Mary Lamb. Gilchrist Anne Burrows

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,

       Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn ye clouds!

       Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!

       And kindle, thou blue ocean! So my Friend,

       Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,

       Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round

       On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem

       Less gross than bodily; and of such hues

       As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes

       Spirits perceive His presence. …

      *****

      On Lamb's return, he wrote in the same modest vein as before—

      "I am scarcely yet so reconciled to the loss of you or so subsided into my wonted uniformity of feeling as to sit calmly down to think of you and write. … Is the patriot [Thelwall] come? Are Wordsworth and his sister gone yet? I was looking out for John Thelwall all the way from Bridgewater and had I met him I think it would have moved me almost to tears. You will oblige me, too, by sending me my great-coat which I left behind in the oblivious state the mind is thrown into at parting. Is it not ridiculous that I sometimes envy that great-coat lingering so cunningly behind! At present I have none; so send it me by a Stowey waggon if there be such a thing, directing it for C. L., No. 45, Chapel Street, Pentonville, near London. But above all, that inscription [of Wordsworth's]. It will recall to me the tones of all your voices, and with them many a remembered kindness to one who could and can repay you all only by the silence of a grateful heart. I could not talk much while I was with you but my silence was not sullenness nor I hope from any bad motive; but in truth, disuse has made me awkward at it. I know I behaved myself, particularly at Tom Poole's and at Cruikshank's most like a sulky child; but company and converse are strange to me. It was kind in you all to endure me as you did.

      "Are you and your dear Sara—to me also very dear because very kind—agreed yet about the management of little Hartley? And how go on the little rogue's teeth?"

      The mention of his address in the foregoing letter, shows that Lamb and his father had already quitted Little Queen Street. It is probable that they did so, indeed, immediately after the great tragedy; to escape, not only from the painful associations of the spot but also from the cruel curiosity which its terrible notoriety must have drawn upon them. The season was coming round which could not but renew his and Mary's grief and anguish in the recollection of that "day of horrors." "Friday next, Coleridge," he writes, "is the day (September 22nd) on which my mother died;" and in the letter is enclosed that beautiful and affecting poem beginning:—