On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
reeds , and sobbing ' with its agony-music , like a lost spirit in a Wilderness of Tombs . It was ever varying and changing with pause and swell ; now in long , dreamy and protracted murmur , moving the listener to sorrow like the plaintive ^ nd withering sighs from a spirit-world ; now with quick sudden gush of clarion-blast , mingled with a shock of choral voices , and its accompaniment of crashing instruments ; and then again ,
falling and dying away in solemn and touching moan , reminding memory of mingled things—the murmur of a receding sea—the music of a thousand harps—the peal of many bells , till finally the enraptured ear , with all its earnest , anxious leaning , catches but the faintest sounds , as of the silvery singing whisper of voices from fairy-land !
I had arisen from my seat on the margin of the lake , and had made some ascent on a winding track in the colossal sweep of rocky mountains bordering the north side , and was now threading a dizzy and narrow path that wound around rock and mountain , all danger and desolation ; where nor leaf nor grass shot up to refreshen the eye or gladden the soul ; and where the dreary
and sterile rocks piled to the clouds , rising on either side with an air of horrible and sublime defiance , struck to my inmost soul with a sense of utter desolation . Below , ten thousand feet below , spread a lake of unknown depth , and dark as midnight ; and as at almost every step fell a fragment of the loose and crumbling- rock ,
it sent up a low , wailing , plashing tone , that made my brain to reel , and my blood to creep . And though , at every step I took , I felt my courage die within me , and a cold spasmodic tremor came over my limbs , and the sweat-drops stood on my brow as big as beads ; and though my eyes ached dizzily at gazing down the bottomless void , while suddenly would rush upon me the
horrible impulse to plunge headlong into the abyss , yet still I held on , strengthened by the whisper within , and continued my way as if under the guidance of an unseen Power , unalarmed , unhurt . It was the dawn of the ninth sunrise , and day was just breaking from its short slumber ; and the black clouds , which had lain like huge moveless mountains , were dividing and breaking
away , like a flock of desert-birds scared by the marauder . A }> i ping , singing , south-west wind , bearing on his bosom odours ike the gums of Araby , was blowing freshly , and played grateful as the dews of heaven on my flushed cheeks and brow . The sun bad arisen ; that orb of glory , of a blood-red hue , had lain upon
those cloud-masses like a rub y on an Ethiop ' s brow , and was now bursting into meridian splendour , when I looked upon the most enchanting scene that ever upon rapt vision broke on this side Paradise , or perchance within its very bowers . It seemed as if I w $ re at the centre of a radii of colonnades .
Untitled Article
£ 42 The Opium-Trane * .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1836, page 642, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2662/page/54/
-