Marvel

“ As each new marvel came in sight, unstaled by familiar and untarnished by vulgar associations, fresh from the hand of nature, so to speak, we were filled as we had never been before with an intoxicating sense of the divine mystery and miracle of life. ”

“ The marvel remains. 'An absolute absorption in the tragic aspect'—you remember, I daresay, my phrase; that was to have been her mood—seen through my coloured glasses. My glasses! Am I not too blind for any glasses? She has just left me and run to her mother. She went as though she would dance. She is merry and triumphant. I am employed in marvelling. She wants to be a queen ”

“ The marvel, God in Heaven!—I am thine.
Therefore we know, in this height-guarded place
Whereto the speed of our desire hath brought us;
Here in this safety crowning, like a fort
Built upon topmost peaks, the height of beauty,—
We know to be glad of life as we were gods
Timelessly glad of deity; yea, to enjoy
Fleshly, spiritual Being till the swift
Torrent of glee (as hurled star-dust can change
Dim earthly weather to a moment like the sun,)
Doth startle life to self-adoring godhead,—
Divine body of Power and divine
Burning soul of Light and self-desire. ”

“ There is all the marvel, if you think of it, in that slight figure, as she treads across the carpet of a modern drawing-room, that has ever been expressed in, or given origin to, the nymphs, goddesses, and angels that the fancy of man has teemed with. ”

“ Shall we see throughout creation each marvel fulfilling its pre-ordered fate—no wandering from its orbit—no variation in its seasons—and yet imagine that the Arch-ordainer will hold back the tides He has sent from their unseen source, at our miserable bidding? ”

“ And I knew for the things eternal the things eye hath not seen;
Yea, the heavens and the earth shall pass; but they never shall pass away.
And the miracle on me wrought, in the streets I would straight make known:
“When this marvel of mine is heard, without cavil shall men receive
Any legend of haloed saint, starting up through the sealèd stone!” ”

“ I cannot choose, but marvel at the way
In which we pass our lives from day to day;
Learning strange lessons in the human heart;
And yet, like shadows, letting them depart. ”

“ There it is that superstition loves to tell her marvels, and curiosity to gather them. The gloom and desolation without, with the wild, unearthly voice of the blast, as it sweeps over a waste of snows and cuts sharp against the leafless branches, or the wan sepulchral light that shows the dreary earth as it were covered with a pall, and the trees like spectres rising from beneath it, alike send men huddling round the blazing fire, and awaken those impressions of the wild and shadowy and unsubstantial, to which tales of marvel or of terror [238] are such welcome food. ”

“ One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver. ”

“ Our broad definition lets the word marvel cover all supernal revelations and inspirations from any god, spirit, or the impersonal spirit realms,—all angel or spirit presence ever perceived by man,—all mighty works, signs, and wonders ever wrought through prophets, apostles, magicians, sorcerers, and the like,—all promptings, helps, and works by spirits called “familiar,”—all necromancies, witchcrafts, &c., &c. As a natural philosophy, our subject embraces all these. ”

“ These divine fragments, these marbles, older than two thousand years, speak to me louder, move me more than human beings. 11In its turn may the new century meditate upon these marvels, and may it try to ascend to them through intelligence and love. It will owe to them its highest joys. ”

“ For the Wild Things only love the marsh and know its haunts, but now she perceived the mystery of its distances and the glamour of its perilous pools, with their fair and deadly mosses, and felt the marvel of the North Wind who comes dominant out of unknown icy lands, and the wonder of that ebb and flow of life when the wildfowl whirl in at evening to the marshlands and at dawn pass out to sea. ”

“ How much less can we compare those marvels, which even the laws of heathen nations prohibit and punish,—I mean the magical and theurgic marvels, of which the great part are merely illusions practised upon the senses, as the drawing down of the moon, "that," as Lucan says, "it may shed a stronger influence on the plants?" ”

“ The marvels which were constantly being revealed as actual facts seemed no less wonderful than the extravagances of medieval romance; and it was scarcely more than a matter of course that men should search in the new strange lands for the fountain of perpetual youth and the philosopher's stone. ”

