THE ALMADORA RAVINE. And all put on a gentle hue, WANDERINGS OF CAIN. AUTHOR. I have come, dear Madam, to claim the performance of your promise. You have forgotten, I fear, the ravine I mentioned to you. LADY. Far from it. The manuscript you have allowed me to peruse, has made me impatient to view it with you. When shall we visit that scene of lonely nature, to which you so frequently allude, and which you say resembles a picture rich and rare ? AUTHOR. This very moment, if it suit your convenience. My arm is at your service; the December air is pure and bracing, the earth sprinkled with hoar-frost like manna, the day young and promising; and you are prepared, I see, for our little tour of discovery. LADY. How glad I am it happens to be so! I should be sorry to lose the opportunity, with which you are so kind as to favour me. We pass that white house, I think? AUTHOR. Yes, and a hundred rods eastward, along this grassy road-side. LADY. I see, to yonder rail-fence on the left. AUTHOR. We enter by these bars, which neighbour B― has painted so gaily. Permit me to let them down for you. We are now admitted to the commencement of things. You observe those feathery spires of pasturegrass? LADY. That harvest too of witch-hazle twigs. AUTHOR. And the crimson leaves of those shrub-oaks. LADY. Nothing can be more richly frosted. Frosted windows are beautiful, but not so beautiful; for here we have the addition of exquisite colouring. AUTHOR. Observe, as we slowly move forward, that tinge before us, that wave of hues I may call it, ever preserving the same distance on the grass. To what may we compare it? LADY. I know not call it the incomparable, if you will, the wave of heaven, or the hue without a name. Whatever you may christen this living lustre, it seems attracting us toward some wonder to come. See it moving over that grove of coated shoots; over those russet leaves too, edged with rough-silver frost-work. AUTHOR. A glorious view, the very rainbow of the groves. LADY. Lunar rainbow, if you please. AUTHOR. Leaving these faint hues of the bow of promise, this galaxy of the earth, on our right, and still following our reflected glory, we must descend with extreme caution into this deep ravine, down which a brook is stealing beneath its crystal prison. See that you walk exactly, even with apostolic exactness on this slippery surface we must keep a firm foot. Let us cross the stream, where you see those mossy steps on either side. We are safely over! LADY. Do you call this winding strip of white ice a stream? How silent! how dumb! the very mockery of a stream. AUTHOR. Let us trace the left-hand margin downward, a little to the left of the sun. Our path is velvety and free from danger, here, and wide enough for two; we might without inconvenience admit even a third. LADY. Some Bertha or Seraphina, for example, trembling on your right! AUTHOR. Even so, Undine or Eumela. Do you perceive the air grow chill? LADY. Yes, and the cause: the sun is disappearing behind that pine-covered bank on our right. Our passage grows more and more dusky. AUTHOR. HOW wide do you conceive the ravine to be at the top, from bank to bank? LADY. About fifty feet. How gracefully those white birches shoot up the two steeps! AUTHOR. You remember who calls the birch "the lady of the woods." LADY. The same poet, who calls it "most beautiful of forest-trees." But see, our companion here, the brook, is not entirely a Persian mute, where it sprays over the rock in the channel. Should your Almadora come down this way AUTHOR. " Winding at its own sweet will LADY. Would it not find or make room enough for its onward sweep ? AUTHOR. Yes, the whole Almadora might here pour its collected waters through, in one mighty stream. LADY. And the whole Merrimac, our own Merrimac, united with it. AUTHOR. Will you believe it? Nay, you must believe it: this very rivulet, by which we are walking and exclaiming, like that of the sweet wayward Undine, is here setting off in quest of adventures, seeking its fortune. It sinks into the ground on yonder grass-plat, near that snowy stump, filtrates deeply through the hill, gushes out half a mile eastward, forms a fountain of the first water, then turns to the right, flows onward in its frolicsome meandering to the Almadora, and so keeps moving, till, passing the scenes of magic reality which I have attempted to describe, it reaches the ocean. LÁDY. Well, we are yet moving through this chill