The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 Part 37

The king seized the goblet, he swung it on high, And whirling, it fell in the roar of the tide; "But bring back that goblet again to my eye, And I'll hold thee the dearest that rides by my side; And thine arms shall embrace as thy bride, I decree, The maiden whose pity now pleadeth for thee."

And Heaven, as he listen'd, spoke out from the s.p.a.ce, And the hope that makes heroes shot flame from his eyes; He gazed on the blush in that beautiful face-- It pales--at the feet of her father she lies!

How priceless the guerdon!--a moment--a breath-- And headlong he plunges to life and to death!

They hear the loud surges sweep back in their swell, Their coming the thunder-sound heralds along!

Fond eyes yet are tracking the spot where he fell.

They come, the wild waters, in tumult and throng, Roaring up to the cliff,--roaring back as before, But no wave ever brings the lost youth to the sh.o.r.e!

LXI. THE PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS.

CARDINAL NEWMAN.--1801-

_From_ CALLISTA.

Juba's finger was directed to a spot where, amid the thick foliage, the gleam of a pool or of a marsh was visible. The various waters round about, issuing from the gravel, or drained from the nightly damps, had run into a hollow, filled with the decaying vegetation of former years.

Its banks were bordered with a deep, broad layer of mud, a transition substance between the rich vegetable matter which it once had been, and the mult.i.tudinous world of insect life which it was becoming. A cloud or mist at this time was hanging over it, high in air. A harsh and shrill sound, a whizzing or a chirping, proceeded from that cloud to the ear of the attentive listener. What these indications portended was plain....

The plague of locusts, one of the most awful visitations to which the countries included in the Roman empire were exposed, extended from the Atlantic to Ethiopia, from Arabia to India, and from the Nile and Red Sea to Greece and the north of Asia Minor. Instances are recorded in history of clouds of the devastating insect crossing the Black Sea to Poland, and the Mediterranean to Lombardy. It is as numerous in its species as it is wide in its range of territory. Brood follows brood, with a sort of family likeness, yet with distinct attributes. It wakens into existence and activity as early as the month of March; but instances are not wanting, as in our present history, of its appearance as late as June. Even one flight comprises myriads upon myriads pa.s.sing imagination, to which the drops of rain or the sands of the sea are the only fit comparison; and hence it is almost a proverbial mode of expression in the East, by way of describing a vast invading army, to liken it to the locusts. So dense are they, when upon the wing, that it is no exaggeration to say that they hide the sun, from which circ.u.mstance indeed their name in Arabic is derived. And so ubiquitous are they when they have alighted on the earth, that they simply cover or clothe its surface.

This last characteristic is stated in the sacred account of the plagues of Egypt, where their faculty of devastation is also mentioned. The corrupting fly and the bruising and prostrating hail preceded them in that series of visitations, but _they_ came to do the work of ruin more thoroughly. For not only the crops and fruits, but the foliage of the forest itself, nay, the small twigs and the bark of the trees are the victims of their curious and energetic rapacity. They have been known even to gnaw the door-posts of the houses. Nor do they execute their task in so slovenly a way, that, as they have succeeded other plagues, so they may have successors themselves. They take pains to spoil what they leave. Like the Harpies, they smear every thing that they touch with a miserable slime, which has the effect of a virus in corroding, or as some say, in scorching and burning. And then, perhaps, as if all this were little, when they can do nothing else, they die; as if out of sheer malevolence to man, for the poisonous elements of their nature are then let loose and dispersed abroad, and create a pestilence; and they manage to destroy many more by their death than in their life.

Such are the locusts. And now they are rus.h.i.+ng upon a considerable tract of that beautiful region of which we have spoken with such admiration.

