Who will believe that he heard her say, With the soft rich voice, in the dear old way:—

“The utmost wonder is this,—I hear, And see you, and love you, and kiss you, Dear;

“I can speak now you listen with soul, not ear; If your soul could see, it would all be clear

“What a strange delicious amazement is Death, To be without body and breathe without breath.

“I should laugh for joy if you did not cry; Oh, listen! Love lasts!—Love never will die.

“I am only your Angel who was your Bride; And I see, that though dead, I have never died.”

p. 78THE GLOAMING.

p. 78

The gloaming! the gloaming! “What is the gloaming?” was asked by some honourable member of this honourable Society, when the word was chosen a month ago. “Twilight,” was promptly answered by another honourable member! And although the gloaming is undoubtedly twilight, is twilight as undoubtedly the gloaming?—the gloaming of Burns, of Scott, the gloaming so often referred to in our old Northern minstrelsy? The City clerk on the knife-board of his familiar “bus,” soothing himself with a fragrant Pickwick, after his ten hours’ labour in that turmoil and eddy of restless humanity—the City—may see, as he rolls westward, the sun slowly sinking and setting in its fiery grandeur behind the Marble Arch. He may see the shades of evening stealing over the Park and the Bayswater Road, and darkness settling softly over gentle Notting Hill; and he may see, if there be no fog, or not too much smoke in the atmosphere to prevent astronomical observations, the stars stealing out one by one in the Heavens above him, as the gas-lamps are being lit in the streets around him; but would that observant youth on his knife-board, with his Pickwick, amidst the lamp-lights, in the roar of London, be justified in describing what he had seen as “the gloaming?” I think not. Is not the gloaming twilight only in certain localities, and under certain conditions? Is not the gloaming chiefly confined to the North country, or to mountainous districts? It is difficult to say where the p. 79gloaming shall be called gloaming no more, and where twilight is just simple twilight, and no gloaming; but surely there lives not the man who will assert that he has seen a real gloaming effect in the Tottenham Court Road, for instance!

The

p. 79

 Prev. P 51/103 next