Читать книгу Lamia's Winter-Quarters (Alfred Austin) - with the original illustrations - (Literary Thoughts Edition) онлайн

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‘...the gleam,

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration, and the Poet’s dream.‘

‘Your wish is my law,’ I hastened to say, and was about to snatch at the first subject I could think of to ward off further reproof, when she held out a little posy of Penzance sweet-briar roses she had been wearing, saying in her sweetest manner, as though afraid she might have wounded me, ‘Are they not lovely? No, keep them, if you care to do so. They remind me of something I saw the other day, when, on my way to London for a few hours, the train halted between Waterloo Station and Charing Cross at a point overlooking a number of back plots and alleys of the humblest description; and the one immediately below me arrested my gaze. There were two short rows of the purest white linen, lately out of the wash-tub, hanging out to dry; and under them, a hammock, with a chubby baby in it, fast asleep. A few feet behind was a red-brick wall, and along its foot three rows of pelargoniums in full flower, and evidently most carefully hoed and watered. A comely looking woman, with her sleeves tucked up as far as they would go, came out of the house, peeped into the hammock, kissed, or rather hugged the baby, and then turned it round to screen it a little from the direct rays of the sun that were shining on this little paradise. Then the train moved on; and I thought to myself, with a feeling of quiet joy, that neither the garden that we love, nor the Tuscan garden that was our winter-quarters, nor all the gardens and palaces in the world, contain more happiness than those few yards of ground in one of the humblest parts of London, tenanted by linen hung out to dry, three rows of pelargoniums, a hammock with a sleeping child in it, and a loving mother.’