by Robert Hogarth Patterson (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.1 #16 (20 Jul 1850).
It is Summer. Day is now at its longest, the season at its brightest; and the heat comes down through the glowing heavens—broiling the sons of labour, but whitening the fields for the harvest. Like hapless Semele, consumed by the splendours of her divine lover, Earth seems about to perish beneath the ardent glances of the God of Day. The sun comes bowling from the Tropics to visit the Hyperboreans. The strange phenomenon of the Polar day—when for six months he keeps careering through the sky, without a single rising or setting, rolling like a fiery ball along the edge of the horizon, glittering like a thousand diamonds on the fields of ice—is now melting the snows that hide the lichens, the rein-deer's food; and, quivering down through the azure shallows of the Greenland coast, infuses the fire of love and the lust for roaming into the "scaly myriads" of the herring tribe.
On ourselves, the Summer sun is shining, glowing—robing in gold the declining days of July, and taking her starry jewels from the crown of Night—nay, lifting the diadem from her sable brow, and invading the skies of mid-night with his lingering beams. Oh, what a glory in those evening skies! The sun, just set, brings out the summits of the far-off hills sharp and black against his amber light: Nature is dreaming; yonder sea is calm as if it had never known a storm. It is the hour of Reverie: old memories, half-forgotten poetry, come floating like dreams into the soul. We wander in thought to the lonely Greek Isle, where Juan and Haidee are roaming with encircling arms upon the silvery sands, or gaze in love's reverie from the deserted banquet-room upon the slumbering waters of the Ægean. We see the mariner resting on his oars within the shadow of Ætna, and hear the "Ave Sanctissima" rising in solemn cadence from the waveless sea. We stand beneath the lovely skies of Italy—we rest on the woody slopes of the Apennines, where the bell of some distant convent is proclaiming sundown, and the vesper hymn floats on the rosy stillness, a vocal prayer.
"Ave Maria! blessed be the hour,
The time, the clime, the spot where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft;
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
And the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft;
While not a breath stole through the rosy air,
And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer!"
Study is impossible in the Summer evenings—those long, clear, mellow nights, when the Evening Star hangs like a diamond lamp in the amber skies of the West, and the hushed air seems waiting for serenades. The very charm of our Study is then our ruin. Whenever we lift our eyes from the page, we look clear away, as from a lofty turret, upon the ever-shifting glories of sunset, where far-off mountains form the magic horizon, and a wide arm of the sea sleeps calmly between, reflecting the skyey splendours. Our heart is not in our task. There is a vague yearning within us, for happiness more ethereal than any we have yet beheld, a happiness which the eye cannot figure, which only the soul can feel—it is the Spirit dreaming of its immortal home. Now and then we pause—the beauty without, half-unconsciously fixes upon itself our dreamy gaze.
"Oh, Summer night!
So soft and bright!"
That air, that lovely serenade of Donizetti's, seems floating in the room. A sweet voice is singing it in my ear, in my heart. Ah, those old times! I think of the hour when first I heard that strain, and of the fair creature singing it—with the twilight shadows around us, and her lip, that might have tempted an Angel, curling, half-proudly, half-kindly, as "upon entreaty" she resumed the strain. I fall into deeper reverie as I recollect it all—those evenings of enhancement, those days of boyish pain and jealousy. And ever the melody comes floating in through my brain, yet without attracting my thoughts—a strain of sweetest sounds accompanying the dissolving views which are dreamily, perpetually, forming and changing, gathering and dispersing, before my mind's eye, like the rose-clouds of sunset. Those shapes are too ethereal for the mind to grasp them. Is it a Juno-like form, beneath the skies and amid the flowers of Summer—with Zephyr playing among her golden curls, as she lifts from her neck a hair-chain to yield it to the suit of love! Or is it a zigzag path on a hill-side—a steed backing on a precipice—a lovely girl on the green bank, clinging to her preserver—sinking, swooning, quivering from that vision of sudden death! Who shall daguerreotype those airy shapes? We feel their presence rather than know their form, and the instant we try to see what we are seeing, they are gone!
