rave is past,
shall my soul, hour after hour, worship at the same source as thine?

....

"In the gardens of my neighbour there is a small fountain. I stood by it
this morning after sunrise. How it sprung up, with its eager spray, to
the sunbeams! And then I thought that I should see thee again this day,
and so sprung my heart to the new morning which thou bringest me from
the skies.

....

"I HAVE seen, I have LISTENED to thee again. How bold I have become! I
ran on with my childlike thoughts and stories, my recollections of the
past, as if I had known thee from an infant. Suddenly the idea of my
presumption struck me. I stopped, and timidly sought thine eyes.

"'Well, and when you found that the nightingale refused to sing?'--

"'Ah!' I said, 'what to thee this history of the heart of a child?'

"'Viola,' didst thou answer, with that voice, so inexpressibly calm
and earnest!--'Viola, the darkness of a child's heart is often but the
shadow of a star. Speak on! And thy nightingale, when they caught and
caged it, refused to sing?'

"'And I placed the cage yonder, amidst the vine-leaves, and took up my
lute, and spoke to it on the strings; for I thought that all music was
its native language, and it would understand that I sought to comfort
it.'

"'Yes,' saidst thou. 'And at last it answered thee, but not with
song,--in a sharp, brief cry; so mournful, that thy hands let fall the
lute, and the tears gushed from thine eyes. So softly didst thou unbar
the cage, and the nightingale flew into yonder thicket; and thou heardst
the foliage rustle, and, looking through the moonlight, thine eyes saw
that it had found its mate. It sang to thee then from the boughs a long,
loud, joyous jubilee. And musing, thou didst feel that it was not the
vine-leaves or the moonlight that made the bird give melody to night,
and that the secret of its music was the presence of a thing beloved.'

"How didst thou know my thoughts in that childlike time better than
I knew myself! How is the humble life of my past years, with its
mean events, so mysteriously familiar to thee, bright stranger! I
wonder,--but I do not again dare to fear thee!

....

"Once the thought of him oppressed and weighed me down. As an infant
that longs for the moon, my being was one vague desire for something
never to be attained. Now I feel rather as if to think of thee sufficed
to remove every fetter from my spirit. I float in the still seas of
light, and noth