Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers
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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers
American literature
Suddenly the notes of the deep-laboring organ burst upon the ear,
falling with double and redoubled intensity, and rolling, as it were,
huge billows of sound. How well do their volume and grandeur accord
with this mighty building! With what pomp do they swell through its
vast vaults, and breathe their awful harmony through these caves
of death, and make the silent sepulchre vocal! And now they rise in
triumph and acclamation, heaving higher and higher their accordant
notes, and piling sound on sound. And now they pause, and the soft
voices of the choir break out into sweet gushes of melody; they soar
aloft, and warble along the roof, and seem to play about these lofty
vaults like the pure airs of heaven. Again the pealing organ heaves
its thrilling thunders, compressing air into music, and rolling it
forth upon the soul. What long-drawn cadences! What solemn sweeping
concords! It grows more and more dense and powerful――it fills the
vast pile, and seems to jar the very walls――the ear is stunned――the
senses are overwhelmed. And now it is winding up in full jubilee――it
is rising from the earth to heaven――The very soul seems rapt away and
floated upwards on this swelling tide of harmony!
I sat for some time lost in that kind of reverie which a strain of
music is apt sometimes to inspire: the shadows of evening were
gradually thickening round me; the monuments began to cast deeper and
deeper gloom; and the distant clock again gave token of the slowly
waning day.
* * * * *
BALTUS VAN TASSEL’S FARM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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