Page:Singular adventures of Sir Gawen, and the enchanted castle.pdf/18

18 length almost dark, when the path taking suddenly an oblique direction Sir Gawen found himself on the edge of a circular lawn whose tint and softness were beyond compare and which seemed to have been lightly brushed by fairy feet. A number of fine old trees, around whose boles crept the ivy and the woodbine; rose at irregular distances, here they mingled into groves, and there seperate and emulous of each other, they shook their airy summits in disdain. The water, which had been for some time concealed now murmured through a thousand beds and visiting each little flower, added vigour to its vegetation, and poignancy to its fragrance. Along the edges of the wood and beneath the shadows of the trees, an innumerable host of glow-worms lighted their inocuous fires, lustrous as the gems of Golconda, and Sir Gawen, desirous yet longer to enjoy the scene, went forward with light footsteps on the lawn; all was calm, and except the breeze of night that sighed soft and sweetly through the world of leaves a perfect silence prevailed. Not many minutes however had elapsed, before the same enchanting music, to which he had listened with so much rapture in the vale, again arrested his ear, and presently he discovered on the border of the lawn, just rising above