Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

did I dream though, then, that those few hours in the old cave would decide my career. Thenceforward the rocks and their fossil treasures formed the chief subject of my everyday thoughts. That day stamped my fate, and I became a geologist.

DEFINITIONS. Strip'lings, young lads. Vis'taş, avenues. Fos'silş, remains of animals or plants found in stratified rocks. Mēa'ger, slender, imperfect. Jū'bi lee, joyful celebration.

THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS.

BY LEIGH HUNT.

King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,

And one day, as his lions fought, sat looking on the

court;

The nobles filled the benches round, the ladies by their

side,

And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he sighed :

And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning

show,

Valor and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.

Ramped and roared the lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went

with their paws;

With wallowing might and stifled roar, they rolled on one another:

Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thunderous

smother;

The bloody foam above the bars came whizzing through

the air:

Said Francis, then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there."

De Lorge's love o'erheard the king, -a beauteous, lively dame,

With smiling lips, and sharp, bright eyes, which always seemed the same;

She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be,

He surely would do wondrous things to show his love

for me;

King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine; I'll drop my glove to prove his love; great glory will be mine."

She dropped her glove to prove his love, then looked at him and smiled;

He bowed, and in a moment leaped among the lions

wild;

The leap was quick, return was quick, he soon regained his place,

Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face.

66

"In faith," cried Francis, "rightly done!" and he rose from where he sat ;

66

"No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that."

NOTE.

King Francis. This is supposed to have been Francis I. of France (b. 1494, d. 1547). He was devoted to sports of this

nature.

SCENES AMONG THE PYRENEES MOUNTAINS.

BY HIPPOLYTE A. TAINE.

A pretty streamlet slips down the mountain, between two walls of rounded stones all purple with poppies and wild mallows. Its fall has been turned to account in driving rows of saws incessantly back and forth over blocks of marble. A tall, barefooted girl in rags ladles up sand and water for wetting the machine; by the aid of the sand the iron blade eats away the block.

A footpath follows the river bank, lined with houses, huge oaks, and fields of Indian corn; on the other side of the river is an arid reach of pebbly shore, where children are paddling in the shallow water. On the transparent wave, flocks of ducks rock with the undulations of the current. It is the country and culture after solitude and the desert.

The pathway winds through a plantation of osiers and willows; the long, waving stalks that love the streams, the pale, pendant foliage, is infinitely graceful to eyes accustomed to the intense green of the mountains. On the right hand may be seen the narrow, rocky ways that lead to the hamlets scattered over the slopes. The houses there lean their backs against the mountains, shelved one above another, so as to look down upon

the valley.

At noon the people are all out. Every door is closed; three or four old women, who alone are left in the village, are spreading grain upon the level rock which forms the street. What more singular than this long, natural flagstone, carpeted with gilded heads of grain. The dark,

narrow church rises from a terraced yard, inclosed by a low wall; the bell tower is white and square, with a slated spire.

Under the porch may be read a few epitaphs carved in the stone. It is touching to read these words of sympathy graven upon a tomb. This sunlight is so sweet, the valley so beautiful, you seem to breathe health in the air; you want to live. The love of life is imparted with the love of light. How often beneath the gloomy northern sky do we form a similar desire?

At the turn of the mountain is the entrance into an oak wood that rises on one of the declivities. These lofty, roomy forests give to the south shade without coolness. High up among the trunks shines a patch of blue sky; light and shade dapple the gray moss like a silken design upon a velvet ground. A heavy, warm air, loaded with vegetable odors, rises to the face and affects the head like wine.

The monotonous sound of the cricket and the grasshopper comes from wheat land and meadow, from mountain and from plain; you feel that living myriads are at work among the heather and under the thatch; and in the veins, where ferments the blood, courses a vague sensation of comfort, which steeps the soul in animal life, and stifles thought under the dull impressions of the senses.

You lie down and are content with merely living; you do not note the passage of the hours, but you are happy in the present moment without thinking of past or future; you gaze upon the slender sprigs of moss, the grayish spikes of the grasses, the long ribbons of the shining herbs; you follow the course of an insect striv

ing to get over a thicket of turf, and clambering up and down in the labyrinth of its stalks. Why not confess that you have become a child again, and are amused with the least of sights?

DEFINITIONS.

From "Travels in the Pyrenees."

Măl'low, a plant with soft, downy leaves; so called from its supposed ability to soothe pain. It is from a Greek word meaning to soothe. O'şier, a kind of willow tree from the twigs of which baskets are made. Ep'i tăph, a writing on a monument in memory of the dead.

GLACIERS.

Snow consists of crystals of ice, which look white only because they do not lie perfectly close; for when the air is squeezed out, they adhere together and form a lump of transparent ice. The snow which accumulates on the heel of one's boot is converted into ice by pressure; and the vast quantities of snow which fall and accumulate among the mountains, are similarly converted into ice by their own weight, which also helps them to creep down the mountain sides into the valleys, where the warmer air changes them once more into water.

If the glaciers, as these rivers of ice are called, remained stationary high up among the mountains, they would go on increasing in thickness year by year, as they received fresh additions of snow; and year by year, as its waters were locked up in the form of ice, the ocean would sink lower and lower.

Glaciers, then, may be called rivers of ice; but unlike other rivers, they are able to move uphill as well as down : and while at one time they descend into deep basins, at another they ascend hills several hundred feet high.

« AnteriorContinuar »