“ Accordingly, he yields once more to the lure of this inexhaustible and illimitable subject, and strives again to find expression for the thoughts which it continually awakens, and to exhibit, however imperfectly, the endless procession of marvels which stream before him who knows and loves the stars like a dazzling rivière of brilliants. ”

“ Some of the marvels which are here described, although very old, are not generally known, and as they are easily put in practice they may afford a pleasant hour's amusement to the reader and his friends. ”

“ There are narratives of marvels wrought by human will, chiefly in remote, but occasionally in recent times, transcending and even contradicting or overruling the known laws of Nature. All these evidences point to one conclusion ”

“ You wish to go there?" cried the man. "Then you will be robbed and enslaved!"
"Not as long as we are able to fight," laughed the big Wul-Takim.
"If you resist the sorcerer, you will be turned into grasshoppers and June-bugs," declared the man, staring at them in wonder.
"How do you know that?" asked Marvel.
"Kwytoffle says so. He promises to enchant every one who dares defy his power."
"Has any one ever yet dared defy him?" asked Nerle.
"Certainly not!" said the man. "No one wishes to become a June-bug or a grasshopper. No one dares defy him.". ”

“ And then come jugglers and enchanters that do many marvels; for they cause the sun and the moon to come in the air, apparently, to every man's sight. And afterwards they make the [246] night so dark that no man may see. And after that they make the day to come again, fair and pleasant, with bright sun, to every man's sight. ”

“ But I must be content with only one more and a concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant one, by which you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon—Verily there is nothing new under the sun. ”

“ Around the mighty master came The marvels which his pencil wrought, Those miracles of power whose fame Is wide as human thought. ”

“ "We lack but open eye and ear
To find the Orient's marvels here;
The still small voice in autumn's hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush. ”

“ All is so silent, still, and weird in this white world, that one marvels when the spirit of winter will appear, or what shrill voices in the air will make his unimaginable magic audible. Nothing happens, however, to disturb the charm, save when a sunbeam cuts the chain of diamonds on an alder bough, and down they drift in a thin cloud of dust. ”

“ The mysteries of this wonderful universe rise more palpable upon the departing spirit, so soon to mingle with their marvels. A voice is on the air, and a music on the wind, inaudible to other ears, but full of strange prophecies to the ear of the dying:—he stands on the threshold of existence, and already looks beyond it ”

“ And, looking out of the sculptor's great window, upon the marble mountains, all red and glowing in the decline of day, but stern and solemn to the last, I thought, my God! how many quarries of human hearts and souls, capable of far more beautiful results, are left shut up and mouldering away: pleasure-travellers through life, avert their faces, as they pass, and shudder at the gloom and ruggedness that conceal them! ”

“ To what shall I liken its glorious perfection of form, or the fire that imbues the cold marble with the soul of a god? Not with sculpture, for it stands alone and above all other works of art—nor with men, for it has a majesty more than human. ”

“ Then childlike artist grown
He craved for form, and from the shapes around
Contorted fair the figure of himself,
Moulded his deities in wood and stone
Around his bed, his banquet board, his tomb
As yet a bungler, but when youth infused
Into the sap and marrow of his brain
The vernal subtleties of love, he dreamed
Of gods as fair as he himself would be,
Majestic, abstract, yet with solid power
To make a goddess tremble; and behold,
Under the yearning passion of his thought
The embryonic marble sloughed its shell,
And gods of strength and beauty trod the earth,
Their foreheads high in heaven. ”

“ The delicate mellowness of the antique marble admirably mocked the tint of human flesh;—a tropical glow, a golden warmth seemed to fill the motionless miracle—this dream of love frozen into marble by a genius greater than Praxiteles ”

“ The picture which remained with them and haunted them like a fair dream was that of a white and splendid archway, crowned with one of the great stories of the world in marble, the story of the triumph of the man, in whom the god was so strong that his dreams, the working of his mind, his strength, his courage, his suffering wrested from the silence of the Unknown a new and splendid world. ”