but enchanting obscurity, though, I trust, not quite to the ocean. AUTHOR. Winding round to the north. Daylight is brightening. LADY. The sunny influences are welcome. AUTHOR. But as yet, you perceive, they produce no impression on this world of frostwork. The brook has entirely vanished. Had it not preferred a more romantic passage, it might have run where we are stepping over this fine turf, our shoes covered with sparkles LADY. Or spangles, like Sindbad the Sailor, in his Valley of Diamonds. AUTHOR. Twenty rods further: Ah, we are now treading the very border of that scene, which "nature created in silence" and love. Here the rugged ravine widens at once. It forms a circular glade of more than five hundred feet diameter, and completely terminates the view, as well as its own course. LADY. This bottom is level as a calm lake; smooth and delightful to the tread, as these brown tufts of grass, thick-inwoven, can make it. AUTHOR. It is truly a magic inclosure; a genuine "corner of calmness;" suitable for Oberon, Titania, Puck, and Co. to foot it upon, under some Midsummer Night's moon. Well, — good people and true are footing it now. Are these circling banks a hundred feet high? Their steep sides, crowded with oak, birch, white poplar, beech, and maple, intertwisted with thickets of thorn and underbrush of every name, and surmounted by pines forming a wall of verdure, render all escape impracticable, except by retracing the tongue of our Jewsharp. LADY. Who wishes to escape?—Not a breath of wind reaches us here. How perfectly still! But look at those fringed wood-tops above, waving in the breeze like warplumes. AUTHOR. And let your eye glance round the whole of this magnificent interiour, from the surface to the summit, all white with interwoven silver, or luminous with gems, as if it were actually a thousand yards torn off from the Milky Way. O that those High-priests of Nature, COLERIDGE, SOUTHEY, and WORDSWORTH, were here, viewing this mighty sweep of circumference, made almost uniform and imbodied by frostwork! LADY. Or BRYANT, the poetic hope of our own country. But not even the breath of fame penetrates to this seclusion. Here is no sound of the living world AUTHOR. Save the note of that blue-jay, you see flying across. LADY. And Moore's "woodpecker tapping the hollow beech tree." AUTHOR. See the speckled rogue sticking to that decayed pine. With what ease he clings to the under side of that old branch! Do you know his aim? He is cleverly stealing the kernels of corn, which the careless jay has imperfectly tucked under the bark. See him dart up that dry picturesque pine-top, which like a mast rises above its evergreen brethren. He is sharpening his bill on the very pinnacle. LADY. But there is a sound, a "soft and soul-like sound," a low deep melody, something that is not earthly. Does that hollow murmur come from the wind, passing through this vast circumference of boughs? AUTHOR. Let a line of Young express its mystic, its almost supernatural power: Like voice of "seas remote or dying storms." Is it the same, as that sound of a going or motion in the tops of the mulberry trees, mentioned in Scripture?— A year or two since, my friend G -, in order to hear this playing of Nature's instrument, entered this glade by climbing up some forbidden way. LADY. And what was the consequence ? AUTHOR. He got himself more effectually scratched, than a dozen grimalkins could have done it for him.-One view more LADY. Another ! AUTHOR. One view more completes the panorama. From this immense area, chequered with shadow and sunshine, its wall sparkling with gems of many-coloured lustre, and yet dim and visionary as a sparry cavern, LADY. Forgive my interrupting you again, but this feature of your panorama I consider more exquisite than all the rest; this many coloured lustre, yet dim and visionary as that of your Lovers' Grotto. The author of the Sylphs of the Seasons,'-would that he were this moment here with us, here to see the wonders that we are seeing! AUTHOR. Still, whatever marvels of poetry his Sylph of Winter might embody, must he not feel that all power of the sister art, even art admirable as his own, would be inadequate to embody a vision so divine as this? LADY. Unquestionably, and for this very reason he would delight to confess the inimitable touches of Nature. AUTHOR. Yes, the Hand of God himself. I am most happy to share with you this feeling or impression of yours. |