Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ With one sweet breath of that self-same perfume
⁠That turned my own December into May.
XLIII
And yet—and yet—let the great world go past!
⁠God holds within the hollow of His hand
Each scourged pariah, down-trodden, and outclassed,
Who pauses at the steep abyss, aghast;—
⁠His will we cannot hope to understand.
⁠Only of all good things that He hath planned,
And all that in the future He may send,
⁠There is no further boon that I demand,
Since I have this—that half I comprehend—
⁠That I have held you to my heart at last! ”

“ Le Pochard rocked and swayed, ticking like a little clock, and drinking cup after cup of his imaginary beverage, as if his life depended upon the quantity consumed. Convulsed with merriment at the performance of the preposterous creature, Jean le Gai lay prone upon the divan, kneading the cushions with his fists and kicking his heels against the floor, and Grégoire, a slow smile curling his thin, sensitive lips, seemed to forget even his absinthe until the toy’s energy slackened and he paused, with the bottle shaking in his hand, and his eyes, as usual, bent upon the ground. ”

“ He was at the age when there is nothing more inspiring than such a play of life and action, under the open sky and over the close-cropped turf. The ripple of lithe muscles along the sleek flanks of the horses; the set, smooth-shaven faces of the rigid jockeys; the gleam of sunlight and colour; and the deep, crescendo voice of the multitude, swelling to thunder as the racers flew past — all these set his pulses tingling, until he, too, cried out impulsively in his excitement. It was his first horse-race, and his first glimpse of Paris into the bargain. ”

“ The earth, which never sighs save when falling asleep or waking, sighs then, and her breath is sweet. Scents and sounds step to the roadside, and are gone again in a moment. The wind whips and whistles. And the triplicate hoof-beats pound, pound, pound out of life all that is stale, morbid, and unclean, so that it becomes a crystal dome inverted on a perfume-breathing garden, and one man whirling through space like a god, with a laugh on his lips!
Hurdles rushed at Andrew out of the music, and he rose to them, and, clearing them, would have shouted, but that the music shouted for him. ”

“ Till the sums on which we labor be solved by a single word!
Calm with the infinite calm of the North’s immutable star,
Crowned with serene omniscience, O Spirit of Deep Mid-Sea,
If thus majestic and mute God’s stately seneschals are,
What, in His own high heaven, shall your Maker and Master be?
Am I then the last of the men that this day departed saw,
Sole survivor of all whom it roused to strive and stir,
That I stand alone in the night, and, beaten to bay by awe,
Confront in the sudden stillness the eloquent eyes of Her? ”

“ Margery had been walking, and with her entrance into the room came an indescribable suggestion of the open air. Her face was radiant, and the violets at her belt, brought suddenly from the slight chill without into the warmth of her mother’s boudoir, seemed to heave a perfumed sigh of relief. The girl’s brown eyes, aglow with youth and health, the proud poise of her head, and her firm hands, ungloved and guiltless of rings, were all in marked contrast to the heavy woman throned upon the divan, and languidly sniffing at her salts. ”

“ He had entered, as one turns aside from the beaten road to explore some little vista of unprecedented beauty, with a vague convincement at the back of his brain, that the divergence was for a moment only, and that, so soon as his curiosity should be satisfied, he would turn back to the highway and go forward again, richer by an experience which it was not necessary to mention, and which would be as immaterial in its bearing upon the main issues of life, as a flower plucked and tossed aside in passing, or a tune whistled in a moment of light-heartededness. ”

“ This portrait of his mother dominated the life of Pépin like the half-remembered substance of a dream. He had known nothing of her in the life, for the breath of being had passed from her lips to his at the moment of his birth, but with the intuition of childhood, he seemed to know that this was one who would have loved him and whom he would have loved. ”

“ God in His pleasure hath set a measure, the bound of their boast to be,
Where, pile upon pile, and mile on mile, are the cliffs of calm control.
But the Lord of Hosts who guardeth the coasts yet loveth each sieging swell,
And He who is Brother to surge and smother is Brother to cliff as well:
He giveth the word if the shore be stirred, He biddeth the sea subside,
And this is our trust, that His will is just, however He turn the tide! ”

“ He realized for the first time that, as a matter of fact, there had never been in his mind the shadow of a doubt that the way lay clear before him, that the attainment of his wishes had been, in his calculations, no more than a matter of time. He had relied upon Margery’s constancy like a mariner upon that of the North Star, and it was as if that luminary had suddenly flung away from him into some new and wholly unfamiliar constellation. The man who offers his hand in friendship and is stabbed in reply is not more aghast than was he. ”

“ And, part and indissoluble portion of its inspiring memories and illustrious destinies, the star of Alleghenia yet blazed upon its azure field! He had been living in a world of unrealities, in a valley of shadow, grayed by portents of failure and despair. His eyes had been narrowed to see the pitfalls which lined his path, to the stumbling-blocks, the briers, the indescribable sordidness of his personal position and his immediate surroundings. ”

“ The world lay brown and barren at the closing of the year,
Where the rushes shook and shuddered on the borders of the mere,
And the troubled tide ran shoreward, where the estuaries twined
Through the wide and empty marsh toward the sullen hills behind:
And the smoke-engirdled city sulked beneath the leaden skies,
With the rain-tears slowly sliding from her million window eyes,
And the fog-ghost limped and lingered past the buildings clad in grime,
Till the Frost King gave the signal for the Christmas pantomime! ”

“ From the doorway of his mother’s cottage, standing, primly white, in the midst of great rocks and strawberry fields, with its thatched roof drawn down, like a hood, about its ears, as if in protection against the western gales, he could look out across the broad harbor of Brest to the Goulet, the gateway to that great Atlantic whose mighty voice came to his ears in stormy weather, muttering against the barrier of the shore. ”