The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began.
The college green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became
"Embrouded ... as it were a mede
Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,"--
"floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare
charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without
angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the
scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of
Arabian Nights. I think I may safely say I never saw so many
well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame
fact to buttress Arabian Nights withal, but it implies much. The
distance was a little too great for one to note personal and individual
beauty; but since I have heard that Boston is famous for its ugly women,
perhaps that was an advantage, as diminishing likewise individual
ugliness. If no one was strikingly handsome, no one was strikingly
plain. And though you could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could
have the full effect of costumes,--rich, majestic, floating, gossamery,
impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely
needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a
dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the
beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured
activity,--
"A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved
By the soft wind of whispering silks."
Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the
Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet
bliss-month among the Blumenthal Mountains.
Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the
green. Youth and gayety and beauty--and in summer we are all young and
gay and beautiful--mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and
velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and
Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy
summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil
their faces there.
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