Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools Part 29

In the Maine Woods Henry D. Th.o.r.eau Yosemite Trails J.S. Chase The Conservation of Natural Resources Charles R. Van Hise Getting Acquainted with the Trees J.H. McFarland The Trees (poem) Josephine Preston Peabody

For biographical material relating to John Muir, consult: With John o'

Birds and John o' Mountains, Century, 80:521 (Portraits); At Home with Muir, Overland Monthly (New Series), 52:125, August, 1908; Craftsman, 7:665 (page 637 for portrait), March, 1905; Craftsman, 23:324 (Portrait); Outlook, 80:303, January 3, 1905; Bookman, 26:593, February, 1908; World's Work, 17:11355, March, 1909; 19:12529, February, 1910.

WAITING

JOHN BURROUGHS

Serene, I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays, For what avails this eager pace?

I stand amid the eternal ways, And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day, The friends I seek are seeking me; No wind can drive my bark astray Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?

I wait with joy the coming years; My heart shall reap where it has sown, And garner up its fruit of tears.

The law of love binds every heart And knits it to its utmost kin, Nor can our lives flow long apart From souls our secret souls would win.

The stars come nightly to the sky, The tidal wave comes to the sea; Nor time, nor s.p.a.ce, nor deep, nor high Can keep my own away from me.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

This poem is so easy that it needs little explanation. It shows the calmness and confidence of one who feels that the universe is right, and that everything comes out well sooner or later. Read the poem through slowly. _Its utmost kin_ means its most distant relations or connections. _The tidal wave_ means the regular and usual flow of the tide. _Nor time nor s.p.a.ce_:--Perhaps Mr. Burroughs was thinking of the Bible, Romans 8:38, 39.

Does the poem mean to encourage mere waiting, without action? Does it discourage effort? Just how much is it intended to convey? Is the theory expressed here a good one? Do you believe it to be true? Read the verses again, slowly and carefully, thinking what they mean. If you like them, take time to learn them.

COLLATERAL READINGS

For a list of Mr. Burrough's books, see page 177.

Song: The year's at the spring Robert Browning The Building of the Chimney Richard Watson Gilder

With John o'Birds and John o'Mountains (Century Magazine, 80:521)

A Day at Slabsides (Outlook, 66:351) Washington Gladden

Century, 86:884, October, 1915 (Portrait); Outlook, 78:878, December 3, 1904.

EXERCISES

Try writing a stanza or two in the meter and with the rhyme that Mr.

Burroughs uses. Below are given lines that may prove suggestive:--

1. One night when all the sky was clear 2. The plum tree near the garden wall 3. I watched the children at their play 4. The wind swept down across the plain 5. The yellow leaves are drifting down 6. Along the dusty way we sped (In an Automobile) 7. I looked about my garden plot (In my Garden) 8. The sky was red with sudden flame 9. I walked among the forest trees 10. He runs to meet me every day (My Dog)

THE PONT DU GARD

HENRY JAMES

(Chapter XXVI of _A Little Tour in France_)

It was a pleasure to feel one's self in Provence again,--the land where the silver-gray earth is impregnated with the light of the sky. To celebrate the event, as soon as I arrived at Nimes I engaged a caleche to convey me to the Pont du Gard. The day was yet young, and it was perfectly fair; it appeared well, for a longish drive, to take advantage, without delay, of such security. After I had left the town I became more intimate with that Provencal charm which I had already enjoyed from the window of the train, and which glowed in the sweet sunshine and the white rocks, and lurked in the smoke-puffs of the little olives. The olive-trees in Provence are half the landscape. They are neither so tall, so stout, nor so richly contorted as I have seen them beyond the Alps; but this mild colorless bloom seems the very texture of the country. The road from Nimes, for a distance of fifteen miles, is superb; broad enough for an army, and as white and firm as a dinner-table. It stretches away over undulations which suggest a kind of harmony; and in the curves it makes through the wide, free country, where there is never a hedge or a wall, and the detail is always exquisite, there is something majestic, almost processional. Some twenty minutes before I reached the little inn that marks the termination of the drive, my vehicle met with an accident which just missed being serious, and which engaged the attention of a gentleman, who, followed by his groom and mounted on a strikingly handsome horse, happened to ride up at the moment. This young man, who, with his good looks and charming manner, might have stepped out of a novel of Octave Feuillet, gave me some very intelligent advice in reference to one of my horses that had been injured, and was so good as to accompany me to the inn, with the resources of which he was acquainted, to see that his recommendations were carried out. The result of our interview was that he invited me to come and look at a small but ancient chateau in the neighborhood, which he had the happiness--not the greatest in the world, he intimated--to inhabit, and at which I engaged to present myself after I should have spent an hour at the Pont du Gard. For the moment, when we separated, I gave all my attention to that great structure. You are very near it before you see it; the ravine it spans suddenly opens and exhibits the picture. The scene at this point grows extremely beautiful.

