BEFORE DAYBREAK, WITH THE GREAT COMET OF 1882.
Reading edition
By CHARLOTTE E. LEAVITT.
The clock strikes four; Glitter the stars, the waning moon hangs low, The breath of night is chill, as soft I go From out the door. In all the air The living silence of the morning broods, So deep, so still, that every sound intrudes Discordant there. A nameless change Makes unfamiliar all the well-known street, And mocking echoes ’neath my stealthy feet, Wake weird and strange. On either hand, Mysterious, with Argus eyes shut fast, Dumb and unchanging as a hopeless past, The houses stand. Athwart the sky Blazes the comet with its streaming hair, Fleeing through space in passionate despair, As doom were nigh; While grand and grim, Warlike Orion from his gleaming height Dares this intruder, in its awful might, To cope with him. Intent I gaze: And, half unheeded, swells through heart and brain A solemn wonder that is almost pain— A song of praise. Lo! far away, The first faint flashes of the coming morn Herald triumphantly a king new-born, A golden day.
Dr. Thomas Sheridan, who lost all chance of further preferment by choosing an unlucky text on the anniversary of George I, was an excellent scholar, but an indolent, good-natured, careless man. He was slovenly, indigent, and cheerful; ill-starred, improvident, but not unhappy. He was a fiddler, punster, quibbler, and wit; not a day passed without a rebus, a madrigal, or an anagram, and his pen and fiddlestick were in continual motion. Of the state of his house, at Quilca, his intimate friend and choice companion has left us the following lively picture:
QUILCA.
“Let me thy properties explain: A rotten cabin dropping rain; Chimneys with scorn rejecting smoke; Stools, tables, chairs, and bedsteads broke. Here elements have lost their uses; Air ripens not, nor earth produces; In vain we make poor Shela toil, Fire will not roast, nor water boil; Through all the valleys, hills, and plains, The goddess Want in triumph reigns, And her chief officers of state— Sloth, Dirt, and Theft—around her wait.”