ng so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest
thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? Fragment of
music too stern, heard once and heard no more, what aileth thee that thy
deep rolling chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep,
and after thirty years have lost no element of horror?

[Footnote 1: "_Averted signs_."--I read the course and changes of the
lady's agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures; but let it be
remembered that I read all this from the rear, never once catching the
lady's full face, and even her profile imperfectly.]

1.

Lo, it is summer, almighty summer! The everlasting gates of life and summer
are thrown open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savanna,
the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are floating: she
upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker. But both of
us are wooing gales of festal happiness within the domain of our common
country--within that ancient watery park--within that pathless chase where
England takes her pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, and
which stretches from the rising to the setting sun. Ah! what a wilderness
of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon the tropic
islands, through which the pinnace moved. And upon her deck what a bevy
of human flowers--young women how lovely, young men how noble, that were
dancing together, and slowly drifting towards _us_ amidst music and
incense, amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages,
amidst natural caroling and the echoes of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly
the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and slowly she disappears beneath
the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, as at some signal from heaven, the
music and the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter--all are
hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting or overtaken her? Did
ruin to our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? Was our shadow
the shadow of death? I looked over the bow for an answer; and, behold! the
pinnace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers were found no more; the
glory of the vintage was dust; and the forest was left without a witness to
its beauty upon the seas. "But where," and I turned to our own crew--"Where
are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning of flowers and
clustering corymbi? Whither have fled the noble young men that danced with
_them_