This fair, quaint landscape, and beautiful moonlight! Who ever looks on such a scene that does not feel a melancholy mingling in his delight?
"The moon shines bright:—in such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise; in such a night,
Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls,
And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents,
Where Cresid lay that night. In such a night
Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand,
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love
To come again to Carthage."
Thus, in the visions of the Seer who lies in Stratford-on-Avon, moonlight and love and melancholy are related; and so it is, and will be, to the end of time, till mortal love is no more, and sadness ends, and the moon is changed to blood, and all things are made new.
And now over the moonlit water, through the boughs of the old trees, the still night air is thrilled with a sweet contralto—a homely song—the echo of childish days and the nursery. Poor Milly! her maid who died so early, whose lover was a young sailor, far away, used to sing it for her in the summer evenings, when they sat down under the hawthorns, on Winnockhough, looking toward the sea, though the sea was many a mile away:—
"As Eve went forth from Paradise,
She, weeping, bore away
One flower that, reared, in tears and sighs,
Is growing to this day.
"Where'er the children of the fall
Are toiling to this hour,
It blooms for each, it blooms for all,
And Love we call this flower.
"Red roses of the bygone year
Are mingled with the mould,
And other roses will appear
Where they grew pale and old.
"But where it grew, no other grows,
No bloom restores the sere;
So this resembles not the rose,
And knows no other year.
"So, welcome, when thy bloom is red,
The glory of thy light;
And welcome when thy bloom is shed,
The long sleep of my night."
And now the song is ended, and, listening, nature seems to sigh; and looking toward the old château, the front next you is in shadow, the window is open, and within you see two ladies. The elder is standing by the girl, who sits still at the open window, looking up into the face of her old friend—the old friend who has known, in the early days of romance, what love is, for whom now "the bloom is shed, and mingling with the mould," but who remembers sadly the blush and glory of its light that died five-and-thirty years ago upon Canadian snows.