ng? You do not think me wrong? I did it for
the best. Indeed I meant it so.

She flits before me now: The peach-bloom of her gauzy crepe, The plaited
tails of hair, The ribbons floating from the summer hat, The grieving
face, dropp'd head absorbed with care. O, dainty little form! I see it
move, receding slow along the path, By hovering butterflies besieged;
I see it reach The breezy top clear-cut against the sky,... Then pass
beyond and sink from sight-forever!

Within, was light and cheer; without, A blustering winter's right. There
was a play; It was her own; for she had wrought it out Unhelped, from
her own head-and she But turned sixteen! A pretty play, All graced
with cunning fantasies, And happy songs, and peopled all with fays, And
sylvan gods and goddesses, And shepherds, too, that piped and danced,
And wore the guileless hours away In care-free romps and games.

Her girlhood mates played in the piece, And she as well: a goddess,
she,--And looked it, as it seemed to me.

'Twas fairyland restored-so beautiful it was And innocent. It made us
cry, we elder ones, To live our lost youth o'er again With these its
happy heirs.

Slowly, at last, the curtain fell. Before us, there, she stood, all
wreathed and draped In roses pearled with dew-so sweet, so glad, So
radiant!--and flung us kisses through the storm Of praise that crowned
her triumph.... O, Across the mists of time I see her yet, My Goddess of
the Flowers!

... The curtain hid her.... Do you comprehend? Till time shall end! Out
of my life she vanished while I looked!

... Ten years are flown. O, I have watched so long, So long. But she
will come no more. No, she will come no more.

It seems so strange... so strange... Struck down unwarned! In the
unbought grace, of youth laid low--In the glory of her fresh young bloom
laid low--In the morning of her life cut down! And I not by! Not by When
the shadows fell, the night of death closed down The sun that lit my
life went out. Not by to answer When the latest whisper passed the lips
That were so dear to me--my name! Far from my post! the world's whole
breadth away. O, sinking in the waves of death she cried to me For
mother-help, and got for answer Silence!

We that are old--we comprehend; even we That are not mad: whose grown-up
scions still abide; Their tale complete: Their earlier selves we glimpse
at intervals Far in the dimming past; We see the little forms as once
they were, And whilst we ache to