LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 838, 1 March 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

HELEN,

Cj lAFTER I.

Such is the simple title of my story. It is a short name—only five letters of the alphabet ; to those who delight in aristocratic high sounding names a very ordinary plebian one indeed; but to me it is the name among the names of women, at the sight of which, in a playbill or a tale, in a newspaper paragraph or a milliner’s circular, on massive door or modest window-plate, a thrill goes through my heart, and 1 feel a beating there that is not easily hushed. Yet why should I try to still it ? Are not all the happiest hours of my life associated with that dear name ? At the mention of it there seem to float before my eyes the waves of goldenbrown hair that encircled as with a halo the sweet face, and the soft violet (eyes are looking again into mine, and the old wellremembered tones seem to swell in music upon my ear. What folly to speak thus when I shall listen to them no more for ever !

Yet I still love to think of bygone days—it is the only happiness that is left me nowdays that were ushered in with clouds of crimson glory, filling the east with their roseate hues, deepening on through the noon into dazzling sunshine and an unclouded sky; but the promise of a glorious day went down in thunder and lightning and furious storm. Even so had it been with me; and the storm, alas, may not have spent its force, but be gathering fresh strength to pour out its vials of wrath on my devoted head. Well, I have borne it yet, and my heart is well-nigh seared and scarred with wounds and sorrows; but I shall bear it to the end. What more pleasure can the world have in store for me? Let the rain fall in pitiless showers and the bleak wind howl around the gnarled and crooked trees that stand crouching before the blast. I shall stand firm unto the end. I can bear my fate. What bitter, dark, brooding sense of evil is this that is filling my heart ? What other fate do I deserve than this that has now come upon me? And yet it is sweet to look back on the lost days—the days that are no more. And a balmy breath of summer wind seems to steal over my spirit, and a voice of unutterable love to come borne on the whispering breeze, telling me that there is a solace for the wounded heart and a balm for the broken spirit. Ah, I wonder if that balm will ever be mine !

All is yet as clear and distinct to my mental vision as on that happy day when I put my knapsack on back, and with canvas and colors, and all the other paraphernalia of a landscape painter, took my way into the regions of flood and fell. Ah, for those happy days when with a buoyant heart I climbed heath and hill, and filled my longing soul with the beautiful vision of creation —the tumbling brook, the roaring torrent, the heath clad moor, the rugged mountain in all its stern and glorious majesty, watching cloud and sunshine chasing each other over hill and dale, and transferring to the glowing canvas effects of storm and mist, rain and sunset! Now in shady dells and silvan glades of wood and forest, catching the sheeny light cast on the tremulous foliage, and striving to depict in all its wonderful anatomy the gnarled trunks and tapering branches of the mouarchs of the wood, among wild flowers and grasses growing by the hedgerows, watching the golden tints on the ripening grain, as Autumn, with russet fingers, mellowed the wooded uplands ; and again on the solemn shore, amid the glistening seaweed-covered rocks and brown-ribbed sand, with the tumbling waves and the murmur of the unresting surge—God’s neverceasing music—around me. Say you that the vocation of a landscape painter is an idle pursuit, unworthy of a cultivated miud ? Let him have—as he should have—a deep reverence for the works of the Creator, and patiently persevering in his attempt to perpetuate that which he deeply reverences, striving to represent worthily something which has touched his inmost feelings, each difficulty he overcomes tends to strengthen and ennoble, each victory affords him the keenest possible delight. But why do I talk of those old days, maundering thus about past joys that can never return, that are gone for evermore, taking with them all the gladness and buoyancy of youth, and leaving behind but the wreck cast up by the waves on a barren shore ?

It seems but as yesterday that i saw her as she came along the path in the wood, where I sat transferring to my canvas some exquisite ferns and foxgloves that grow together on the bank, their green and purple tints blending with perfect lusciousness of color with the wild flowers growing beside them. I thought her then, and 1 think her still (in the innermost depths of rny lonely heart), the iovlicst woman that God had ever made; with a slender and eminently graceful form, in all the soft round ness of budding womanhood, a perfect oval face, cowued with a glory of golden brown hair, and deep violet eyes, tender and true as the sky that is mirrored in the depths of the placid lake. I cannot describe her features ; when you looked at her you knew that you were looking at something of exquisite loveliness, though it would have been difficult to describe what really formed that surpassing beauty. It was the whole design that pleased, and the soul within all. But sweeter than all else was the smile that overspread her face with a radiance as of something heavenly, and made you almost feel as if you were looking upon the face of an angel. I tried to transfer that heavenly look to canvas in a picture representing an

angel cheering on a soldier in the battle of life, with bruised armour and bleeding feet, tired and wearied, and nearly overcome by the her-t of the day and the ardour of his toil, but receiving fresh vigour for further noble efforts by the encouraging smile. It is tut a poor attempt to depict with the unworthy pigments of this earth what eaanot be limned by poor humanity ; but it is to me a valuable memento, a gem of priceless worth, with which I shall not p~rt to the day of my death —nay, not even then ; for it shall be buried with me, and we shall go down to the grave together. I can only remember now that I asked her some questions about the place—l think the nearest road to a scene I wished to paint the next day—and that this chance meeting gradually ripened into acquaintance, and then into love. I have in my writing desk some lines I wrote on a scrap of paper that day after she had passed out of my sight, which I keep, not from their poeticai merit, but as a memorial of old times. Here they are ; very silly I may think them now, but I did not think so when I wrote them : * I have seen her, my love, my queen, And the flowers were kissing her feet; Daisies and lilies in white and green Looked up her coming to greet ; And the sunbeam stole through the leafy sheen Where the oak and the linden meet. * She is sweet as the hr* abh of the spring That comes laden with scent of (lowers, When the lark soars aloft on the wing In the blush of the blossoming hours, And the soft voiced thrush and the linnet sing In the shade of their leafy bowers. e My love with the violet eyes, And the hair of golden brown, Where the sunshine for ever nestling lies

Half hid in the radiant crown, ’Till the glowing light of even dies Away over hill aud'down ! £ Winds, breathe soft on her head ! Kiss, O ye flowers, her feet! 0 rosy snu, in the western red, Gently upon her beat; Beat till the rose of love is spread

Where the oak and the linden meet ! ’ {To he continued.)