Celestia Colby notebook 1844-1857

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To make chloride of lime Dissolve a bushel of salt in a barrel of water, and with this salt water slake a barrel of lime

E/R Quire

R/

"Now fired by wrath and now by reason cooled"

Illiad

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Cynthia L Weeks Celestia M. Rice's Book Cherry Valley

Cyntha Vine Colby

[pressed flowers] Plummier

Mrs. Cordelia R. Davis Geneva Kane Co. Ill. May 22nd 1852

C.R.F.

AA Mass Ma C Celes C

celestia M. Rices

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To S.L.C. March 22nd 1857

What a curse is ignorance! How destructive to enjoyment! I've been reading "Nile Notes of a Howadji," but my ignorance prevents a full appreciation of its beauty. A haze the sense in many places by not understanding and allusions with which it abounds. Yet it is interesting, dreamy, and poetical.

I feel while reading it as I can imagine I should if roaming among the scenes described, I could gaze upon the tropical spendor of the earth and sky, could admire the strange rare beauty of the floral lace, and the majestic grandeur of the palm, could stand in breathless awe amid the awful solotude [sic: solitude] of the desert, but no voice would come to me from the sacred shrine of Memnon to thrill my soul with the mighty music of the past, and from the pyramids no shadowy forms of ancient greatness should look down on me with wisdom in its glance, "Each palm is a poet" Says the Howadji; but the melody of the poem would be lost on my uninstructed ear.

Thus it is that the dark veil of ignorance shuts out avenues of exquisite pleasure which are open to the favored few who possess the golden Ring and I most can only gaze wistfully at the flowery path I cannot enter as Moses from Pisgah's top viewed the promised land which he was forbidden to enter.

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Loose Papers

On the Death of C A Weeds August 1847.

1. I saw a flower untimely blasted By the cruel frost of spring Yet beautiful while it lasted And lovely when withering.

2. So then dear friend has perished In innocence and truth, Like the hopes that are cherished In the first days of youth.

3. Like the leaf that decays When the forest is green When the bright fair days Of summer are seen.

4. Go thou from earth lost faded away In thy early youthful bloom Thy soul hath gave to realms of day Thy body to the tomb.

To the Spring Breeze. April 2d 1846

Blow ye spring breezes, blow ye scented gales, Strong wild in your mirth o'er hills and dales, Go to your love cottage and carry tales of joy, Go tell them of their long lost absent boy. Say that in your wanderings him you've seen, Kissed his cheek and marked his noble men. Go to that son, and tell him of his parents old and gray Tell him of that home far, far away, Of that love cot, deck hid among the trees. Of each familiar flower, and the hum of the bees, Where once his own merry voice rung wild and free In those innocent days of boyish glee. Go bid his return to his childhood sweet home. Bid him in foreign climes no longer avow But to go and cheer that father and mother, And to be to that sister as once he was—a brother.

Aspirations I scrap.

There are in the human heart high and holy aspirations, that sleep there in its hidden recesses like pearls in the bossoms of an shell because their home is not on earth, and they meet with nothing here to satisfy them.

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Loose Papers.

To H. H. For her Album July 1847

Learn not a strangers wish fair maiden Nor grudge the pages that bears her name, For she would wish thy life with blossoms laden And thy memory live in fame.

May the fire of thine eye ne'er be quenched in sorrow Nor the bloom of they cheek be less lovely than now May each day be happy, but happier thy morrow, And the gems of Content encircle thy brow. May thy life be like a long summers day And thy death like the close of the same, As useful in thy own happy way, And blessings be breathed on thy name. One hour for herself, the stranger would crave Thy pardon for sullying this page The pleasures now, to thee who has pardon gave And blessings on thy age.

To a Friend August 1844

When in its wild majesty the storm is roaring by And Nature's pall is spread o'er all the darkened sky And each element in wild confusion blending And sheets of liquid fire to earth descending Then think of me.

When morning dawns and freshly fair, The sun breaks forth on the fragrant air, And flowerets ope their face to the day, To drink the light of the suns first ray Then think of me.

A world which cannot furnish aught to satisfy the longings of the soul.

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