A fiddle, is it? Do not for one moment believe it.--A poet walked
through Southern woods, and the Dryads opened their hearts to him.
They unfolded the secrets that dwell in the depths of forests. They
sang to him under the starlight the songs of their green, rustling
land. They whispered the loves of the trees sentient to poets:--

"The sayling pine; the cedar, proud and tall;
The vine-propt elme; the poplar, never dry;
The builder oake, sole king of forrests all;
The aspine, good for staves; the cypresse funerall;
The lawrell, meed of mightie conquerours
And poets sage; the firre, that weepeth stille;
The willow, worne of forlorne paramours;
The eugh, obedient to the benders will
The birch, for shaftes; the sallow, for the mill;
The mirrhe, sweete-bleeding in the bitter wounde;
The warlike beech; the ash, for nothing ill;
The fruitful olive; and the platane round;
The carver holme; the maple, seldom inward sound."

They sang to him with their lutes. They danced before him with sunny,
subtile grace, wreathing with strange loveliness. They brought him
honey and wine in the white cups of lilies, till his brain was drunk
with delight; and they kept watch by his moss pillow, while he slept.

In the dew of the morning, he arose and felled the kindly tree that had
sheltered him, not knowing it was the home of Arborine, fairest of the
wood-nymphs. But he did it not for cruelty, but tenderness, to carve a
memorial of his most memorable night, and so pulled down no thunders on
his head. For Arborine loved him, and, like her, sister Undine in the
North, found her soul in loving him. Unseen, the beautiful nymph
guided his hand as he fashioned the sounding viol, not knowing he was
fashioning a palace for a soul new-born. He wrought skilfully strung
the intense chords, and smote them with the sympathetic bow. What
burst of music flooded the still air! What new song trembled among the
mermaiden tresses of the oaks! What new presence quivered in every
listening harebell and every fearful windflower? The forest felt a
change, for tricksy nymph had proved a mortal love, and put off her
fairy phantasms for the deep consciousness of humanity. The wood heard,
bewildered. A shudder as of sorrow thrilled through it. A breeze that
was almost sad swept down the shady aisles as the Poet passed out into
the sunshine and the world.

But Nature knows no pain, though Arborines appear nev