Gala-Days | Page 6

Potomac, O soldiers? Are you wooing her with honeyed words on the bloody soil of Virginia? Is she tranced by your glittering sword-shine in ransomed Tennessee? Is she floating on a lotus-leaf in Florida lagoons? Has she drunk Nepenthe in the orange-groves? Is she chasing golden apples under the magnolias? Are you toying with the tangles of her hair in the bright sea-foam? O, rouse her from her trance, loose the fetters from her lovely limbs, and speed her to our Northern skies, that moan her long delay.
Or is she frightened by the thunders of the cannonade sounding from shore to shore, and wakening the wild echoes? Does she fear to breast our bristling bayonets? Is she stifled by the smoke of powder? Is she crouching down Caribbean shores, terror-stricken and pallid? Sweet June, fear not! The flash of loyal steel will only light you along your Northern road. Beauty and innocence have nothing to dread from the sword a patriot wields. The storm that rends the heavens will make earth doubly fair. Your pathway shall lie over Delectable Mountains, and through vinelands of Beulah. Come quickly, tread softly, and from your bountiful bosom scatter seeds as you come, that daisies and violets may softly shine, and sweetly twine with the amaranth and immortelle that spring already from heroes' hearts buried in soldiers' graves.
"But there is no use in placarding her," said Halicarnassus. "We shall have no warm weather till the eclipse is over."
"So ho!" I said. "Having exhausted every other pretext for delay, you bring out an eclipse! and pray when is this famous affair to come off?"
"Tomorrow if the weather prove favorable, if not, on the first fair night."
Then indeed I set my house in order. Here was something definite and trustworthy. First an eclipse, then a book, and yet I pitied the moon as I walked home that night. She came up the heavens so round and radiant, so glorious in her majesty, so confident in her strength, so sure of triumphal march across the shining sky; not knowing that a great black shadow loomed right athwart her path to swallow her up. She never dreamed that all her royal beauty should pass behind a pall, that all her glory should be demeaned by pitiless eclipse, and her dome of delight become the valley of humiliation! Is there no help? I said. Can no hand lead her gently another way? Can no voice warn her of the black shadow that lies in ambuscade? None. Just as the young girl leaves her tender home, and goes fearless to her future,--to the future which brings sadness for her smiling, and patience for her hope, and pain for her bloom, and the cold requital of kindness, or the unrequital of coldness for her warmth of love, so goes the moon, unconscious and serene, to meet her fate. But at least I will watch with her. Trundle up to the window here, old lounge! you are almost as good as a grandmother. Steady there! broken-legged table. You have gone limping ever since I knew you; don't fail me tonight. Shine softly, Kerosena, next of kin to the sun, true monarch of mundane lights! calmly superior to the flickering of all the fluids, and the ghastliness of all the gases, though it must be confessed you don't hold out half as long as you used when first your yellow banner was unfurled. Shine softly tonight, and light my happy feet through the Walden woods, along the Walden shores, where a philosopher sits in solitary state. He shall keep me awake by the Walden shore till the moon and the shadow meet. How tranquil sits the philosopher, how grandly rings the man! Here, in his homespun house, the squirrels click under his feet, the woodchucks devour his beans, and the loon laughs on the lake. Here rich men come, and cannot hide their lankness and their poverty. Here poor men come, and their gold shines through their rags. Hither comes the poet, and the house is too narrow for their thoughts, and the rough walls ring with lusty laughter. O happy Walden wood and woodland lake, did you thrill through all your luminous aisles and all your listening shores for the man that wandered there?
Is it begun? Not yet. The kitchen clock has but just struck eleven, and my watch lacks ten minutes of that. What if the astronomers made a mistake in their calculations, and the almanacs are wrong, and the eclipse shall not come off? Would it be strange? Would it not be stranger if it were not so? How can a being, standing on one little ball, spinning forever around and around among millions of other balls larger and smaller, breathlessly the same endless waltz,--how can he trace out their