Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
Ever since I had received in my girlhood, from my best friend, the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in five volumes in blue and gold, I had read and re-read the pages, till I knew scores by heart. I had longed to see the face and home of her whom the English call "Shakespeare's daughter," and whom Edmund Clarence Stedman names "the passion-flower of the century."
During the week she labored for other people, and on Sundays for herself, by going to church and reading the Bible. On one of the blank leaves she had recorded the day of her birth, and that of her child's, likewise her marriage and her husband's death. Thus she lived, poor, patient and resigned. Her heart was a passion-flower, bearing within it the crown of thorns and the cross of Christ.
Now his eyes wandered over the space where were the grandilla, with its blossom like a passion-flower, the black Tahiti plum, with its bright pink tassel-blossom, and the fine mango trees, loaded half with fruit and half with bud.
He sang of the love of Christ, he thought but of the love of Alice; and still he refrained from plucking that wonderful passion-flower of her glance.
Specially noticeable among the latter was a gorgeous purple passion-flower, with orange-coloured fruit as big as pumpkins, that covered everything with its vigorous growth. The path was always narrow and sometimes steep, and we had frequently almost to creep under the overhanging boughs, or to turn aside to avoid a more than usually dense mass of creepers.
It was neither singing, nor chanting, nor speaking, but a subtle mixture of the three; and the effect upon me was one of haunting harmonies that left me profoundly moved. He began, "Birds in the high Hall-garden," and, skipping the next four sections, went on to, "I have led her home, my love, my only friend," and ended with: There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate.
Longfellow's genius was not a great creative force. It burst into no tempests of mighty passion. It did not wrestle with the haughtily veiled problems of fate and free-will absolute. It had no dramatic movement and variety, no eccentricity and grotesqueness and unexpectedness. It was not Lear, nor Faust, nor Manfred, nor Romeo. A carnation is not a passion-flower.
At times, in the warm days of May, the whole company went out together on the large and splendid piazza which ran along the castle, on the garden side, and which was supported by slender marble columns, and whose roof, made of thin wire-work, was thickly shaded by the foliage of the vine, the ivy, and the delicate leaves of the passion-flower.
Servants passed in and out removing the things from the table. Presently they were left alone. The heavy breath of the palm trees floated in upon them; the fruit of the passion-flower hung temptingly at the window; they could hear the sound of a torrent just behind the house.
Her face was oval without a flaw, and pale as newly-minted gold, with a flush of red where the blood ran warm beneath the skin. Her hair was black as ebony and finer than the finest silk, rich and lustrous; her jet-black eyebrows formed a perfect arch. Her mouth was like a passion-flower, but small and sweet, with lips full and firm and scarlet.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking