Sights From A Steeple

From Twice Told Tales

O! I have climbed high, and my reward is small. Here I stand, with
wearied knees, earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far,
far beyond me still. O that I could soar up into the very zenith, where
man never breathed, nor eagle ever flew, and where the ethereal azure
melts away from the eye, and appears only a deepened shade of
nothingness! And yet I shiver at that cold and solitary thought. What
clouds are gathering in the golden west, with direful intent against the
brightness and the warmth of this dimmer afternoon! They are ponderous
air-ships, black as death, and freighted with the tempest; and at
intervals their thunder, the signal-guns of that unearthly squadron,
rolls distant along the deep of heaven. These nearer heaps of fleecy
vapor--methinks I could roll and toss upon them the whole day long!--
seem scattered here and there, for the repose of tired pilgrims through
the sky. Perhaps--for who can tell?--beautiful spirits are disporting
themselves there, and will bless my mortal eye with the brief appearance
of their curly locks of golden light, and laughing faces, fair and faint
as the people of a rosy dream. Or, where the floating mass so
imperfectly obstructs the color of the firmament, a slender foot and
fairy limb, resting too heavily upon the frail support, may be thrust
through, and suddenly withdrawn, while longing fancy follows them in
vain. Yonder again is an airy archipelago, where the sunbeams love to
linger in their journeyings through space. Every one of those little
clouds has been dipped and steeped in radiance, which the slightest
pressure might disengage in silvery profusion, like water wrung from a
sea-maid's hair. Bright they are as a young man's visions, and, like
them, would be realized in chillness, obscurity, and tears. I will look
on them no more.

In three parts of the visible circle, whose centre is this spire, I
discern cultivated fields, villages, white country-seats, the waving
lines of rivulets, little placid lakes, and here and there a rising
ground, that would fain be termed a hill. On the fourth side is the sea,
stretching away towards a viewless boundary, blue and calm, except where
the passing anger of a shadow flits across its surface, and is gone.
Hitherward, a broad inlet penetrates far into the land; on the verge of
the harbor, formed by its extremity, is a town; and over it am I, a
watchman, all-heeding and unheeded. O that the multitude of chimneys
could speak, like those of Madrid, and betray, in smoky whispers, the
secrets of all who, since their first foundation, have assembled at the
hearths within! O that the Limping Devil of Le Sage would perch beside
me here, extend his wand over this contiguity of roofs,