We are no bad risers in the morning, but we never saw the sun rise on Midsummer-day but once. It is many years ago, yet we remember it as vividly as if it had been this morning. It was from the summit of the Calton Hill, the unfinished Acropolis, the still-born ruin of Modern Athens. The whole sky in the south and west, opposite to where the sun was about to appear, was suffused from the horizon to the zenith with a deep pink or rose hue; and in the midst, spanning the heavens, stood a magnificent Rainbow! A symbol of peace in a sea of blood! There lay the palatial edifices of the New Town, white and still in the hush of early morning, and high above them and around them rose that strange emblem of mercy amid judgment. Such an apparition might fitly have filled the skies of the Cities of the Plain on that woeful morn, the last the blessed sun ever rose upon them;—ere amid mutterings in the earth and thunders in the clouds, the volcano awoke from its sleep, and the red lava poured from its sources of fire—when clouds of stones and ashes, falling, falling, falling, gathered deeper and deeper above the Plain, and the descending lightnings set fire to the thousand founts of naphtha bubbling up from their subterranean reservoirs—when a whirlwind of flame shot up against the face of the sky, like the last blasphemy of a godless world; and with a hollow groaning, the sinking, convulsed earth hid the scene of pollution and wrath beneath the ever mournful-looking waters of the Dead Sea. The skies of night and morning are familiar to me as those of day, but never but that once did that Heavenly Spectre meet my eye.
As I reached the northern brow of the hill, it wanted but a minute or two of sunrise; in a few seconds a new Day would dawn—a flake would separate itself from the infinite Future, and be born into the world. I stood awaiting the Incarnation of Time. A flapping wing broke on the solemn stillness. Two rooks rose slowly from the ground, where they had been preying upon the tenants of the turf. Below me, to the east and north, spread out the waters of the Firth of Forth—not a billow breaking against its rocky islets—its broad expanse of the colour of lead, sombre and waveless, like the lifeless waters of the Asphaltite Sea; while, toiling like an imp of darkness, a small steamboat tore up its leaden-like surface, disappearing behind the house-tops of Leith. The spirits of night seemed hurrying to their dens, to escape the golden arrows of the God of Day. In the bowery gardens below me, the birds began an overture as the curtain of the Dawn was lifting. At length the sun shot up into the sky; then seemed to pause for some time, his lower limb resting on the dark sea, his upper almost touching a bank of over-hanging cloud. Pale tremulous rays, like those of the aurora borealis, darted laterally from the orb, shooting quiveringly along the sky, and returning: the waves of light were ebbing and flowing on the sands of Night. The sea and the slopes of the Calton still lay in the dull hues of dawn; but a strange cold sun-gleam which one felt instinctively would be short-lived, glittered around me on the crest of the hill, and on the white stone monuments that crown it as with a diadem. Foremost and loftiest rose the noble columns of the National Monument, even in their imperfection the most Grecian of British edifices, standing aloft like the ruins of Minerva's temple on the bluff Cape of Sunium, visible from afar to mariners entering the romantic Bay of the Forth. The glitter which now tinged them with gold was bright and brief as the national fervour which gave them birth. In a few minutes the sun passed up behind the bank of cloud, and nothing remained of his beams but a golden streak on the far edge of the waters.
Fair Summer has come, and the ocean wooes us. Breaking her ward, she has leapt like a lovely Bacchante to our arms; while men who have been "sighing like furnace" for her, and chiding the dull delay of her coming, now fly from her embraces into the sea—plunge into the haunts of the Nereids. In what "infernal machines" do they go a-wooing! And yet they appear to have every confidence in their natural powers of attraction; the Nereids run no danger of being deceived as to the physique of their human admirers. Queer fishes some of them are, certainly! Only look at yon big fat old fellow, for all the world like a skinned porpoise, floundering and blowing in the shallows like a stranded whale! while another more modest animal, of like dimensions, floats like cork or blubber in deep water, thumping energetically with leg and arm, and hides obesity in a cataract of foam. Yonder, over the clear blue depths, breasting at his ease the flood, goes the long steady stroke of the swimmer—an animal half-amphibious, seen at times afar off, lifting on the crest of a wave a mile at sea. With laugh and splutter a band of juveniles rub their heads with water in the most approved manner, as if they were a set of old topers afraid of apoplexy; or with whoop and hollo engage in water-combat, or in a race in bunting that reminds one of running in sacks; while a still younger member of the human family roams lustily as he clings to his pitiless nurse's neck, or emerges half-suffocated from the prescriptive thrice-repeated dip. Yet there is something gladsome in the flash of the waters around the sportive bathers, and in the glancing glitter of the sun-beams on the ivory-like arms that are swaying to and fro upon the blue waters. It speaks of Summer; and that of itself awakens gladness.
