but always clinging, with every ounce of energy still left, to the line. Now, one thought was uppermost--"What if he should breach?" I had seen them do so when in flurry, leaping full twenty feet in the air. Then I prayed.

Quickly as all the preceding changes had pa.s.sed, came perfect peace.

There I lay, still alive, but so weak that, although I could feel the turns slipping off my arms, and knew that I should slide off the slope of the whale's side into the sea if they did, I could make no effort to secure myself. Everything then pa.s.sed away from me, just as if I had gone to sleep. I do not at all understand how I kept my position, nor how long, but I awoke to the blessed sound of voices, and saw the second mate's boat alongside.

FRANK T. BULLEN: "The Cruise of the Cachalot."

THE MAPLE