Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][merged small][merged small]

guessed the riddle that she cast herself from a great rock and was killed. The people were so glad to be rid of the dreadful monster that they made Edipus king of Thebes.

Later in life, Edipus lost his eyesight and gave up the throne. Then, for many miserable years, he wandered up and down the earth with his beautiful daughter, Antigone, as his companion.

Antigone's love for her blind old father was most beautiful to see. She was his hope, his pride, his one joy in life, and after his death hers was the one faithful heart filled with grief at his loss.

ANTIGONE'S LAMENT FOR EDIPUS.

"Alas! I only wished I might have died
With my poor father; wherefore should I ask
For longer life?

Oh, I was fond of misery with him;

E'en what was most unlovely grew beloved
When he was with me. O my dearest father,
Beneath the earth now in darkness hid,

Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still
Wast dear, and shall be ever!"

[blocks in formation]

PATERNAL LOVE.

I walked up my garden path as I was coming home from shooting. My dog ran on before me; suddenly he went slower, and crept carefully forward, as if he scented game. I looked along the path and perceived a young sparrow, with its downy head and yellow bill.

It had fallen from a nest (the wind was blowing hard through the young birch trees beside the path), and was sprawling motionless, helpless, on the ground, with its little wings outspread.

My dog crept softly up to it, when suddenly an old black-breasted sparrow threw himself down from a neighboring tree, and let himself fall like a stone directly under the dog's nose, and, with ruffled feathers, sprang with a terrified twitter several times against his open, threatening mouth.

He had flown down to protect his young at a sacrifice of himself. His little body trembled all over, his cry was hoarse, he was frightened almost to death; but he sacrificed himself.

My dog must have seemed to him a gigantic monster; but for all that he could not stay on his

high, safe branch; a power stronger than himself

drove him down.

My dog stopped, and drew back.

if he, too, respected this power.

It seemed as

I hastened to call back the amazed dog, and reverently withdrew yes, don't laugh; I felt a reverence for this little lord of a bird, with its paternal love.

- Ivan Tourgueneff.

A SONG OF A NEST.

There was once a nest in a hollow;
Down in the mosses and knot-grass pressed,
Soft and warm, and full to the brim.
Vetches leaned over it purple and dim,
With buttercup buds to follow.

I pray you hear my song of a nest,
For it is not long:-

You shall never light, in a summer quest,
The bushes among

Shall never light on a prouder sitter,

A fairer nestful, nor ever know

A softer sound than their tender twitter,
That wind-like did come and go.

Jean Ingelow.

THE FLAG IN NATURE.

All nature sings wildly the song of the free,

The red, white, and blue floats o'er land and o'er sea:
The white in each billow that breaks on the shore,
The blue in the arching that canopies o'er
The land of our birth, in its glory outspread -
And sunset dyes deepen and glow into red;
Day fades into night, and the red stripes retire,
But stars o'er the blue light their sentinel fire,
And though night be gloomy with clouds overspread,
Each star holds its place in the field overhead;
When scatter the clouds and the tempest is through,
We count every star in the field of the blue.

Samuel Francis Smith.

ONE, BUT A LION.

A vainglorious fox-mother, with a litter of cubs at her heels, one day came upon a powerful lioness nursing her new-born son, and derided her for producing but one cub at a birth, saying, at last, Why not emulate myself?"

66

Never!" replied the lioness, casting a contemptuous glance at the fox cubs; "not numbers, but quality-one, but a lion!"

« AnteriorContinuar »