The ravine is the valley of the Gardon, which the road from Nimes has followed some time without taking account of it, but which, exactly at the right distance from the aqueduct, deepens and expands, and puts on those characteristics which are best suited to give it effect. The gorge becomes romantic, still, and solitary, and, with its white rocks and wild shrubbery, hangs over the clear, colored river, in whose slow course there is here and there a deeper pool. Over the valley, from side to side, and ever so high in the air, stretch the three tiers of the tremendous bridge. They are unspeakably imposing, and nothing could well be more Roman. The hugeness, the solidity, the unexpectedness, the monumental rect.i.tude of the whole thing leave you nothing to say--at the time--and make you stand gazing. You simply feel that it is n.o.ble and perfect, that it has the quality of greatness. A road, branching from the highway, descends to the level of the river and pa.s.ses under one of the arches. This road has a wide margin of gra.s.s and loose stones, which slopes upward into the bank of the ravine. You may sit here as long as you please, staring up at the light, strong piers; the spot is extremely natural, though two or three stone benches have been erected on it. I remained there an hour and got a complete impression; the place was perfectly soundless, and for the time, at least, lonely; the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object I had come to see. It came to pa.s.s that at the same time I discovered in it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely absent from great Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaptation of the means to the end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is so much more than attained. The Roman rigidity was apt to overshoot the mark, and I suppose a race which could do nothing small is as defective as a race that can do nothing great. Of this Roman rigidity the Pont du Gard is an admirable example. It would be a great injustice, however, not to insist upon its beauty,--a kind of manly beauty, that of an object constructed not to please but to serve, and impressive simply from the scale on which it carries out this intention. The number of arches in each tier is different; they are smaller and more numerous as they ascend. The preservation of the thing is extraordinary; nothing has crumbled or collapsed; every feature remains; and the huge blocks of stone, of a brownish-yellow (as if they had been baked by the Provencal sun for eighteen centuries), pile themselves, without mortar or cement, as evenly as the day they were laid together. All this to carry the water of a couple of springs to a little provincial city! The conduit on the top has retained its shape and traces of the cement with which it was lined. When the vague twilight began to gather, the lonely valley seemed to fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name, as if the mighty empire were still as erect as the supports of the aqueduct; and it was open to a solitary tourist, sitting there sentimental, to believe that no people has ever been, or will ever be, as great as that, measured, as we measure the greatness of an individual, by the push they gave to what they undertook. The Pont du Gard is one of the three or four deepest impressions they have left; it speaks of them in a manner with which they might have been satisfied.

I feel as if it were scarcely discreet to indicate the whereabouts of the chateau of the obliging young man I had met on the way from Nimes; I must content myself with saying that it nestled in an enchanting valley,--_dans le fond_, as they say in France,--and that I took my course thither on foot, after leaving the Pont du Gard. I find it noted in my journal as "an adorable little corner." The princ.i.p.al feature of the place is a couple of very ancient towers, brownish-yellow in hue, and mantled in scarlet Virginia-creeper. One of these towers, reputed to be of Saracenic origin, is isolated, and is only the more effective; the other is incorporated in the house, which is delightfully fragmentary and irregular. It had got to be late by this time, and the lonely _castel_ looked crepuscular and mysterious. An old housekeeper was sent for, who showed me the rambling interior; and then the young man took me into a dim old drawing-room, which had no less than four chimney-pieces, all unlighted, and gave me a refection of fruit and sweet wine. When I praised the wine and asked him what it was, he said simply, "C'est du vin de ma mere!" Throughout my little journey I had never yet felt myself so far from Paris; and this was a sensation I enjoyed more than my host, who was an involuntary exile, consoling himself with laying out a _manege_, which he showed me as I walked away.

His civility was great, and I was greatly touched by it. On my way back to the little inn where I had left my vehicle, I pa.s.sed the Pont du Gard, and took another look at it. Its great arches made windows for the evening sky, and the rocky ravine, with its dusky cedars and shining river, was lonelier than before. At the inn I swallowed, or tried to swallow, a gla.s.s of horrible wine with my coachman; after which, with my reconstructed team, I drove back to Nimes in the moonlight. It only added a more solitary whiteness to the constant sheen of the Provencal landscape.

NOTES

=The Pont du Gard=:--A famous aqueduct built by the Romans many years ago.

=Provence=:--One of the old provinces in southeast France.

=Nimes=:--(N[=e][=e]m) A town in southeast France, noted for its Roman ruins.

=caleche=:--(ka l[=a]sh') The French term for a light covered carriage with seats for four besides the driver.

=Octave Feuillet=:--A French writer, the author of _The Romance of a Poor Young Man_; Feuillet's heroes are young, dark, good-looking, and poetic.

=chateau=:--The country residence of a wealthy or t.i.tled person.

=Gardon=:--A river in France flowing into the Rhone.

=nice=:--Look up the meaning of this word.

=dans le fond=:--In the bottom.

=Saracenic=:--The Saracen invaders of France were vanquished at Tours in 732 A.D.

=castel=:--A castle.

=C'est=, etc.:--It is some of my mother's wine.

=manege=:--A place where horses are kept and trained.