IX
The stars were paling over Etna, white and ghostly, as I came out to
depart. In the dark street I met a woman with a young boy clinging to
her side. Her black hair fell down over her shoulders, and her bosom was
scantily clothed by the poor garment that fell to her ankles and her
feet. She was still young, and from her dark, sad face her eyes met mine
with that fixed look of the hopeless poor, now grown familiar; the
child, half naked, gazed up at me as he held his mother's hand. What
brought her there at that hour, alone with her child? She seemed the
epitome of the human life I was leaving behind, come forth to bid
farewell; and she passed on under the shadows of the dawn. The last star
faded as I went down the hollow between the spurs. Etna gleamed white
and vast over the shoulder of the ravine, and, as I dipped down, was
gone.
A NEW DEFENCE OF POETRY
There was an old cry, Return to Nature! Let us rather return unto the
soul. Nature is great, and her science marvellous; but it is man who
knows it. In what he knows it is partial and subsidiary. Know thyself,
was the first command of reason; and wisdom was an ancient thing when
the sweet influences of the Pleiades and the path of Arcturus with his
sons were young in human thought.
Pages:
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77