ams, was ever present, and
poisoned his days and nights with perpetual sorrows. Though courted by
King Grabyall, and all the surrounding potentates, who had grown up
daughters, he declined their advances, passing most of his leisure
hours in wandering along the river he had followed in his journey, and
which flowed just at the foot of the terrace of his stately castle. He
remembered that it issued from the aperture through which he had
emerged from the crystal basin, and constantly fed his sickly fancy
with the hope that the little gold-fish might have vanished in the
same direction. If so, it was probably still in the river, if it lived
at all; and he was perpetually bending over the stream, watching the
gambols of the finny tribes, to see if he could not detect among them
his lost wanderer.

One day having rambled much further than he had ever been before in
that direction, he perceived in turning a sharp angle of the river, a
noble marble villa, which had never attracted his notice before. It
basked its white, unsullied beauties on the bank of the murmuring
stream, and its turrets rose from out a sea of green foliage that
almost hid them from sight. Led by curiosity, or rather by his
destiny, he approached the building by a winding walk, that seemed
almost a labyrinth, now bringing him near, and anon carrying him to a
distance, until tired at last, he stopped, and rested himself under
the shade of a stately beech, that spread its broad arms afar, and
afforded a delightful canopy. Here, gazing around in listless apathy,
his attention was attracted by the letter V, carved on the smooth
bark, and environed with a chaplet of violets, underneath which the
motto, "Forget me not," was cut in graceful letters. While pondering
on this rural emblem of constant love, he was startled by a low and
plaintive female voice chanting the following simple strain, with the
gentle pathos of chastened sorrow:

"Forget me not! forget me not!
Pale, withered leaf, in which I read
The sad, mysterious, lonely lot
By cruel fate for me decreed.

"Pale, withered leaf, you mind me now
Of him whose gentle name you bear,
Whose lips once uttered many a vow,
In breath more sweet than violets are.

"Oft would he take me in his hands,
Oft hide me in his throbbing heart;
Oft kiss my eyes with words so bland--
Was ever scaly imp so blessed;

"I joy'd his wasting form to see,
His stately be