Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout PapersTHE NOTCH ON THE AXE.—A STORYA LA MODEPART I“Every one remembers in the Fourth Book of the immortalpoem of your Blind Bard, (to whose sightlessorbs no doubt Glorious Shapes were apparent, and VisionsCelestial,) how Adam discourses to Eve of the BrightVisitors who hovered round their Eden—‘Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.’“‘How often,’ says Father Adam, ‘from the steep ofechoing hill or thicket, have we heard celestial voicesto the midnight air, sole, or responsive to each other’snotes, singing!’ After the Act of Disobedience, whenthe erring pair from Eden took their solitary way, andwent forth to toil and trouble on common earth—thoughthe Glorious Ones no longer were visible, you cannotsay they were gone. It was not that the Bright Oneswere absent, but that the dim eyes of rebel man nolonger could see them. In your chamber hangs a pictureof one whom you never knew, but whom you have longheld in tenderest regard, and who was painted for youby a friend of mine, the Knight of Plympton. She communeswith you. She smiles on you. When your spiritsare low, her bright eyes shine on you and cheer you.Her innocent sweet smile is a caress to you. She neverfails to soothe you with her speechless prattle. You loveher. She is alive with you. As you extinguish your candleand turn to sleep, though your eyes see her not, is shenot there still smiling? As you lie in the night awake,and thinking of your duties, and the morrow’s inevitabletoil oppressing the busy, weary, wakeful brain aswith a remorse, the crackling fire flashes up for a momentin the grate, and she is there, your little BeauteousMaiden, smiling with her sweet eyes! When moon isdown, when fire is out, when curtains are drawn, when210