Eugene Aram — Complete. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ WITH DAME DARKMANS.—HER HISTORY.—POVERTY AND

      ITS EFFECTS

             MAD. “Then, as Time won thee frequent to our hearth,

             Didst thou not breathe, like dreams, into my soul

             Nature’s more gentle secrets, the sweet lore

             Of the green herb and the bee-worshipp’d flower?

             And when deep Night did o’er the nether Earth

             Diffuse meek quiet, and the Heart of Heaven

             With love grew breathless—didst thou not unrol

             The volume of the weird chaldean stars,

             And of the winds, the clouds, the invisible air,

             Make eloquent discourse, until, methought,

             No human lip, but some diviner spirit

             Alone, could preach such truths of things divine?

             And so—and so—”

             ARAM. “From Heaven we turned to Earth,

             And Wisdom fathered Passion.”

             ..................

             ARAM. “Wise men have praised the Peasant’s thoughtless lot,

             And learned Pride hath envied humble Toil;

             If they were right, why let us burn our books,

             And sit us down, and play the fool with Time,

             Mocking the prophet Wisdom’s high decrees,

             And walling this trite Present with dark clouds,

             ‘Till Night becomes our Nature; and the ray

             Ev’n of the stars, but meteors that withdraw

             The wandering spirit from the sluggish rest

             Which makes its proper bliss. I will accost

             This denizen of toil.”

       —From Eugene Aram, a MS. Tragedy.

             “A wicked hag, and envy’s self excelling

             In mischiefe, for herself she only vext,

             But this same, both herself and others eke perplext.”

           ...............

             “Who then can strive with strong necessity,

             That holds the world in his still changing state,

           .................

             Then do no further go, no further stray,

             But here lie down, and to thy rest betake.”

                —Spenser.

      Few men perhaps could boast of so masculine and firm a mind, as, despite his eccentricities, Aram assuredly possessed. His habits of solitude had strengthened its natural hardihood; for, accustomed to make all the sources of happiness flow solely from himself, his thoughts the only companion—his genius the only vivifier—of his retreat; the tone and faculty of his spirit could not but assume that austere and vigorous energy which the habit of self-dependence almost invariably produces; and yet, the reader, if he be young, will scarcely feel surprise that the resolution of the Student, to battle against incipient love, from whatever reasons it might be formed, gradually and reluctantly melted away. It may be noted, that the enthusiasts of learning and reverie have, at one time or another in their lives, been, of all the tribes of men, the most keenly susceptible to love; their solitude feeds their passion; and deprived, as they usually are, of the more hurried and vehement occupations of life, when love is once admitted to their hearts, there is no counter-check to its emotions, and no escape from its excitation. Aram, too, had just arrived at that age when a man usually feels a sort of revulsion in the current of his desires. At that age, those who have hitherto pursued love, begin to grow alive to ambition; those who have been slaves to the pleasures of life, awaken from the dream, and direct their desire to its interests. And in the same proportion, they who till then have wasted the prodigal fervours of youth upon a sterile soil; who have served Ambition, or, like Aram, devoted their hearts to Wisdom; relax from their ardour, look back on the departed years with regret, and commence, in their manhood, the fiery pleasures and delirious follies which are only pardonable in youth. In short, as in every human pursuit there is a certain vanity, and as every acquisition contains within itself the seed of disappointment, so there is a period of life when we pause from the pursuit, and are discontented with the acquisition. We then look around us for something new—again follow—and are again deceived. Few men throughout life are the servants to one desire. When we gain the middle of the bridge of our mortality, different objects from those which attracted us upward almost invariably lure us to the descent. Happy they who exhaust in the former part of the journey all the foibles of existence! But how different is the crude and evanescent love of that age when thought has not given intensity and power to the passions, from the love which is felt, for the first time, in maturer but still youthful years! As the flame burns the brighter in proportion to the resistance which it conquers, this later love is the more glowing in proportion to the length of time in which it has overcome temptation: all the solid and, concentred faculties ripened to their full height, are no longer capable of the infinite distractions, the numberless caprices of youth; the rays of the heart, not rendered weak by diversion, collect into one burning focus;

         [Love is of the nature of a burning glass, which kept still in one place, fireth; changed often it doth nothing!”

     —Letters by Sir John Suckling.]

      the same earnestness and unity of purpose which render what we undertake in manhood so far more successful than what we would effect in youth, are equally visible and equally triumphant, whether directed to interest or to love. But then, as in Aram, the feelings must be fresh as well as matured; they must not have been frittered away by previous indulgence; the love must be the first produce of the soil, not the languid after-growth.

      The reader will remark, that the first time in which our narrative has brought Madeline and Aram together, was not the first time they had met; Aram had long noted with admiration a beauty which he had never seen paralleled, and certain vague and unsettled feelings had preluded the deeper emotion that her image now excited within him. But the main cause of his present and growing attachment, had been in the evident sentiment of kindness which he could not but feel Madeline bore towards him. So retiring a nature as his, might never have harboured love, if the love bore the character of presumption; but that one so beautiful beyond his dreams as Madeline Lester, should deign to exercise towards him a tenderness, that might suffer him to hope, was a thought, that when he caught her eye unconsciously СКАЧАТЬ