These Signs Of A Modern Humdrum
Prosperity Seemed To Melt Away Before My Eyes As I Gazed
From The Schooner's
Deck, and the accessories of an elder
time came to furnish the landscape, - the clumsy merchantmen
lazily swaying with the
Tide, darkened into armed galleys
with their rows of glittering shields, - the snug,
bourgeois-looking town shrank into the quaint proportions
of the huddled ancient Nidaros, - and the old marauding
days, with their shadowy line of grand old pirate kings,
rose up with welcome vividness before my mind.
What picture shall I try to conjure from the past, to
live in your fancy, as it does in mine?
Let the setting be these very hills, - flooded by this
same cold, steely sunshine. In the midst stands a stalwart
form, in quaint but regal attire. Hot blood deepens the
colour of his sun-bronzed cheek; an iron purpose gleams
in his earnest eyes, like the flash of a drawn sword; a
circlet of gold binds the massive brow, and from beneath
it stream to below his waist thick masses of hair, of
that dusky red which glows like the heart of a furnace
in the sunlight, but deepens earth-brown in the shadow.
By his side stands a fair woman; her demure and heavy-lidded
eyes are seldom lifted from the earth, which yet they
seem to scorn, but the king's eyes rest on her, and many
looks are turned towards him. A multitude is present,
moved by one great event, swayed by a thousand
passions, - some with garrulous throats full of base
adulation and an unworthy joy, - some pale, self-scorning,
with averted looks, and hands that twitch instinctively
at their idle daggers, then drop hopeless, harmless at
their sides.
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