Page images
PDF
EPUB

2. Alas, the snakes were hanging upon his breast, and the drops of poison on his tongue; and he now, at length, felt all the horror of his situation. Distracted, with unspeakable grief, and with face up-turned to heaven, he cried, "My father! give me back my youth! O, place me once again upon life's cross-way, that I may choose aright." But his father and his youth were long since gone. He saw phantom-lights dancing upon the marshes, and disappearing at the church-yard; and he said, "These are my foolish days!" He saw a star shoot from heaven, and glittering in its fall, vanish upon the earth. "Behold an emblem of my career," said his bleeding heart, and the serpent tooth of repentance digged deeper into his wounds.

3. His excited imagination shewed him specters flying upon the roof, and a skull, which had been left in the charnelhouse, gradually assumed his own features. In the midst of this confusion of objects, the music of the new-year flowed down from the steeple, like distant church-melodies. His heart began to melt. He looked around the horizon, and over the wide earth, and thought of the friends of his youth, who now, better and happier than he, were the wise of the earth, prosperous men, and the fathers of happy children; and he said, "Like you, I also might slumber, with tearless eyes, through the long nights, had I chosen aright in the outset of my career. Ah, my father! had I hearkened to thy instructions, I too might have been happy."

4. In this feverish remembrance of his youthful days, the skull bearing his features, seemed slowly to rise from the door of the charnel-house. At length, by that superstition, which, in the new-year's night, sees the shadow of the future, it became a living youth. He could look no longer he covered his eyes: a thousand burning tears streamed down, and fell upon the snow. In accents scarcely audible, he sighed disconsolately: "Oh, days of my youth, return, return! And they did return. It had only been a horrible dream. But, although he was still a youth, his errors had been a reality. And he thanked God, that he,

:

[ocr errors]

I

still young, was able to pause in the degrading course of vice, and return to the sunny path which leads to the land of harvests.

5. Return with him, young reader, if thou art walking in the same downward path, lest his dream become thy reality. For if thou turnest not now, in the spring-time of thy days, vainly, in after years, when the shadows of age are darkening around thee, shalt thou call, "Return, oh beautiful days of youth!" Those beautiful days, gone, gone forever, and hidden in the shadows of the misty past, shall close their ears against thy miserable cries, or answer thee in hollow accents, "Alas! we return no more."

CXV. THE CLOSING YEAR.

1. 'Tis midnight's holy hour, and silence now
Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er

2.

G. D. PRENTICE.

The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds,
The bell's deep tones are swelling;-'tis the knell
Of the departed year. No funeral train

Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest
Like a pale, spotless shroud: the air is stirred,
As by a mourner's sigh; and, on yon cloud,
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the Seasons seem to stand,

Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form,

And Winter, with his aged locks,—and breathe

In mournful cadences, that come abroad

Like the far wind-harp's wild, touching wail,

A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year,

Gone from the earth forever.

'Tis a time

For memory and for tears. Within the deep,
Still chambers of the heart, a specter dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time,
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold

And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions, that have passed away,

And left no shadow of their loveliness

3.

4.

5.

On the dead waste of life. The specter lifts
The coffin-lid of Hope, and Joy, and Love,

And bending mournfully above the pale,

Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers O'er what has passed to nothingness.

The year

Has gone, and with it, many a glorious throng
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow,
Its shadow, in each heart. In its swift course,
It waved its scepter o'er the beautiful;
And they are not. It laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man; and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.

It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous; and the tearful wail
Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er
The battle-plain, where sword, and spear, and shield,
Flashed in the light of mid-day; and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and moldering skeleton. It came,
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air,
It heralded its millions to their home,

In the dim land of dreams.

Remorseless Time!

Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! What power

Can stay him in his silent course, or melt

His iron-heart to pity! On, still on,

He presses, and forever. The proud bird,—
The condor of the Andes, that can soar

Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave

The fury of the northern hurricane,

And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home,

Furls his broad wing at night-fall, and sinks down
To rest upon his mountain crag; but Time
Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness,
And Night's deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinion.

Revolutions sweep

O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast

Of dreaming sorrow: cities rise and sink
Like bubbles on the water: fiery isles

Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back
To their mysterious caverns: mountains rear

To heaven their bold and blackened cliffs, and bow
Their tall heads to the plain; and empires rise,
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down, like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations; and the very stars,
Yon bright and glorious blazonry of God,
Glitter awhile in their eternal depths,

And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away
To darkle in the trackless void; yet Time,
Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career,
Dark, stern, all pitiless, and pauses not
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path,
To sit and muse, like other conquerors,

Upon the fearful ruin he hath wrought.

CXVI.-A REPUBLIC OF PRAIRIE-DOGS.

W. IRVING.

1. On returning from our excursion, I learned that a burrow, or village, as it is termed, of prairie-dogs had been discovered upon the level summit of a hill, about a mile from the camp. Having heard much of the habits and peculiarities of these little animals, I determined to pay a visit to the community. The prairie-dog is, in fact, one of the curiosities of the Far West, about which travelers delight to tell marvelous tales, endowing him, at times, with something of the political and social habits of a rational being, and giving him systems of civil government and domestic economy, almost equal to what they used to bestow upon the beaver.

2. The prairie-dog is an animal of the cony kind, about the size of a rabbit. He is of a very sprightly, mercurial nature: quick, sensitive, and somewhat petulant. He is very gregarious, living in large communities, sometimes of

several acres in extent, where innumerable little heaps of earth, show the entrances to the subterranean cells of the inhabitants, and the well-beaten tracks, like lanes and streets, show their mobility and restlessness. According to the accounts given of them, they would seem to be continually full of sport, business, and public affairs: whisking about hither and thither, as if on gossiping visits to each other's houses, or congregating in the cool of the evening, or after a shower, and gamboling together in the open air.

3. Sometimes, especially when the moon shines, they pass half the night in revelry, barking or yelping with short, quick, yet weak tones, like those of very young puppies. While in the hight of their playfulness and clamor, however, should there be the least alarm, they all vanish into their cells in an instant, and the village remains blank and silent. In case they are hard pressed by their pursuers, without any hope of escape, they will assume a pugnacious air, and a most whimsical look of impotent wrath and defiance. Such are a few of the particulars that

I could gather about the habits of this little inhabitant of the prairies, who, with his pigmy republic, appears to be a subject of much whimsical speculation and burlesque remarks, among the hunters of the Far West.

4. It was toward evening that I set out, with a companion, to visit the village in question. Unluckily, it had been invaded in the course of the day by some of the rangers, who had shot two or three of its inhabitants, and thrown the whole sensitive community into confusion. As we approached, we could perceive numbers of the inhabitants seated at the entrance of their cells, while sentinels seem to have been posted on the out-skirts, to keep a look out. At sight of us, the picket-guards scampered in and gave the alarm; whereupon, every inhabitant gave a short yelp or bark, and dived in his hole, his heels twinkling in the air, as if he had thrown a somerset.

5. We traversed the whole village, or republic, which covered an area of about thirty acres; but not a whisker

« PreviousContinue »