As we look upon the earth in a glorious summer-day, we feel as if all nature loved us, and that a spirit within is answering to the loving call of the outer world. We feel as if caressed by the beauty floating around—as if the mission of nature were to delight us. And it is so. It was to be a joy for Man that this glorious world sprang out of Chaos, and it was to enjoy it that we were gifted with our many senses of beauty. How narrow the enjoyment of the body to the domain of the spirit! The possessions and enjoyments of man consist less in the acres we can win from our fellows, than in the wide universe around us. Creature-comforts are unequally divided, but the charm of existence, the joy that rays from all nature, are the property of all. Who can set a price upon the colours of the rose or the hues of sunset? Yet, would the Vernon Gallery be an adequate exchange? Water and air, prime necessaries of physical life, are not more free to all, than is its best and highest food everywhere accessible to the spirit. What we want is, to rub the dust of the earth off our souls, and let them mirror the beauty of the universe. What we want is, to open the nature within to the nature without—to clear the mind from ignorance, the heart from prejudice. We must learn to see things as they are—to find beauty in nature, love in man, good everywhere; not to shut our eyes or look through a distorting medium. We scramble for the crumbs of worldly success, and too often have neglected the higher delights that are free to our taking. Like the groveller in the Pilgrim's Progress, we rake amid straws on the ground, when a crown of joy is ready to descend upon us if we will only look up. We turn aside the river from its bed, and toil in the sand for golden dust, destroying happiness in the search for its symbol, and forget that the world itself may be made golden, that the art of the Alchemist may be ours. The true sunshine of life is in the heart. It is there that the smile is born that makes the light of life, the rosy smile that makes the world of beauty, and keeps life sweet—the smile that "makes a summer where darkness else would lie."
We are in one of the pretty lanes of England. The smoke of a great city is beginning to curl up into the morning skies, but the sounds of that wakening Babylon cannot reach us in our green seclusion. As we step along lightly, cheerily, in the cool sunlight, hark to the glad voices of children; and lo! a cottage-home, sweeter-looking than any we have yet passed. Honeysuckles and jessamine wreathe the wooden trellis of the porch with verdure and flowers. In those flowers the early bee is hanging and humming, birds are chirping aloft, and cherubs are singing below. An urchin, with his yellow curls half-blinding his big blue eyes, sits on the sunny gravel-walk, playing with a frisky, red-collared kitten. On the steps of the door, beneath the shade of the trellis-work, sit two girls, a lapful of white roses before them, which they are gathering into a bouquet, or sticking into each other's hair. What are they singing?
Come, come, come! Oh, the merry Summer morn!
From dewy slumbers breaking,
Birds and flowers are waking.
Come, come, come! and leave our beds forlorn!
Hark, hark, hark! I hear our playmates call!
Hurrah! for merry rambles!
Morn is the time tor gambols.
Yes, yes, yes! Let's go a-roving all!
Haste, haste, haste! To woodland dells away!
There flowers for us are springing,
And little birds are singing—
"Come, come, come! Good-morrow! come away!"
A wiseacre lately remarked, as a proof of the sober sense of the age, that no one now sang about the happiness of childhood! Sombre sense, he should have said,—if he misused the word "sense" at all. No happiness,—nay, no peculiar happiness in childhood! Does he mean to maintain that we get happier as we get older?—that life, at the age of Methuselah, is as joyous as at fifteen? Has novelty, which charms in all the details of existence, no charm in existence itself? Is suspicion—that infallible growth of years, that baneful result of knowledge of the world—no damper on happiness? Is innocence nothing? Is ennui known to the young? No, no!
Youth is the summer of life; it is the very heyday of joy,—the poetry of existence. Youth beholds everything through a golden medium,—through the prism of fancy, not in the glass of reason; in the rose-hue of idealism, not the naked forms that we call reality.
"All that's bright must fade,
The brightest still the fleetest!"
We have but to look around us and within us to see the sad truth exemplified. Summer is fading with its roses—Youth vanishes with its dreams. "Passing away" is written on all tilings earthly. Yet "a thing of beauty is a joy for ever." We have a compensating faculty, which gives immortality to the mortal in the cells of memory; the joys of which Time has robbed us still live on in perennial youth. Nay, more, they live unmarred by the sorrows that in actual life grow up along with them. As the colours of fancy fade from the Present, they gather in brighter radiance around the Past. We conserve the roses of Summer—let us embalm the memories of Youth.