Sometimes an hour of Fate’s serenest weather Strikes through our changeful sky its coming beams; Somewhere above us, in elusive ether, Waits the fulfilment of our dearest dreams.
Wrapped in his sad-colored cloak, the Day, like a Puritan, standeth Stern in the joyless fields, rebuking the lingering color,– Dying hectic of leaves and the chilly blue of the asters,– Hearing, perchance, the croak of a crow on the desolate tree-top.
The aquilegia sprinkled on the rocks A scarlet rain; the yellow violet Sat in the chariot of its leaves, the phlox Held spikes of purple flame in meadows wet, And all the streams with vernal-scented reed Were fringed, and streaky bellow of miskodeed.
The nearest approach I have ever seen to the symmetry of ancient sculpture was among the Arab tribes of Ethiopia. Our Saxon race can supply the athlete, but not the Apollo.
It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one’s own.
As I toiled up the Mount of Olives, in the very footsteps of Christ, panting with the heat and the difficult ascent, I found it utterly impossible to conceive that the Deity, in human form, had walked there before me.
