Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/203

Rh the full beauty of summer; the fruit-garden, where every tree and walk had a remembrance—those iron links of affection. The wind was high, and at every step a shower of fragrant and coloured leaves fell over her like rain: her fancy asked of her feelings, Do they weep to bid me farewell? Nothing exaggerates self-importance like solitude; and, perhaps because we have it not, then more than ever do we feel the want of sympathy: hopes, thoughts, these link themselves with external objects; and it is the expression of that haunting desire of association, those vine-like emotions of the human heart which fasten on whatever is near, that give an interest like truth to the poet's fiction, who says that the mournful waters and the drooping trees murmur with his murmurs, and sorrow with his sorrows. It was now the shadowy softness of twilight—that one English hour whose indistinct beauty has a vague charm which may compensate for all the sunshine that ever made glorious the vale of Damascus; and as she emerged from the yew-tree walk, the waving wind and the dim light gave the figures cut in their branches almost the appearance of reality, and their