United States or Chile ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Who does not see that it is so, that as we journey on in life there are made in our behalf preparations for another state of being, unmistakable premonitions of that fact which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews so eloquently states, that "here have we no continuing city"? The gloss of objects in which we delighted is worn off by attrition, is sicklied o'er by care; the vanity of earthly things startles us suddenly, like a new truth; the friends we love drop away from our side into silence; desire fails; the grasshopper becomes a burden; until, at length, we feel that our only love is not here below, until these tendrils of earth aspire to a better climate, and the weight that has been laid upon us makes us stoop wearily to the grave as a rest and a deliverance.

The litter now ascended the height: its bearers halted; a lean hand tore the curtains aside, and Margrave descended leaning, this time, not on the Black-veiled Woman, but on the White-robed Skeleton. There, as he stood, the moon shone full on his wasted form; on his face, resolute, cheerful, and proud, despite its hollowed outlines and sicklied hues.

As for thy hideous fleur de lis, an' thy master had no better device, he would not long rest the king's jeweller." "I have no heart for the pearls," said Margaret, abruptly; "they are at best pale and sicklied. What hast thou of bolder ornament and more dazzling lustrousness?"

Actually they must have been a presentable enough and a capable enough set of spinsters, though sicklied o'er by the pale cast of indifferent personalities, indifferently housed, indifferently fed, indifferently paid; all anaemic, all without any prospects whatsoever, all dominated by and domineered over by the masterful personality of the Sultana.

'The native hue of resolution' gets 'sicklied o'er' with the paleness that comes from hesitation. Am I sure that anything is God's will? Then the sooner I go to work at doing it, the better for myself and for the vigour of my work. This headstrong rashness, as they thought it, brings up the other 'spies' once more. Notice how the gloomy views are the only ones in their second statement.

Nay, as a beast of the wild wood hath the hunters in watchful dread, even so did the beloved in all things regard the man, with angered lips, and eyes that had the dreadful glance of fate, and the whole face was answerable to this wrath, the colour fled from it, sicklied o'er with wrathful pride. Yet even thus was the loved one beautiful, and the lover was the more moved by this haughtiness.

It was hardly fancy that the flowers took the colors of the ribbons and stuffs of the looms, and that the same instant nature and art were sicklied o'er with the same pale hues of fashion. If this relation of nature and art is too subtle for comprehension, there is nothing fanciful in the influence of the characters in fiction upon social manners and morals.

Looking at the matter from the point of theory only, we should say that a physician could not be otherwise than melancholy. A merry doctor! Why, one might as well talk of a laughing death's-head, the cachinnation of a monk's memento mori. This life of ours is sorrowful enough at its best estate; the brightest phase of it is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast" of the future or the past.

The moon was abroad, but the vapours that surrounded her gave a watery and sicklied dulness to her light, and whereever in the niches and hollows of the cliff the shadows fell, all was utterly dark and unbroken by the smallest ray; only along the near waves of the sea and the whiter parts of the level sand were objects easily discernible.

Had he known nothing of Sir Francis Geraldine he would have been thoroughly contented. Then had come the blow, and all his joys were "sicklied over" with the unhealthy tone which his image of her former lover gave him. She became at once to him a different creature.