“A king lived long ago,
In the morning of the world,”
who had two children, Despard and Goldilocks. They were twin brother and sister, but no more alike than a queen-lily and a nightshade, a raven and a dove.
Goldilocks was a bright young damsel, with hair like fine threads of gold, and a face so radiant that people questioned if the blood in her veins might not be liquid sunshine. Her eyes were as soft as violets; and her laugh was like the music of a spring robin.
Despard, on the other hand, was as melancholy as an owl. His raven hair cast gloomy shadows, and his mournful eyes pierced you with a sudden sorrow. He was too low-spirited to chase butterflies, weave daisy-chains, and dance with Goldilocks among the flowers. He liked better to play at a mimic funeral, and deck himself as chief mourner, in a friar’s robe with sable plumes. He could never understand why laughing Goldilocks should object to making believe die, and be buried in the large jewel-coffer, which stood for a tomb.
He always said that, if he lived to be a man, he should grow all the more wretched, and creep over the earth like a great black cloud. When Despard spoke so hopelessly, Goldilocks paused in her song or her play, and stealthily brushed a rare tear from her eye. She was afraid her brother’s words might prove true.
These children lived in what is called the Golden Age, when the rivers flowed with milk and wine, and yellow honey dripped from oak-trees. Their childhood would probably have lasted forever; but the Silver Age came on, and every thing was changed. Then, it was sometimes too warm, and sometimes too cold. People began to live in caves, and weave houses of twigs. The king, their father, died, and went, so it was said, to the “Isles of the Blessed.”
The children were shipwrecked upon a foreign shore, all because of a sudden swell of the ocean. Here they were desolate and homesick. The strange people among whom they had fallen did not know they were the children of a king. No one was left to care for them but their old nurse, named Sibyl.
This aged woman was growing lame, and her hair was gray; yet she loved the twins, and would spin all the day long, to buy black bread for them, and now and then a little choice fruit.
“Alas,” she sighed, “alas, for the Golden Age, when the forests had never been robbed, when oxen were not called to draw the plough, and the beautiful earth laughed, and tossed up fruit and flowers without waiting to be asked!”
The frocks that Sibyl made for Goldilocks were coarse; but on fair spring days she took from the chest a delicate, rosy robe, embroidered with gold, and smiled to see how it adorned the child.