On Alps, without a breast beguiled
To glow in shedding rascal sweat.
Somewhere about his grinder teeth
He mouthed of thoughts that grilled beneath,
And summoned Nature to her feud
With bile and buskin attitude."
There is more of this pretty poem, but I have quoted as much as my own irascibility can bear, I, at least, have been a child, and have spent some of my childhood's happiest hours with Manfred on the Alps; and have with him beheld
"the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance,"
and have believed with all a child's sincerity in his remorseful gloom:—
"for I have ceased
To justify my deeds unto myself—
The last infirmity of evil."
Every line is inexpressibly dear to me now, recalling, as it does, the time "when I was in my father's house, and my path ran down with butter and honey." Once more I see the big, bare, old-fashioned parlor, to dust which was my daily task, my dear mother having striven long and vainly to teach my idle little hands some useful housewifely accomplishment. In
