Page:The Gift, a Christmas and New Year's Present for 1842.djvu/170

160 all things. The star-shaped flowers shrank into the stems of the trees, and appeared no more. The tints of the green carpet faded, and one by one the ruby-red asphodels withered away, and there sprang up in place of them, ten by ten, dark eye-like violets that quivered uneasily. And life departed from our paths; for the tall flamingo flaunted no longer his scarlet plumage before us, but flew sadly from the vale into the hills, with all the gay, glowing birds that had arrived in his company. And the golden and silver fish swam down through the gorge at the lower end of our domain, and bedecked the sweet river never again. And the lulling melody that had been softer than the wind-harp of Æolus, and more divine than all save the voice of Eleonora—it died, little by little, away, in murmurs growing lower and lower, until the stream returned at length utterly into the solemnity of its original silence. And then, lastly, the voluminous cloud uprose, and abandoning the tops of the mountains to the dimness of old, fell back into the regions of Hesper, and took away all its manifold golden and gorgeous glories from the Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass.

Yet the promises of Eleonora were not forgotten; for I heard the sounds of the swinging of the censers of the angels; and streams of a holy perfume floated ever and ever about the valley; and at lone hours, when my heart beat heavily, the winds that bathed my brow came unto me laden with soft sighs; and indistinct murmurs filled often the night air; and once—oh, but once only—I was awakened from a slumber like unto the slumber of death, by the pressing of spiritual lips upon mine own.

But the void within my heart refused even thus to be filled. I longed—I madly pined for the love which had before filled it to overflowing. At length the valley pained me through its memories of Eleonora, and I left it