“ He was willing to toil, to endure privation and fatigue, could he but visit that land where heavenly beauty is depicted on the canvas, where the marble wants but the clasp of him of old to warm it into life, and where the soft blue of the sky, and the delicious atmosphere brooding over the glories of centuries gone by, make it the Mecca of the artist’s heart. ”

“ Holds me obscure, and undivulged doth bless
⁠My soul, and in this world doth strangely shroud;
Whereof the meaning I but faintly guess,
⁠Save that it keeps me private in life's crowd.
XXVI
In what a glorious substance did they dream
⁠Who first embodied immortality,
⁠And in warm marble gave this world to see
The earthly art that lifts heaven-high its beam! ”

“ Lo, I behold thy brow, all glorious then,
(Its reflex dawning on the statue's face)
Bringing its Thought to birth in human grace,
The soul of the grand form, upstarting, when
Thou openest thus thy mysteries to our ken,
Striking a marble window through blind space.
But God, who mouldeth in life-plastic clay,
Flashing his thoughts from men with living eyes,
Not from still marble forms, changeless alway,
Breathed forth his human self in human guise:
Thou didst appear, walking unknown abroad,
The son of man, the human, subject God. ”

“ Still more secondary is the position of sculpture in the civilization of to-day. Here and there a monument or statue commemorates some great name or some great event. But these are still outside the current of our daily life. Marble is to us a gospel of death, and we grow less and less fond of its cold abstraction. The glitter of bric-à-brac, bits of color, an unexpected shimmer here and there—such are the favorite aspects of art with us. ”

“ A perfectly beautiful face, blanched to the pallor of marble, was revealed by the action. A murmur of admiration arose from the spectators, blent with subdued exclamations of horror from three who were nearly stricken lifeless by her unexpected advent. ”

“ But how can I convey to you that listen to me any idea of that vision of joy and beauty? No sunrise, no sunset, could equal the glory of that hour of light on the water and the marble. The unexpected apparition of the beloved woman in a forest in springtime could not be as intoxicating as this sudden revelation by daylight of the heroic and voluptuous city, which carries in its marble embrace the richest dream of a Latin soul. ”

“ Yes! tears are gathering in those eyes—and see! the entire woman thrills throughout the soul, and the statue has started into life! The pallor of the marble countenance, the swelling of the marble bosom, the very purity of the marble feet, we behold suddenly flushed over with a tide of ungovernable crimson ”

“ Rich marbles—richer painting—shrines where flame The lamps of gold—and haughty dome which vies In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame Sits on the firm-set ground—and this the clouds must claim. ”

“ Even as the cunning workman brings to pass The sculptor's thought from out the unwieldy mass Of shapeless marble, so Time lops away The stony crust of falsehood that concealed His just proportions, and, at last revealed, The statue issues to the light of day, Most beautiful, most human. ”

“ May the morn find you sane—the night mad again—and long may it be ere the soft light of the full moon shall rest upon the green sod of your grave, and glow, reflected from the marble of your monument. ”

“ It is wrong to call it a dream in marble: it is a thought, an idea, a conception of tenderness, a sigh of eternal devotion and love, caught and imbued with earthly immortality. There it stands in its astonishing perfection, rising from a lofty platform of marble of dazzling whiteness, minarets, dome, portals, all shining like a fresh, crisp snow wreath. ”

“ Those who worship here from day to day become familiar with all this sculpture, and are not distracted, if they are not aided by the beauty and the majesty of such a wealth of art. But a stranger within the gates, for a morning only, seeing it all at once for the first and the last time, would find it difficult to withdraw his soul from the marble and contemplate for an hour the unseen and eternal. ”

“ Not far off we see another youth at work on a block of marble, similar in every detail to the first. The tools with which he plies his labor differ in no wise from those of the worker we have been following.
The glory of the morning shines upon the marble. Glowing with enthusiasm, the light of a high purpose illuminating his face, the sculptor, with steady hand and eye, begins to work out his ideal. The vision that flits before him is so beautiful that he almost fears the cunning of his hand will be unequal to fashioning it from the rigid mass before him. ”