Page:Francesca Carrara 2.pdf/226

Rh Made up of illusions, as our existence is, alas for the time when we come to know those illusions beforehand!

Lucy's cheek was pale with the sickness of hope long deferred; and her imagination, wearied with exertion, sometimes sunk down, languid in its utter solitude. Still she hoped and trusted, and, in so doing, was far happier than she deemed. Gentle fancies waited around her, the poetry of her youth was over all the associations of her attachment—the days to come rose beautiful before her, for they were of her own creation; and absence was sweetened by expectation.

In all things there is one period more lovely than aught that has gone before—than aught that can ever come again. That delicate green, touched with faint primrose, of the young leaves, when the boughs are putting forth the promise of a shadowy summer—the tender crimson of the opening bud, whose fragrant depths are unconscious of the sun,—these are the fittest emblems for that transitory epoch in the history of a girl's heart, when her love, felt for the first time, is as simple, as guileless, as unworldly as herself. It is the purest, the most ideal poetry in nature. It does not, and it cannot last. It is only too likely that the innocent and trusting heart will be ground