The swarm to which Juba pointed grew and grew till it became a compact body, as much as a furlong square; yet it was but the vanguard of a series of similar hosts, formed one after another out of the hot mould or sand, rising into the air like clouds, enlarging into a dusky canopy, and then discharged against the fruitful plain. At length the huge innumerous ma.s.s was put into motion, and began its career, darkening the face of day. As became an instrument of divine power, it seemed to have no volition of its own; it was set off, it drifted, with the wind, and thus made northwards, straight for Sicca. Thus they advanced, host after host, for a time wafted on the air, and gradually declining to the earth, while fresh broods were carried over the first, and neared the earth, after a longer flight, in their turn. For twelve miles did they extend from front to rear, and their whizzing and hissing could be heard for six miles on every side of them. The bright sun, though hidden by them, illumined their bodies, and was reflected from their quivering wings; and as they heavily fell earthward, they seemed like the innumerable flakes of a yellow-colored snow. And like snow did they descend, a living carpet, or rather pall, upon fields, crops, gardens, copses, groves, orchards, vineyards, olive woods, orangeries, palm plantations, and the deep forests, sparing nothing within their reach, and where there was nothing to devour, lying helpless in drifts, or crawling forward obstinately, as they best might, with the hope of prey.

They could spare their hundred thousand soldiers twice or thrice over, and not miss them; their ma.s.ses filled the bottoms of the ravines and hollow ways, impeding the traveller as he rode forward on his journey and trampled by thousands under his horse-hoofs. In vain was all this overthrow and waste by the roadside, in vain their loss in river, pool, and watercourse. The poor peasants hastily dug pits and trenches as their enemy came on; in vain they filled them from the wells or with lighted stubble. Heavily and thickly did the locusts fall; they were lavish of their lives; they choked the flame and the water, which destroyed them the while, and the vast living hostile armament still moved on.

They moved right on like soldiers in their ranks, stopping at nothing, and straggling for nothing; they carried a broad furrow or wheal all across the country, black and loathsome, while it was as green and smiling on each side of them and in front, as it had been before they came. Before them, in the language of prophets, was a paradise, and behind them a desert. They are daunted by nothing they surmount walls and hedges, and enter enclosed gardens or inhabited houses. A rare and experimental vineyard has been planted in a sheltered grove. The high winds of Africa will not commonly allow the light trellice or the slim pole; but here the lofty poplar of Campania has been possible, on which the vine plant mounts so many yards into the air, that the poor grape-gatherers bargain for a funeral pile and a tomb as one of the conditions of their engagement. The locusts have done what the winds and lightning could not do, and the whole promise of the vintage, leaves and all, is gone, and the slender stems are left bare. There is another yard, less uncommon, but still tended with more than common care; each plant is kept within due bounds by a circular trench round it, and by upright canes on which it is to trail; in an hour the solicitude and long toil of the vine-dresser are lost, and his pride humbled. There is a smiling farm; another sort of vine, of remarkable character, is found against the farmhouse. This vine springs from one root, and has clothed and matted with its many branches the four walls. The whole of it is covered thick with long cl.u.s.ters, which another month will ripen. On every grape and leaf there is a locust. Into the dry caves and pits, carefully strewed with straw, the harvest-men have (safely, as they thought just now) been lodging the far-famed African wheat. One grain or root shoots up into ten, twenty, fifty, eighty, nay, three or four hundred stalks: sometimes the stalks have two ears apiece, and these shoot into a number of lesser ones. These stores are intended for the Roman populace, but the locusts have been beforehand with them. The small patches of ground belonging to the poor peasants up and down the country, for raising the turnips, garlic, barley, water-melons, on which they live, are the prey of these glutton invaders as much as the choicest vines and olives. Nor have they any reverence for the villa of the civic decurion or the Roman official. The neatly arranged kitchen garden, with its cherries, plums, peaches, and apricots, is a waste; as the slaves sit round, in the kitchen in the first court, at their coa.r.s.e evening meal, the room is filled with the invading force, and news comes to them that the enemy has fallen upon the apples and pears in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and is at the same time plundering and sacking the preserves of quince and pomegranate, and revelling in the jars of precious oil of Cyprus and Mendes in the store-rooms.

