Initial Studies in American LettersBeers, Henry A. (Henry Augustin)
History
Initial Studies in American Letters
Beers, Henry A. (Henry Augustin)
American literature -- History and criticism
The shadows lay along Broadway,
'Twas near the twilight tide--
And slowly there a lady fair
Was walking in her pride.
Alone walked she; but, viewlessly,
Walked spirits at her side.
Peace charmed the street beneath her feet,
And Honor charmed the air;
And all astir looked kind on her,
And called her good as fair--
For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.
She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true;
For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo,
But honored well are charms to sell,
If priests the selling do.
Now walking there was one more fair--
A slight girl, lily-pale;
And she had unseen company
To make the spirit quail--
'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn,
And nothing could avail.
No mercy now can clear her brow
For this world's peace to pray;
For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,
Her woman's heart gave way!
But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven
By man is cursed alway.
NAHANT.
Here we are, then, in the "Swallow's Cave." The floor descends by a
gentle declivity to the sea, and from the long dark cleft stretching
outward you look forth upon the Atlantic--the shore of Ireland the
first _terra firma_ in the path of your eye. Here is a dark pool, left
by the retreating tide for a refrigerator; and with the champagne in
the midst we will recline about it like the soft Asiatics of whom we
learned pleasure in the East, and drink to the small-featured and
purple-lipped "Mignons" of Syria--those fine-limbed and fiery slaves
adorable as peris, and by turns languishing and stormy, whom you buy
for a pinch of piastres (say 5L 5s.) in sunny Damascus. Your drowsy
Circassian, faint and dreamy, or your crockery Georgian--fit dolls for
the sensual Turk--is, to him who would buy _soul_, dear at a penny the
hecatomb.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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