Thomas Wentworth Higginson

“ You may notice it again in the summer, when our bay is thronged for miles on miles with inch-long jelly-fishes,—lovely creatures, in shape like disembodied gooseberries, and shot through and through in the sunlight with all manner of blue and golden glistenings, and bearing tiny rows of fringing oars that tremble like a baby's eyelids. There is less of gross substance in them than in any other created thing,—mere water and outline, destined to perish at a touch, but seemingly never touching, for they float secure, finding no conceivable cradle so soft as this awful sea. ”

“ Sailing gives a sense of prompt command, since by a single movement of the tiller you effect so great a change of direction or transform motion into rest; there is, therefore, a certain magic in it: but, on the other hand, there is in rowing a more direct appeal to your physical powers; you do not evade or cajole the elements by a cunning device of keel and canvas, you meet them man-fashion and subdue them. The motion of the oars is like the strong motion of a bird's wings; to sail a boat is to ride upon an eagle, but to row is to be an eagle. ”

“ Her baby ten months old, if disturbed in the night, would creep to her and touch her lips, to awaken her, but would make no noise.
One might fancy that all men who have an agonizing sorrow or a fearful secret would be drawn by irresistible attraction into the society of the deaf and dumb. What awful passions might not be whispered, what terror safely spoken, in the charmed circle round yonder silent boat,—a circle whose centre is a human life which has not all the susceptibilities of life, a confessional where even the priest cannot hear! ”

“ How unlike are those weird and gloomy nights to this sunny noon, when I rest my oars in this sheltered bay, where a small lagoon makes in behind Coaster's Harbor Island, and the very last breath and murmur of the ocean are left outside! The coming tide steals to the shore in waves so light they are a mere shade upon the surface till they break, and then die speechless for one that has a voice. And even those rare voices are the very most confidential and silvery whispers in which Nature ever spoke to man ”

“ The harbor and the beach are thus occupied in winter; but one may walk for many a mile along the cliffs, and see nothing human but a few gardeners, spreading green and white sea-weed as manure upon the lawns. The mercury rarely drops to zero here, and there is little snow; but a new-fallen drift has just the same virgin beauty as farther inland, and when one suddenly comes in view of the sea beyond it, there is a sensation of summer softness. ”

“ A little farther out the sea breaks more roughly over submerged rocks, and the waves lift themselves, before breaking, in an indescribable way, as if each gave a glimpse through a translucent window, beyond which all ocean's depths might be clearly seen, could one but hit the proper angle of vision. On the right side of my retreat a high wall limits the view, while close upon the left the crumbling parapet of Fort Greene stands out into the foreground, its verdant scarp so relieved against the blue water that each inward-bound schooner seems to sail into a cave of grass. ”

“ A tint of salmon-color, burnished into long undulations of lustre, overspreads the shallower waves; but a sober gray begins to steal in beneath the sunset rays, and will soon claim even the brilliant foreground for its own. Pile a few more fragments of drift-wood upon the fire in the great chimney, little maiden, and then couch yourself before it, that I may have your glowing childhood as a foreground for those heaped relics of shipwreck and despair. You seem, in your scarlet boating-dress, Annie, like some bright tropic bird, alit for a moment beside that other bird of the tropics, flame. ”

“ Who can wonder that women prize beauty, and are intoxicated by their own fascinations, when these fragile gifts are yet strong enough to outlast all the memories of statesmanship and war? Next to the immortality of genius is that which genius may confer upon the object of its love. Laura, while she lived, was simply one of a hundred or a thousand beautiful and gracious Italian women; she had her loves and aversions, joys and griefs; she cared dutifully for her household, and embroidered the veil which Petrarch loved; her memory appeared as fleeting and unsubstantial as that woven tissue. ”

“ Even beyond its grasp it tosses soft pendants of moss that twine like vine-tendrils, or sway in the wind. It mellows harsh colors into beauty, and Ruskin grows eloquent over the wave-washed tint of some tarry, weather-beaten boat. But air is pitiless: it dries and stiffens all outline, and bleaches all color away, so that you can hardly tell whether these ribs belonged to a ship or an elephant; and yet there is a certain cold purity in the shapes it leaves, and the birds it sends to perch upon these timbers are a more graceful company than lobsters or fishes. ”

“ For in these yards there seems no particular difference between land and water; the tide comes and goes anywhere, and nobody minds it; boats are drawn up among burdocks and ambrosia, and the platform on which you stand suddenly proves to be something afloat. Vessels are hauled upon the ways, each side of the wharf, their poor ribs pitiably unclothed, ready for a cumbrous mantua-making of oak and iron. On one side, within a floating boom, lies a fleet of masts and unhewn logs, tethered uneasily, like a herd of captive sea-monsters, rocking in the ripples. ”

