FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125  
126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   >>   >|  
for another! for I confess with shame and contrition, that I never wait to enquire whether it thunders to the left or the right, to be frightened most ingloriously. Isn't it a disgrace to anyone with a pretension to poetry? Dr. Chambers, a part of whose office it is, Papa says, 'to reconcile foolish women to their follies,' used to take the side of my vanity, and discourse at length on the passive obedience of some nervous systems to electrical influences; but perhaps my faint-heartedness is besides traceable to a half-reasonable terror of a great storm in Herefordshire, where great storms most do congregate, (such storms!) round the Malvern Hills, those mountains of England. We lived four miles from their roots, through all my childhood and early youth, in a Turkish house my father built himself, crowded with minarets and domes, and crowned with metal spires and crescents, to the provocation (as people used to observe) of every lightning of heaven. Once a storm of storms happened, and we all thought the house was struck--and a tree was so really, within two hundred yards of the windows while I looked out--the bark, rent from the top to the bottom ... torn into long ribbons by the dreadful fiery hands, and dashed out into the air, over the heads of other trees, or left twisted in their branches--torn into shreds in a moment, as a flower might be, by a child! Did you ever see a tree after it has been struck by lightning? The whole trunk of that tree was bare and peeled--and up that new whiteness of it, ran the finger-mark of the lightning in a bright beautiful rose-colour (none of your roses brighter or more beautiful!) the fever-sign of the certain death--though the branches themselves were for the most part untouched, and spread from the peeled trunk in their full summer foliage; and birds singing in them three hours afterwards! And, in that same storm, two young women belonging to a festive party were killed on the Malvern Hills--each sealed to death in a moment with a sign on the chest which a common seal would cover--only the sign on them was not rose-coloured as on our tree, but black as charred wood. So I get 'possessed' sometimes with the effects of these impressions, and so does one, at least, of my sisters, in a lower degree--and oh!--how amusing and instructive all this is to you! When my father came into the room to-day and found me hiding my eyes from the lightning, he was quite angry and called 'it disgracef
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125  
126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
lightning
 

storms

 

struck

 
moment
 

beautiful

 

branches

 

father

 

Malvern

 

peeled

 

brighter


untouched

 
summer
 

spread

 
bright
 
colour
 

twisted

 

finger

 

flower

 

shreds

 

whiteness


sisters

 

degree

 

amusing

 

effects

 

impressions

 
instructive
 

disgracef

 

called

 

hiding

 

possessed


belonging

 

festive

 
killed
 

singing

 

sealed

 

coloured

 

charred

 

common

 

foliage

 

hundred


obedience
 
nervous
 

systems

 

electrical

 

passive

 
length
 

follies

 
vanity
 
discourse
 

influences