ed the solemn toil-and-care-worn countenances of the old with a
profounder emotion than had ever touched our hearts in the hour of our
more thoughtless joy; and the whole life of those dwellers among the
woods, and the moors, and the mountains, seemed to us far more affecting
now that we saw deeper into it, in the light of a melancholy sprung from
the conviction that the time was close at hand when we should mingle
with it no more. The thoughts that possessed our most secret bosom
failed not by the least observant to be discovered in our open eyes.
They who had liked us before, now loved us; our faults, our follies, the
insolences of our reckless boyhood, were all forgotten; whatever had
been our sins, pride towards the poor was never among the number; we had
shunned not stooping our head beneath the humblest lintel; our mite had
been given to the widow who had lost her own; quarrelsome with the young
we might sometimes have been, for boyhood is soon heated, and boils
before a defying eye; but in one thing at least we were Spartans, we
revered the head of old age.

And many at last were the kind--some the sad farewells, ere long
whispered by us at gloaming among the glens. Let them rest for ever
silent amidst that music in the memory which is felt, not heard--its
blessing mute though breathing, like an inarticulate prayer! But to
Thee--O palest Phantom--clothed in white raiment, not like unto a ghost
risen with its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph descending from
the skies to bless--unto Thee will we dare to speak, as through the mist
of years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, charming us, while we cannot
choose but weep, with the self-same vision that often glided before us
long ago in the wilderness, and at the sound of our voice would pause
for a little while, and then pass by, like a white bird from the sea,
floating unscared close by the shepherd's head, or alighting to trim its
plumes on a knoll far up an inland glen! Death seems not to have touched
that face, pale though it be--lifelike is the waving of those gentle
hands--and the soft, sweet, low music which now we hear, steals not sure
from lips hushed by the burial mould! Restored by the power of love, she
stands before us as she stood of yore. Not one of all the hairs of her
golden head was singed by the lightning that shivered the tree under
which the child had run for shelter from the flashing sky. But in a
moment the blue light in her dewy eyes wa