ver the open, 'tis a race with the long-thrown
shadows; a race across the heaths and up the hills, till, at the
farthest bourne of mounted eastern cloud, the heralds of the sun lay
rosy fingers and rest.

Sweet are the shy recesses of the woodland. The ray treads softly
there. A film athwart the pathway quivers many-hued against purple shade
fragrant with warm pines, deep moss-beds, feathery ferns. The little
brown squirrel drops tail, and leaps; the inmost bird is startled to a
chance tuneless note. From silence into silence things move.

Peeps of the revelling splendour above and around enliven the conscious
full heart within. The flaming West, the crimson heights, shower their
glories through voluminous leafage. But these are bowers where deep
bliss dwells, imperial joy, that owes no fealty to yonder glories, in
which the young lamb gambols and the spirits of men are glad. Descend,
great Radiance! embrace creation with beneficent fire, and pass from
us! You and the vice-regal light that succeeds to you, and all heavenly
pageants, are the ministers and the slaves of the throbbing content
within.

For this is the home of the enchantment. Here, secluded from vexed
shores, the prince and princess of the island meet: here like darkling
nightingales they sit, and into eyes and ears and hands pour endless
ever-fresh treasures of their souls.

Roll on, grinding wheels of the world: cries of ships going down in
a calm, groans of a System which will not know its rightful hour of
exultation, complain to the universe. You are not heard here.

He calls her by her name, Lucy: and she, blushing at her great boldness,
has called him by his, Richard. Those two names are the key-notes of the
wonderful harmonies the angels sing aloft.

"Lucy! my beloved!"

"O Richard!"

Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, a sheep-boy pipes
to meditative eve on a penny-whistle.

Love's musical instrument is as old, and as poor: it has but two stops;
and yet, you see, the cunning musician does thus much with it!

Other speech they have little; light foam playing upon waves of feeling,
and of feeling compact, that bursts only when the sweeping volume is too
wild, and is no more than their sigh of tenderness spoken.

Perhaps love played his tune so well because their natures had unblunted
edges, and were keen for bliss, confiding in it as natural food. To
gentlemen and ladies he fine-draws upon the viol, ravishingly; or blow