How strange, I thought, that this sphere should be thus condemned
to solitude! I had hoped, at least to discover some new form of
animal life--perhaps of a lower class than any with which we are at
present acquainted, but still, some living organism. I found my newly
discovered world, if I may so speak, a beautiful chromatic desert.
While I was speculating on the singular arrangements of the internal
economy of Nature, with which she so frequently splinters into atoms
our most compact theories, I thought I beheld a form moving slowly
through the glades of one of the prismatic forests. I looked more
attentively, and found that I was not mistaken.
Words can not depict the anxiety with which I awaited the nearer
approach of this mysterious object. Was it merely some inanimate
substance, held in suspense in the attenuated atmosphere of the
globule? or was it an animal endowed with vitality and motion? It
approached, flitting behind the gauzy, colored veils of cloud-foliage,
for seconds dimly revealed, then vanished. At last the violet pennons
that trailed nearest to me vibrated; they were gently pushed aside, and
the form floated out into the broad light.
It was a female human shape. When I say human, I mean it possessed the
outlines of humanity--but there the analogy ends. Its adorable beauty
lifted it illimitable heights beyond the loveliest daughter of Adam.
I can not, I dare not, attempt to inventory the charms of this divine
revelation of perfect beauty. Those eyes of mystic violet, dewy and
serene, evade my words. Her long, lustrous hair following her glorious
head in a golden wake, like the track sown in heaven by a falling star,
seems to quench my most burning phrases with its splendors. If all the
bees of Hybla nestled upon my lips, they would still sing but hoarsely
the wondrous harmonies of outline that enclosed her form.
She swept out from between the rainbow-curtains of the cloud-trees
into the broad sea of light that lay beyond. Her motions were those
of some graceful naiad, cleaving, by a mere effort of her will, the
clear, unruffled waters that fill the chambers of the sea. She floated
forth with the serene grace of a frail bubble ascending through the
still atmosphere of a June day. The perfect roundness of her limbs
formed suave and enchanting curves. It was like listening to the most
spiritual symphony of Beethoven the divine, to watch the harmonious
flow of lines. This, indeed, was a pleasure, cheaply purchased at
any price. What cared I, if I had waded to the portal of this wonder
through another's blood? I would have given my own to enjoy one such
moment of intoxication and delight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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