“ Meeting two neighboring fishermen, I took them with me. As we approached the well-known wall, the blast blew out our lights, and we could scarcely speak. The lightning had grown less frequent, yet sheets of flame seemed occasionally to break over the dark, square sides of the house, and to send a flickering flame along the ridge-pole and eaves, like a surf of light. A surf of water broke also behind us on the Blue Rocks, sounding as if it pursued our very footsteps; and one of the men whispered hoarsely to me, that a Nantucket brig had parted her cable, and was drifting in shore. ”

“ Thus widely may one's thoughts wander from a summer boat. But the season for rowing is a long one, and far outlasts in Oldport the stay of our annual guests. Sometimes in autumnal mornings I glide forth over water so still, it seems as if saturated by the Indian-summer with its own indefinable calm. The distant islands lift themselves on white pedestals of mirage; the cloud-shadows rest softly on Conanicut; and what seems a similar shadow on the nearer slopes of Fort Adams is in truth but a mounted battery, drilling, which soon moves and slides across the hazy hill like a cloud. ”

“ I know of nothing more wild than that gray waste of boulders; it is a natural Salisbury Plain, of which icebergs and ocean-currents were the Druidic builders; in that multitude of couchant monsters there seems a sense of suspended life; you feel as if they must speak and answer to each other in the silent nights, but by day only the wandering sea-birds seek them, on their way across the Cape, and the sweet-bay and green fern embed them in a softer and deeper setting as the years go by. ”

“ There is always a charm to me in the inexplicable windings of these wayward tracks; yet I like the path best where it is nearest the ocean. There, while looking upon blue sea and snowy sails and floating gulls, you may yet hear on the landward side the melodious and plaintive drawl of the meadow-lark, most patient of summer visitors, and, indeed, lingering on this island almost the whole year round.
But who cares whither a footpath leads? The charm is in the path itself, its promise of something that the high-road cannot yield. ”

“ The blinds of the piazza doorway opened, the sweet sea-air came in, the low and level rays of yellow sunset entered as softly as if the breeze were their chariot; and softer and stiller and sweeter than light or air, little Marian stood on the threshold. She had been in the fields with Janet, who had woven for her breeze-blown hair a wreath of the wild gerardia blossoms, whose purple beauty had reminded the good Scotchwoman of her own native heather. In her arms the child bore, like a little gleaner, a great sheaf of graceful golden-rod, as large as her grasp could bear. ”

“ To my imagination it burns as a central flame among these dark houses, and lights up the whole of this little fishing hamlet, humble suburb of the fashionable watering-place. I fancy that others too perceive the light, and that certain huge visitors are attracted, even when the storm keeps neighbors and friends at home. For the slightest presage of foul weather is sure to bring to yonder anchorage a dozen silent vessels, that glide up the harbor for refuge, and are heard but once, when the chain-cable rattles as it runs out, and the iron hand of the anchor grasps the rock. ”

“ Upon the other side is a scene of peace; and a fisherman sings in his boat as he examines the floats of his stake-net, hand over hand. A white gull hovers close above him, and a dark one above the horsemen, fit emblems of peace and war. The slightest sounds, the rattle of an oar, the striking of a hoof against a stone, are borne over the water to an amazing distance, as if the calm bay amid its seeming quiet, were watchful of the slightest noise. But look! in a moment the surface is rippled, the sky is clouded, a swift change comes over the fitful mood of the season ”

“ This chimney is more voracious than the sea. Give time enough, and all which yonder depths contain might pass through this insatiable throat, leaving only a few ashes and the memory of a flickering shade,—pulvis et umbra. We recognize this when we have anything to conceal. Deep crimes are buried in earth, deeper are sunk In water, but the deepest of all are confided by trembling men to the profounder secrecy of flame. If every old chimney could narrate the fearful deeds whose last records it has cancelled, what sighs of undying passion would breathe from its dark summit,—what groans of guilt! ”

“ These sonnets are in Petrarch's earlier manner; but the death of Laura brought a change. Look at yonder schooner coming down the bay, straight toward us; she is hauled close to the wind, her jib is white in the sunlight, her larger sails are touched with the same snowy lustre, and all the swelling canvas is rounded into such lines of beauty as scarcely anything else in the world—hardly even the perfect outlines of the human form—can give. ”

“ Almost any day that is good for living. Living is not quite agreeable in the midst of a tornado or an equinoctial storm, neither is rowing. There are days when rowing is as toilsome and exhausting a process as is Bunyan's idea of virtue; while there are other days, like the present, when it seems a mere Oriental passiveness and the forsaking of works,—just an excuse to Nature for being out among her busy things. For even at this stillest of hours there is far less repose in Nature than we imagine. What created thing can seem more patient than yonder kingfisher on the sea-wall? ”

“ Each season, as winter returns, I try in vain to comprehend this wonderful shifting of expression that touches even a thing so essentially unchanging as the sea. How delicious to all the senses is the summer foam above yonder rock; in winter the foam is the same, the sparkle as radiant, the hue of the water scarcely altered; and yet the effect is, by comparison, cold, heavy, and leaden. It is like that mysterious variation which chiefly makes the difference between one human face and another ”