- end_line
- 1493
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1424
- text
- IV.
But Love has more to do with his own possible and probable posterities,
than with the once living but now impossible ancestries in the past. So
Pierre's glow of family pride quickly gave place to a deeper hue, when
Lucy bade love's banner blush out from his cheek.
That morning was the choicest drop that Time had in his vase. Ineffable
distillations of a soft delight were wafted from the fields and hills.
Fatal morning that, to all lovers unbetrothed; "Come to your
confessional," it cried. "Behold our airy loves," the birds chirped from
the trees; far out at sea, no more the sailors tied their bowline-knots;
their hands had lost their cunning; will they, nill they, Love tied
love-knots on every spangled spar.
Oh, praised be the beauty of this earth, the beauty, and the bloom, and
the mirthfulness thereof! The first worlds made were winter worlds; the
second made, were vernal worlds; the third, and last, and perfectest,
was this summer world of ours. In the cold and nether spheres, preachers
preach of earth, as we of Paradise above. Oh, there, my friends, they
say, they have a season, in their language known as summer. Then their
fields spin themselves green carpets; snow and ice are not in all the
land; then a million strange, bright, fragrant things powder that sward
with perfumes; and high, majestic beings, dumb and grand, stand up with
outstretched arms, and hold their green canopies over merry angels--men
and women--who love and wed, and sleep and dream, beneath the approving
glances of their visible god and goddess, glad-hearted sun, and pensive
moon!
Oh, praised be the beauty of this earth; the beauty, and the bloom, and
the mirthfulness thereof. We lived before, and shall live again; and as
we hope for a fairer world than this to come; so we came from one less
fine. From each successive world, the demon Principle is more and more
dislodged; he is the accursed clog from chaos, and thither, by every new
translation, we drive him further and further back again. Hosannahs to
this world! so beautiful itself, and the vestibule to more. Out of some
past Egypt, we have come to this new Canaan; and from this new Canaan,
we press on to some Circassia. Though still the villains, Want and Woe,
followed us out of Egypt, and now beg in Canaan's streets: yet
Circassia's gates shall not admit them; they, with their sire, the demon
Principle, must back to chaos, whence they came.
Love was first begot by Mirth and Peace, in Eden, when the world was
young. The man oppressed with cares, he can not love; the man of gloom
finds not the god. So, as youth, for the most part, has no cares, and
knows no gloom, therefore, ever since time did begin, youth belongs to
love. Love may end in grief and age, and pain and need, and all other
modes of human mournfulness; but love begins in joy. Love's first sigh
is never breathed, till after love hath laughed. Love laughs first, and
then sighs after. Love has not hands, but cymbals; Love's mouth is
chambered like a bugle, and the instinctive breathings of his life
breathe jubilee notes of joy!
That morning, two bay horses drew two Laughs along the road that led to
the hills from Saddle Meadows. Apt time they kept; Pierre Glendinning's
young, manly tenor, to Lucy Tartan's girlish treble.
Wondrous fair of face, blue-eyed, and golden-haired, the bright blonde,
Lucy, was arrayed in colors harmonious with the heavens. Light blue be
thy perpetual color, Lucy; light blue becomes thee best--such the
repeated azure counsel of Lucy Tartan's mother. On both sides, from the
hedges, came to Pierre the clover bloom of Saddle Meadows, and from
Lucy's mouth and cheek came the fresh fragrance of her violet young
being.
"Smell I the flowers, or thee?" cried Pierre.
"See I lakes, or eyes?" cried Lucy, her own gazing down into his soul,
as two stars gaze down into a tarn.
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