r exquisite
proportions on bread-and-butter, and would (we must suppose) joyfully
have her scraggy to have her poetical, can hardly object to dewberries.
Indeed the act of eating them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry
is a sister to the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat: mouth, eye,
and hand are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it
was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went up above
her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from
a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to
her with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green
osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude a boat
slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked
the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her
territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes.
Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz,
the weir-fall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild
flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a
terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his
proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and
stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric clouds. Her
posture was so graceful, that though he was making straight for the
weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then one enticing dewberry caught
her eyes. He was floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched
low, and could not gather what it sought. A stroke from his right
brought him beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole
shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat into the
water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she had thrust against
the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save herself, he enabled her to
recover her balance, and gain safe earth, whither he followed her.

CHAPTER XV

He had landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes. The world
lay wrecked behind him: Raynham hung in mists, remote, a phantom to
the vivid reality of this white hand which had drawn him thither away
thousands of leagues in an eye-twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sang overhead!
What splendour in the heavens! What marvels of beauty about his
enchanted brows! And, O you wonder! Fair Flame! by whose light the
glories of being are now first seen....Radiant Miranda! Prince Ferdinand
is