Their Silver Wedding Journey — Volume 3 by William Dean Howells
page 23 of 226 (10%)
page 23 of 226 (10%)
|
crypt of the church, in caskets of bronze and copper and marble, with
draperies of black samite, more and more funereally vainglorious to the last. Their courtly coffins are ranged in a kind of hemicycle, with the little coffins of the children that died before they came to the knowledge of their greatness. On one of these a kneeling figurine in bronze holds up the effigy of the child within; on another the epitaph plays tenderly with the fate of a little princess, who died in her first year. In the Rose-month was this sweet Rose taken. For the Rose-kind hath she earth forsaken. The Princess is the Rose, that here no longer blows. From the stem by death's hand rudely shaken. Then rest in the Rose-house. Little Princess-Rosebud dear! There life's Rose shall bloom again In Heaven's sunshine clear. While March struggled to get this into English words, two German ladies, who had made themselves of his party, passed reverently away and left him to pay the sacristan alone. "That is all right," he said, when he came out. "I think we got the most value; and they didn't look as if they could afford it so well; though you never can tell, here. These ladies may be the highest kind of highhotes practising a praiseworthy economy. I hope the lesson won't be lost on us. They have saved enough by us for their coffee at the Orangery. Let us go and have a little willow-leaf tea!" The Orangery perpetually lured them by what it had kept of the days when |
|