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- 11076
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z
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- 11018
- text
- beauteous creature be not a spirit, it yet teaches a spiritual lesson.
For if, after one hundred and fifty years’ entombment, a mere insect
comes forth at last into light, itself an effulgence, shall there be no
glorified resurrection for the spirit of man? Spirits! spirits!’ she
exclaimed, with rapture, ‘I still believe in them with delight, when
before I but thought of them with terror.’
The mysterious insect did not long enjoy its radiant life; it expired
the next day. But my girls have preserved it. Embalmed in a silver
vinaigrette, it lies on the little apple-tree table in the pier of the
cedar-parlour.
And whatever lady doubts this story, my daughters will be happy to show
her both the bug and the table, and point out to her, in the repaired
slab of the latter, the two sealing-wax drops designating the exact
place of the two holes made by the two bugs, something in the same way
in which are marked the spots where the cannon balls struck Brattle
Street church.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
UNDER THE ROSE
(_Being an extract from an old MS. entitled ‘Travels in Persia (Iran)
by a servant of My Lord the Ambassador.’_)
... These roses of divers hues, red, yellow, pink, and white, the black
slave, a clean-limbed adolescent, and comely for all his flat nose; he,
before offering them to My Lord to refresh him with their colour and
scent, did, at the Azem’s bidding, drop them into a delicate vase of
amber; and so cunningly, withal, that they fell as of themselves into
the attitude of young damsels leaning over the balustrade of a dome and
gazing downward; so that the vase itself was all but hidden from view,
at least, much of the upper part thereof, where I noted that certain
_relievos_ were, though truly I could get but a peep thereof at that
time.
On the next day but one repairing to the same villa where the Azem made
abode for that month, and there waiting to convey a reply to a missive
from My Lord; I saw by chance on a marble buffet the same vase then
empty; and going up to it, curiously observed the _relievos_, before
hidden by the flowers. They were of a mystical type, methought,
something like certain pictures in the great Dutch Bible in a library at
Oxon, setting forth the enigmas of the Song of the Wise Man, to wit,
King Solomon. I hardly knew what to make of them; and so would as lief
have seen the roses in their stead. Yet for the grace of it, if not the
import, whatever that might be, was I pleased with a round device of
sculpture on one side, about the bigness of My Lord’s seal to a
parchment, showing the figure of an angel with a spade under arm like a
gardener, and bearing roses in a pot; and a like angel-figure, clad like
a cellarer, and with a wine-jar on his shoulder; and these two angels,
side by side, pacing toward a meagre wight, very doleful and Job-like,
squatted hard by a sepulchre, as meditating thereon; and all done very
lively in small.
- title
- Chunk 12