They come up to the walls of Sicca, and are flung against them into the ditch. Not a moment's hesitation or delay; they recover their footing, they climb up the wood or stucco, they surmount the parapet, or they have entered in at the windows, filling the apartments, and the most private and luxurious chambers, not one or two, like stragglers at forage or rioters after a victory, but in order of battle, and with the array of an army. Choice plants or flowers about the _impluvia_ and _xysti_, for ornament or refreshment, myrtles, oranges, pomegranates, the rose and the carnation, have disappeared. They dim the bright marbles of the walls and the gilding of the ceilings. They enter the triclinium in the midst of the banquet; they crawl over the viands and spoil what they do not devour. Unrelaxed by success and by enjoyment, onward they go; a secret mysterious instinct keeps them together, as if they had a king over them. They move along the floor in so strange an order that they seem to be a tessellated pavement themselves, and to be the artificial embellishment of the place; so true are their lines, and so perfect is the pattern they describe. Onward they go, to the market, to the temple sacrifices, to the bakers' stores, to the cookshops, to the confectioners, to the druggists; nothing comes amiss to them; wherever man has aught to eat or drink, there are they, reckless of death, strong of appet.i.te, certain of conquest....

Another and a still worse calamity. The invaders, as we have already hinted, could be more terrible still in their overthrow than in their ravages. The inhabitants of the country had attempted, where they could, to destroy them by fire and water. It would seem as if the malignant animals had resolved that the sufferers should have the benefit of this policy to the full; for they had not got more than twenty miles beyond Sicca when they suddenly sickened and died. When they thus had done all the mischief they could by their living, when they thus had made their foul maws the grave of every living thing, next they died themselves, and made the desolated land their own grave. They took from it its hundred forms and varieties of beautiful life, and left it their own fetid and poisonous carcases in payment. It was a sudden catastrophe; they seemed making for the Mediterranean, as if, like other great conquerors, they had other worlds to subdue beyond it; but, whether they were overgorged, or struck by some atmospheric change, or that their time was come and they paid the debt of nature, so it was that suddenly they fell, and their glory came to nought, and all was vanity to them as to others, and "their stench rose up, and their corruption rose up, because they had done proudly."

The hideous swarms lay dead in the moist steaming underwoods, in the green swamps, in the sheltered valleys, in the ditches and furrows of the fields, amid the monuments of their own prowess, the ruined crops and the dishonored vineyards. A poisonous element, issuing from their remains, mingled with the atmosphere, and corrupted it. The dismayed peasant found that a plague had begun; a new visitation, not confined to the territory which the enemy had made its own, but extending far and wide, as the atmosphere extends, in all directions. Their daily toil, no longer claimed by the fruits of the earth, which have ceased to exist, is now devoted to the object of ridding themselves of the deadly legacy which they have received in their stead. In vain; it is their last toil; they are digging pits, they are raising piles, for their own corpses, as well as for the bodies of their enemies. Invader and victim lie in the same grave, burn in the same heap; they sicken while they work, and the pestilence spreads.

LXII. THE CANE-BOTTOM'D CHAIR.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.--1811-1863.

In tatter'd old slippers that toast at the bars, And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars, Away from the world and its toils and its cares, I've a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs.

To mount to this realm is a toil, to be sure, But the fire there is bright and the air rather pure; And the view I behold on a suns.h.i.+ny day Is grand through the chimney-pots over the way.

This snug little chamber is cramm'd in all nooks With worthless old knicknacks and silly old books, And foolish old odds and foolish old ends, Crack'd bargains from brokers, cheap keepsakes from friends.

Old armor, prints, pictures, pipes, china, (all crack'd,) Old rickety tables, and chairs broken-back'd; A twopenny treasury, wondrous to see; What matter? 'tis pleasant to you, friend, and me.

No better divan need the Sultan require, Than the creaking old sofa that basks by the fire; And 'tis wonderful, surely, what music you get From the rickety, ramshackle, wheezy spinet.

That praying-rug came from a Turcoman's camp; By Tiber once twinkled that brazen old lamp; A Mameluke fierce yonder dagger has drawn: 'Tis a murderous knife to toast m.u.f.fins upon.

Long, long through the hours, and the night, and the chimes, Here we talk of old books, and old friends, and old times; As we sit in a fog made of rich Latakie This chamber is pleasant to you, friend, and me.

