nd who smiles with a dreamy, thoughtful expression, when his face
comes to her--long ago, flowers were very bright in the bright May
day, by a country brookside. The butter-cups were over all the hills,
for children to put under their chins, and pea-blossoms, very much
like lady-slippers, swayed prettily in the wind. Beneath the feet of
the boy and girl--she was a merry, bright-eyed child! how I love her
still!--broke crocuses and violets, and a thousand wild flowers, fresh
and full of fairy beauty. The grass was green and soft, and the birds
rose through the air on fluttering wings, singing and rejoicing, and
the clouds floated over them as only clouds in May can float, quickly,
hopefully, with a dash of changeful April in them--not like those of
August: for the May cloud is a maiden, a child, full of life and joy,
running and playing, and looking playfully back at the winds as they
rustle on--not August-like--a thoughtful ripened beauty, large, lazy,
and contemplative, whose spring of youth has passed, whose summer has
arrived, in all its wealth, and power, and languid splendor. Well,
they wandered--the boy and girl--on the bright May day, pleasantly
across the hills, and along the brook, which ran merrily over the
pebbles as bright as diamonds. That boy has now become a man, and he
has vainly sought, in all the glittering pursuits of life, an adequate
recompense for the death of those soft hours. Having gone, as all
things must go, they left no equivalent in the future. But not,
therefore, in sadness does he write this: rather in deep joy, and as
though he had said--

'Give me a golden pen, and let me lean
On heaped-up flowers--'

"So wholly flooded is his heart with the memory of that young, frank
face. She wore a pink dress, he recollects--all children should wear
either pink or white--and her hair was in long, bright curls, and her
eyes were diamonds, full of light. He thought the birds were envious
of her singing, when she carolled clearly in the bright May morning.
He wove her a garland of flowers for her hair, and she blushed as
she took it from his hands. She had on a small gold ring, and a red
bracelet; and since that time he has loved red bracelets more than all
barbaric pearls and gold. In those times, the trees were greener than
at present, the birds sang more sweetly, and the streams ran far more
merrily. They thought so at least, as they sat under a large oak, and
he read to her, with shadowy, lovi