“I will be good, but don't forget the story, Auntie, when you come back. Are there any nymphs here?”
“Perhaps there may be. I think there is one who resembles them very much,” and she kissed his young, happy face, turned so eagerly up to her own. Leaving him to amuse himself as best he might, Dawn approached Edith and seated herself beside a bed of deep green moss, and watched, with intense interest, the growing picture for a long time; then her mind became abstracted and cloudy. She was no longer in the green woods, amid the fern and wild flowers, but away, far away on life's great highway, where the dust, rising at every step, blinded her eyes.
Thus semi-entranced, Dawn sat unconscious of the presence of her friend, and everything earthly around her, until the spell was broken, and her attention was attracted by a sheet of note paper, which fluttered at her feet. Almost involuntarily she picked it up, and her gaze was fastened upon the writing with which it was covered.
“'Tis love which mostly destinates our life.
What makes the world in after life I know not,
For our horizon alters as we age;
Power only can make up for the lack of love—
Power of some sort. The mind at one time grows
So fast, it fails; and then its stretch is more
Than its strength; but, as it opes, love fills it up,
Like to the stamen in the flower of life,
Till for the time we well-nigh grow all love;
And soon we feel the want of one kind heart
To love what's well, and to forgive what's ill
In us—”
Then followed these lines, written with a trembling hand, some of the words being almost illegible:
“I cannot love as I have loved,
And yet I know not why;
It is the one great woe of life,
To feel all feeling die;
And one by one the heart-strings snap,
As age comes on so chill;
And hope seems left, that hope may cease,
And all will soon be still.
And the strong passions, like to storms,
Soon rage themselves to rest,
Or leave a desolated calm—
A worn and wasted breast;
A heart that like the Geyser spring,
Amidst its bosomed snows,
May shrink, not rest, but with its blood
Boils even in repose.
And yet the things one might have loved
Remain as they have been,—
Youth ever lovely, and one heart
Still sacred and serene;
But lower, less, and grosser things
Eclipse the world-like mind,
And leave their cold, dark shadow where
Most to the light inclined.
And then it ends as it began,
The orbit of our race,
In pains and tears, and fears of life,
And the new dwelling place.
From life to death,—from death to life,
We hurry round to God,
And leave behind us nothing but
The path that we have trod.”
She knew whose hand had copied these words, and how keenly the heart that sensed their meaning was suffering, and yet she could not place her hand upon its beatings and quell its throbs.
“Why! how came this from Ralph's folio? The wind must have taken it out,” said Miss Weston, noticing the paper, while holding the picture for her friend to look at. Dawn did not reply to her inquiry, but gave her words of praise and encouragement, while her thoughts were afar from forest, friends and picture.
“Come, Auntie, it's time for the luncheon, your father says, and we have it almost ready.”
She arose, and with Miss Weston joined the party, thinking how strange it was that those lines should come to her; for something seemed to tell her that they had been accidentally placed in the folio, as they were evidently not intended for any eye but that of the writer.