But on one side of the
portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-hush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.
And who put the cold, white panes in the place of those windows," high in color, "which caused the astonished eyes of our fathers to hesitate between the rose of the grand
portal and the arches of the apse?
The idea occurred to many that either the funeral procession of some great personage had halted in front of the Province House, or that a corpse, in a velvet-covered and gorgeously-decorated coffin, was about to be borne from the
portal. After listening a moment, Sir William Howe called, in a stern voice, to the leader of the musicians, who had hitherto enlivened the entertainment with gay and lightsome melodies.
Far in the forest, dim and old, For her may some tall vault unfold -- Some vault that oft hath flung its black And winged pannels fluttering back, Triumphant, o'er the crested palls, Of her grand family funerals -- Some sepulchre, remote, alone, Against whose
portal she hath thrown, In childhood, many an idle stone -- Some tomb fromout whose sounding door She ne'er shall force an echo more, Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
The massive
portal yawned, somber and sorrowful, before us, giving a glimpse of marble halls within.
I had believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon; I had believed in the front door, as a mysterious
portal of the Temple of State whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence.
But all the estuaries of great rivers have their fascination, the attractiveness of an open
portal. Water is friendly to man.
With a kick and a blow he freed himself from two others who clung to him, and in a moment he was within the
portal with his comrades.
Soon there emerged from under a sculptured
portal the figure of a young girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much.
I went out through the
portal into the sunlit world again as soon as my hunger was satisfied.
It is sufficient for us that enough is developed to point our path aright, and to direct our wandering steps to that
portal which shall open on the light of an eternal day.
During these experiments Woola had been standing at my side gazing intently at the door, and as my glance fell upon him it occurred to me to test the correctness of my hypothesis, that this
portal had been the means of ingress to the temple used by Thurid, the black dator, and Matai Shang, Father of Therns.