Read "Alide" by Emma Lazarus online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"If it were not that I must play true to my clerical gown, Max, I could for very delight in the glory of this October afternoon caper one of my lately-learned waltzes on the roadside. Gods! what a gift life is on such a day as this! Do, you not feel this mountain air tingling like wine through your veins? My blood is all aglow within me -- my heart is as light as flame. " It was a rich, vibrant, sonorous voice, and yet it had a boyish ring of merriment that seemed in no wise to belong to the soberly-clad student who walked demurely by his companion's side through the quiet, shining meadows.
"Julius Steck! " exclaimed his comrade, who spoke with a lazy, good-humored drawl, "for the love of sport remember who and what you are. A learned young bachelor of divinity to begin by invoking the heathen gods, -- to yearn after a waltz in the open fields, and a heart like flame, forsooth! a pretty thing to carry into a country parsonage to kindle a conflagration among the lasses!"