But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest, There's one that I love and I cherish the best; For the finest of couches that's padded with hair I never would change thee, my cane-bottom'd chair.

'Tis a bandy-legg'd, high-shoulder'd, worm-eaten seat, With a creaking old back, and twisted old feet; But since the fair morning when f.a.n.n.y sat there, I bless thee, and love thee, old cane-bottom'd chair.

If chairs have but feeling, in holding such charms, A thrill must have pa.s.s'd through your wither'd old arms!

I look'd, and I long'd, and I wish'd in despair; I wish'd myself turn'd to a cane-bottom'd chair.

It was but a moment she sat in this place, She'd a scarf on her neck, and a smile on her face!

A smile on her face, and a rose in her hair, And she sat there, and bloom'd in my cane-bottom'd chair.

And so I have valued my chair ever since, Like the shrine of a saint, or the throne of a prince; Saint f.a.n.n.y, my patroness sweet I declare, The queen of my heart and my cane-bottom'd chair.

When the candles burn low, and the company's gone, In the silence of night as I sit here alone-- I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair-- My f.a.n.n.y I see in my cane-bottom'd chair.

She comes from the past and revisits my room; She looks as she then did, all beauty and bloom; So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair, And yonder she sits in my cane-bottom'd chair.

LXIII. THE RECONCILIATION.[N]

THACKERAY.

There was scarce a score of persons in the Cathedral beside the Dean and some of his clergy, and the choristers, young and old, that performed the beautiful evening prayer. But Mr. Tusher was one of the officiants, and read from the eagle in an authoritative voice, and a great black periwig; and in the stalls, still in her black widow's hood, sat Esmond's dear mistress, her son by her side, very much grown, and indeed a n.o.ble-looking youth, with his mother's eyes, and his father's curling brown hair, that fell over his _point de Venise_--a pretty picture such as Vand.y.k.e might have painted. Mons. Rigaud's portrait of my Lord Viscount, done at Paris afterwards, gives but a French version of his manly, frank English face. When he looked up there were two sapphire beams out of his eyes such as no painter's palette has the color to match, I think. On this day there was not much chance of seeing that particular beauty of my young lord's countenance; for the truth is, he kept his eyes shut for the most part, and, the anthem being rather long, was asleep.

But the music ceasing, my lord woke up, looking about him, and his eyes lighting on Mr. Esmond, who was sitting opposite him, gazing with no small tenderness and melancholy upon two persons who had so much of his heart for so many years, Lord Castlewood, with a start; pulled at his mother's sleeve (her face had scarce been lifted from her book), and said, "Look, mother!" so loud, that Esmond could hear on the other side of the church, and the old Dean on his throned stall. Lady Castlewood looked for an instant as her son bade her, and held up a warning finger to Frank; Esmond felt his whole face flush, and his heart throbbing, as that dear lady beheld him once more. The rest of the prayers were speedily over; Mr. Esmond did not hear them; nor did his mistress, very likely, whose hood went more closely over her face, and who never lifted her head again until the service was over, the blessing given, and Mr.

Dean, and his procession of ecclesiastics, out of the inner chapel.

Young Castlewood came clambering over the stalls before the clergy were fairly gone, and running up to Esmond, eagerly embraced him. "My dear, dearest old Harry!" he said, "are you come back? Have you been to the wars? You'll take me with you when you go again? Why didn't you write to us? Come to mother."

Mr. Esmond could hardly say more than a "G.o.d bless you, my boy," for his heart was very full and grateful at all this tenderness on the lad's part; and he was as much moved at seeing Frank as he was fearful about that other interview which was now to take place: for he knew not if the widow would reject him as she had done so cruelly a year ago.

"It was kind of you to come back to us, Henry," Lady Esmond said. "I thought you might come."

"We read of the fleet coming to Portsmouth. Why did you not come from Portsmouth?" Frank asked, or my Lord Viscount, as he now must be called.

Esmond had thought of that too. He would have given one of his eyes so that he might see his dear friends again once more; but believing that his mistress had forbidden him her house, he had obeyed her, and remained at a distance.