Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/341

 the least shadow of grief. She looks around so carelessly, so naïvely, that we cannot believe that she yet lives a life different from that which we call animal life.

How differently she would look about if she understood more than a mere child does! How she would enjoy the view into free space, where bluish mountains, surrounding a delightful valley, rise to heaven! How pleased she would be to look where the wooded hills lower gradually like terraces, forming a wonderful amphitheatre, easily to be surveyed from the place where the child stands. How eagerly would she gaze at those far-off hills crossed by a zigzag highway, that now disappears in the woods and again may be seen looking like a white or yellow thread or glittering like melting gold in the glowing rays of the sun! And what strange sentiments would fill her heart when she turned to that small field in her immediate neighborhood, enclosed by a low, dilapidated wall, here and there bearing a shrub or a tree,—a country churchyard, with half-sunken graves, most of them without a cross or other memorial sign; a lone country churchyard in a forsaken mountain region seldom visited even by a chance wanderer.

What does this poor child, who has scarcely seen its nearest surroundings, know of the world, of its joys and griefs, its enjoyments and sufferings, its efforts, labors, and struggles? What does this awkward worm in a soiled little dress know of men,—those noble creatures said to have been created in God’s own image, and of all their excitements and passions? Why, this little girl does not even know that the nearest mountain village—a few miserable huts with inhabitants as poor, nay, poorer than those huts themselves—lies under the nearest wooded hill, an hour’s journey away from the churchyard; she has not the slightest idea that the first church may not be seen until half an hour’s journey beyond the village; she has never dreamed of what the difference is between a charming park, designed for pleasure, and that mysterious place where human hearts are quietly decaying; she does not even know that she is sitting by a churchyard wall, under a bush of lilacs, amid grass that has grown up out of a forgotten grave!

Suddenly a breeze springs up, swings the top of the lilac bush,