"O Golden Hair! ... O Gladness of an Hour Made flesh and blood!"
* * * * *
"Who speaks of glory and the force of love
And thou not near, my maiden-minded dove!
With all the coyness, all the beauty sheen
Of thy rapt face?
A fearless virgin-queen,
A queen of peace art thou,--and on thy head
The golden light of all thy hair is shed
Most nimbus-like, and most suggestive too
Of youthful saints enshrined and garlanded."
* * * * *
"Our thoughts are free,--and mine have found at last
Their apt solution; and from out the Past
There seems to shine as 'twere a beacon-fire:
And all the land is lit with large desire
Of lambent glory; all the quivering sea
Is big with waves that wait the
Morn's decree
As I, thy vassal, wait thy beckoning smile
Athwart the splendors of my dreams of thee!"
--"A Lover's Litanies."--ERIC MACKAY.
It was a dismal March evening. London lay swathed in a melancholy fog,--a fog too dense to be more than temporarily disturbed even by the sudden gusts of the bitter east wind. Rain fell steadily, sometimes changing to sleet, that drove in sharp showers on the slippery roads and pavements, bewildering the tired horses, and stirring up much irritation in the minds of those ill-fated foot- passengers whom business, certainly not pleasure, forced to encounter the inconveniences of the weather. Against one house in particular--an old-fashioned, irregular building situated in a somewhat out-of-the-way but picturesque part of Kensington--the cold, wet blast blew with specially keen ferocity, as though it were angered by the sounds within,--sounds that in truth rather resembled its own cross groaning.
Curious short grunts and plaintive cries, interspersed with an occasional pathetic long- drawn whine, suggested dimly the idea that somebody was playing, or trying to play, on a refractory stringed instrument, the well- worn composition known as Raff's "Cavatina." And, in fact, had the vexed wind been able to break through the wall and embody itself into a substantial being, it would have discovered the producer of the half-fierce, half-mournful noise, in the person of the Honorable Frank Villiers, who, with that amazingly serious ardor so often displayed by amateur lovers of music, was persistently endeavoring to combat the difficulties of the violoncello. He adored his big instrument,--the more unmanageable it became in his hands, the more he loved it. Its grumbling complaints at his unskilful touch delighted him,--when he could succeed in awakening a peevish dull sob from its troubled depths, he felt a positive thrill of almost professional triumph,--and he refused to be daunted in his efforts by the frequently barbaric clamor his awkward bowing wrung from the tortured strings.