David Christie Murray

“ And many a darkness into the light shall leap, And shine in the sudden making of splendid names, And noble thought be freer under the sun. And the heart of a people beat with one desire; For the peace, that I deem’d no peace, is over and done, And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep, And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.
So thought Polson Jervase, and so thought hundreds of valiant men who were ready to lay down their lives in a quarrel which the years have proved unprofitable. ”

“ He will not live as an inventor, for he has not invented. He will not live as one of those who have opened new fields of thought. He will not live amongst those who have explored the heights and the deeps of the spirit of man. He may live—‘the stupid and ignorant pig of a public’ will settle the question—as a writer in whose works stand revealed a lovable, sincere, and brave soul and an unsleeping vigilance of artistic effort. ”

“ But here in the solitude of her own chamber she could kiss Reuben's letter, and could rest it against her hot cheek in an ecstasy of fluttering congratulations. How he looked, how he walked, how he talked, how he smiled, how he played! How brave, how handsome, how altogether noble and good and gifted he was! There was nobody to compare with him in Heydon Hay, and the young men of Castle Barfield were contemptible by comparison with him. A human sun before whose rays other young women's luminaries paled like rush-lights! ”

“ But the day wore itself out at last, and at ten o'clock at night I was wandering along the road by which Brunow must come, and listening with my soul in my ears for the first distant noise of hoof-beats. The sun had gone down in a bank of threatening cloud, and before the moon rose the last look I had taken at the hills which hemmed us in on every side had shown them seemingly hidden by driving mists, which travelled at an astonishing pace, betokening a wild wind up there, while the valley lay in a hot stillness. ”

“ Paul had broken loose, and knew not what to look for, and cared little for the hour. For his head was full of verses, and his heart was full of the summer day, and for the first time in his life he had gone to Nature, and forgotten his thrice-thirty-times copied emotions, and had dared to speak in his own voice. The lines he had made that day were unutterably sacred and sweet to him. The dreaming Solitary, staring down the gorge, heard the boy’s awestruck whisper, and, forgetting all the rest of the verses, remembered this one only:
‘Why, all is happy! ”

“ My native cheerfulness, my piano, my violin, my violoncello, my canvas children, and my pipes, all nourish me like meat and wine. I played upon my violin a little impromptu good-bye to my landscape—a melodious farewell to a sweet creation. The time seemed long before my landlady returned, and when I put back my violin in its case, I heard a sound of crying on the stairs. I opened the door and looked out, and there was a little English angel, whom I had never before seen, sitting upon the topmost step, close to my attic door, crying as if her heart had broken. ”

“ If the greatest Englishman since Shakespeare had not yet given Polson Jervase the words in which to speak his thought, it lightened his breast all the same.
I wake to the higher aims Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold, And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames, Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told; And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll’d, Tho’ many a light shall darken, and many shall weep For those that are crush’d in the clash of jarring claims, Yet God’s just wrath shall be wreak’d on a giant liar ”