Violets and Other Tales

								


  LOVE.


A bed of roses, pleasing to the eye,
Flowers of heaven, passionate and pure,
Upon this bed the youthful often lie,

    And pressing hard upon its sweet delight,

    The cruel thorns pierce soul and heart, and cause a woeful blight.

  DEATH.


A traveller who has always heard
That on this journey he some day must go,

    Yet shudders now, when at the fatal word

    He starts upon the lonesome, dreary way.

    The past, a page of joy and woe,--the future, none can say.

  FAITH.


Blind clinging to a stern, stone cross,

    Or it may be of frailer make;
Eyes shut, ears closed to earth's drear dross,

    Immovable, serene, the world away

    From thoughts--the mind uncaring for another day.

SALAMMBO.
BY GUSTAVE FLANBERT.

Like unto the barbaric splendor, the clashing of arms, the flashing of
jewels, so is this book, full of brightness that dazzles, yet does not
weary, of rich mosaic beauty of sensuous softness. Yet, with it all,
there is a singular lack of elevation of thought and expression;
everything tends to degrade, to drag the mind to a worse than earthly
level. The crudity of the warriors, the minute description of the
battles, the leper, Hann; even the sensual love-scene of Salammbo and
Matho, and the rites of Taint and Moloch. Possibly this is due to the
peculiar shortness and crispness of the sentences, and the painstaking
attention to details. Nothing is left for the imagination to complete.
The slightest turn of the hand, the smallest bit of tapestry and
armor,--all, all is described until one's brain becomes weary with the
scintillating flash of minutia. Such careful attention wearies and
disappoints, and sometimes, instead of photographing the scenes
indelibly upon the mental vision, there ensues only a confused mass of
armor and soldiers, plains and horses.
But the description of action and movement are incomparable, resembling
somewhat, in the rush and flow of words, the style of Victor Hugo; the
breathless rush and fire, the restrained passion and fury of a
master-hand.
Throughout the whole book this peculiarity is noticeable--there are no
dissertations, no pauses for the author to express his opinions, no
stoppages to reflect,--we are rushed onward with almost breathless
haste, and many times are fain to pause and re-read a sentence, a
paragraph, sometimes a whole page. Like the unceasing motion of a column
of artillery in battle, like the roar and fury of the Carthaginian's
elephant, so is the torrent of Flanbert's eloquence--majestic, grand,
intense, with nobility, sensuous, but never sublime, never elevating,
never delicate.
As an historian, Flanbert would have ranked high--at least in
impartiality. Not once in the whole volume does he allow his prejudices,
his opinions, his sentiments to crop out. We lose complete sight of the
author in his work. With marvellous fidelity he explains the movements,
the vices and the virtues of each party, and with Shakespearean tact, he