Must pass away ere the buds appear:
Many a night of darksome sorrow
Yield to the light of a joyless morrow,
Ere birds again, on the clothed trees,
Shall fill the branches with melodies.
She will dream of meadows with wakeful streams;
Of wavy grass in the sunny beams;
Of hidden wells that soundless spring,
Hoarding their joy as a holy thing;
Of founts that tell it all day long
To the listening woods, with exultant song;
She will dream of evenings that die into nights,
Where each sense is filled with its own delights,
And the soul is still as the vaulted sky,
Lulled with an inner harmony;

And the flowers give out to the dewy night,
Changed into perfume, the gathered light;
And the darkness sinks upon all their host,
Till the sun sail up on the eastern coast--
She will wake and see the branches bare,
Weaving a net in the frozen air.

The story goes on to tell how, at last, weary with wintriness, she
travelled towards the southern regions of her globe, to meet the spring
on its slow way northwards; and how, after many sad adventures, many
disappointed hopes, and many tears, bitter and fruitless, she found
at last, one stormy afternoon, in a leafless forest, a single snowdrop
growing betwixt the borders of the winter and spring. She lay down
beside it and died. I almost believe that a child, pale and peaceful as
a snowdrop, was born in the Earth within a fixed season from that stormy
afternoon.

CHAPTER XIII

"I saw a ship sailing upon the sea
Deeply laden as ship could be;
But not so deep as in love I am
For I care not whether I sink or swim."
Old Ballad.

"But Love is such a Mystery
I cannot find it out:
For when I think I'm best resols'd,
I then am in most doubt."
SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

One story I will try to reproduce. But, alas! it is like trying to
reconstruct a forest out of broken branches and withered leaves. In the
fairy book, everything was just as it should be, though whether in words
or something else, I cannot tell. It glowed and flashed the thoughts
upon the soul, with s