Sunday, May 27, 2012

ye clouds

"Ye flying clouds, what look ye down upon? Tell me, what ye see abroad?"  (Mardi, 1849)

"How beautifully those light clouds float along from the east, wafted by the gentle airs that just give music to the leaves over head. Ye far wanderers! are ye messengers from that busy world?  If so, pass on...." 

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger 18 (August 1852): 508; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army
)

Saturday, May 26, 2012

misanthropic quadrupeds

"It was the fate of a melancholy buffalo,— whether misused and misanthropic,—shunning the vulgar herd, or exiled, as an old and hardened sinner, to this solitude, to encounter us here...."
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

"As for the goats, occasionally you come across a black, misanthropic ram, nibbling the scant herbage of some height inaccessible to man, in preference to the sweet grasses of the valley below."  (Omoo)

Thursday, May 24, 2012

siesta day-dreams

Bertel Thorvaldsen
Numa Pompilius and Egeria, 1794
not only siesta, but day-dreaming at siesta, and
not only day-dreaming at siesta, but
day-dreaming at siesta with visions of meeting a female spirit, and not only
day-dreaming at siesta with visions of meeting a female spirit, but
day-dreaming at siesta with visions of meeting a female spirit, followed by the allegation of being under the influence of drink, thus:

But here comes Frank again: well, rest is evidently not a time for dull narrative.

F.  "Most industrious of scribblers, I give you good evening!  How charming, for a change, is our old friend, Siesta!  I hope the beautiful nymphs of this happy valley, if they suffice you, hovered over your dreams.  But, in truth, I think you dream all day, when no wild bull is a-foot. Hast thou, most favored mortal, tempted an Egeria from her sacred fountain and grove to meet thee, where others groan in very spirit, in the hot and dusty stony barrens?"

C.  You are quite overpowering!  Your dreams surely were spirituous.  But a truce to day-dreams; light as they are, the whole world granteth them not a foundation spot!"
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

High midsummer noon is more silent than night. Most sweet a siesta then. And noon dreams are day-dreams indeed; born under the meridian sun. Pale Cynthia begets pale specter shapes; and her frigid rays best illuminate white nuns, marble monuments, icy glaciers, and cold tombs. 
The sun rolled on. And starting to his feet, arms clasped, and wildly staring, Yoomy exclaimed--"Nay, nay, thou shalt not depart, thou maid!--here, here I fold thee for aye!--Flown?--A dream! Then siestas henceforth while I live. And at noon, every day will I meet thee, sweet maid! And, oh Sun! set not; and poppies bend over us, when next we embrace!"

"What ails that somnambulist?" cried Media, rising. "Yoomy, I say! what ails thee?"

"He must have indulged over freely in those citrons," said Mohi, sympathetically rubbing his fruitery. "Ho, Yoomy! a swallow of brine will help thee." (Mardi)
UPDATE:  Yoomy and the Captain of Dragoons are being Byronic again.  From the fourth canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (115):

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
As thine ideal breast; whate'er thou art
Or wert,--a young Aurora of the air,
The nympholepsy of some fond despair;
Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth,
Who found a more than common votary there
Too much adoring; whatsoe'er thy birth,
Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

what care

C. "...life is burthened with a thousand artificial cares and anxieties: the growth of envy, jealousy and folly, the prolific brood of another arch-tyrant, fashion."

F. "Well! what care we in this honest wilderness! Care for nothing you cannot help, is the sum of my philosophy."  
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border ; Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

Yet again, when he bethought him of the hurry and bustle of Mardi, dejection stole over him. "Who will heed it," thought he; "what care these fops and brawlers for me?"  (Mardi)

Thursday, May 17, 2012

demurely

"this merry little river, whose sparkling waters often demurely purl over golden sands..."
Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger 18 (August 1852), 506; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army
Down each of these little valleys flows a clear stream, here and there assuming the form of a slender cascade, then stealing invisibly along until it bursts upon the sight again in larger and more noisy waterfalls, and at last demurely wanders along to the sea.  (Typee)

satanic grandeur, believers

Devil's Gate
 1852
"So named perhaps by some earnest believer in Satanic grandeur, it is in truth the gateway chosen, (for its romantic beauty, I shall say) by that fair and gentle offspring of mountain dell, the better named Sweet Water...." --Southern Literary Messenger 18 (August 1852): 506; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 348
 1851
For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heart-woes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. --Moby-Dick
1850
"— a churlish, ill- tempered, unphilosophical, superstitious old bear of a quarter-gunner; a believer in Tophet...." -- White-Jacket