weetness, such a grace,
In all thy speech appear,
That what to th'eye a beauteous face,
That thy tongue is to the ear."
--COWLEY.

The water was deep to the very edge; and I sprang from the little boat
upon a soft grassy turf. The island seemed rich with a profusion of all
grasses and low flowers. All delicate lowly things were most plentiful;
but no trees rose skywards, not even a bush overtopped the tall grasses,
except in one place near the cottage I am about to describe, where a few
plants of the gum-cistus, which drops every night all the blossoms that
the day brings forth, formed a kind of natural arbour. The whole island
lay open to the sky and sea. It rose nowhere more than a few feet above
the level of the waters, which flowed deep all around its border. Here
there seemed to be neither tide nor storm. A sense of persistent calm
and fulness arose in the mind at the sight of the slow, pulse-like rise
and fall of the deep, clear, unrippled waters against the bank of the
island, for shore it could hardly be called, being so much more like
the edge of a full, solemn river. As I walked over the grass towards the
cottage, which stood at a little distance from the bank, all the flowers
of childhood looked at me with perfect child-eyes out of the grass. My
heart, softened by the dreams through which it had passed, overflowed
in a sad, tender love towards them. They looked to me like children
impregnably fortified in a helpless confidence. The sun stood half-way
down the western sky, shining very soft and golden; and there grew a
second world of shadows amidst the world of grasses and wild flowers.

The cottage was square, with low walls, and a high pyramidal roof
thatched with long reeds, of which the withered blossoms hung over all
the eaves. It is noticeable that most of the buildings I saw in Fairy
Land were cottages. There was no path to a door, nor, indeed, was there
any track worn by footsteps in the island.

The cottage rose right out of the smooth turf. It had no windows that I
could see; but there was a door in the centre of the side facing me,
up to which I went. I knocked, and the sweetest voice I had ever heard
said, "Come in." I entered. A bright fire was burning on a hearth in
the centre of the earthern floor, and the smoke found its way out at an
opening in the centre of the pyramidal roof. Over the fire hung a lit