be distinguished from them by the once happy
little damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile on
her face. Consider the great variety of truthful and delicate thought in
the few lines we have quoted--the _wonder_ of the little maiden at the
fleetness of her favorite--the "little silver feet"--the fawn
challenging his mistress to a race with "a pretty skipping grace,"
running on before, and then, with head turned back, awaiting her
approach only to fly from it again--can we not distinctly perceive all
these things? How exceedingly vigorous, too, is the line,

"And trod as if on the four winds!"

a vigor apparent only when we keep in mind the artless character of the
speaker and the four feet of the favorite, one for each wind. Then
consider the garden of "my own," so overgrown, entangled with roses and
lilies, as to be "a little wilderness"--the fawn loving to be there, and
there "only"--the maiden seeking it "where it _should_ lie"--and not
being able to distinguish it from the flowers until "itself would
rise"--the lying among the lilies "like a bank of lilies"--the loving to
"fill itself with roses,"

"And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold,"

and these things being its "chief" delights--and then the pre-eminent
beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines, whose very hyperbole
only renders them more true to nature when we consider the innocence,
the artlessness, the enthusiasm, the passionate girl, and more
passionate admiration of the bereaved child:

"Had it lived long, it would have been
Lilies without, roses within."

[Footnote 1: "The Book of Gems." Edited by S. C. Hall.]

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