And dropped them in, and how the eager waves Gathered and drew them down: but at that word The maiden shrieked a broken-hearted shriek And all who heard it shuddered and turned pale 415 At the despairing cry, and "They are gone,' She said, " gone— gone forever. Cruel ones! 'Tis you who shut me out eternally From that serener world which I had learned To love so well. Why took ye not my life? 420 Ye cannot know what ye have done." She spake The brothers followed to the maiden's bower, 425 She met them at the door. "The wrong is great," She said, "that ye have done me, but no power Have ye to make it less,, nor yet to soothe My sorrow; I shall bear it as I may, The better for the hours that I have passed 430 In the calm region of the middle sea. Go, then. I need you not." They, overawed, tears Broke forth a flood, as when the August cloud, 435 Melts into streams of rain. That weary night O azure bowers and grots, in which I loved To roam and rest! Am I to long for you, 440 And think how strangely beautiful ye are, Yet never see you more? And dearer yet, Ye gentle ones in whose sweet company I trod the shelly pavements of the deep, And swam its currents, creatures with calm eyes 445 Looking the tenderest love, and voices soft To haunt this upper world, with its harsh sounds And glaring lights, its withering heats, its frosts, 455 Cruel and killing, its delirious strifes, And all its feverish passions, till I die." So mourned she the long night, and when the morn Brightened the mountains, from her lattice looked 460 A desolate and dreary waste. That day She passed in wandering by the brook that oft Seemed, with its cheerful murmur, to invite Her footsteps thither. "Well may'st thou rejoice, 465 Fortunate stream!" she said, "and dance along Thy bed, and make thy course one ceaseless strain Of music, for thou journeyest toward the deep, To which I shall return no more.' The night Brought her to her lone chamber, and she knelt 470 And prayed, with many tears, to Him whose hand Touches the wounded heart and it is healed. With prayer there came new thoughts and new desires. She asked for patience and a deeper love For those with whom her lot was henceforth cast, 475 And that in acts of mercy she might lose The sense of her own sorrow.. When she rose A weight was lifted from her heart. She sought Her couch, and slept a long and peaceful sleep. At morn she woke to a new life. Her days 480 Henceforth were given to quiet tasks of good In the great world. Men hearkened to her words, And wondered at their wisdom and obeyed, 485 And saw how beautiful the law of love Can make the cares and toils of daily life. Still did she love to haunt the springs and brooks, As in her cheerful childhood, and she taught The spray of dashing fountains. To relieve Their weary hands, she showed them how to tame 495 The rushing stream, and make him drive the wheel That whirls the humming millstone and that wields The ponderous sledge. The waters of the cloud, That drench the hillside in the time of rains, So passed her life, a long and blameless life, 479. In the new life to which Sella awakes, one notes that it is the old world in which she had lived endowed now with those gifts which her ripened soul brought from the ideal world in which she had hoped to lose herself. 505 And reverence. Still she kept, as age came on, So old traditions tell, before she died. A hundred cities mourned her, and her death 515 Saddened the pastoral valleys. By the brook, That bickering ran beside the cottage door Where she was born, they reared her monument. 520 And there the flowers that love the running stream Iris and orchis, and the cardinal flower, Crowded and hung caressingly around The stone engraved with Sella's honored name. II. THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE SNOW. [IN this tender fancy Bryant has treated the personality of the snow with a kinder, more sympathetic touch than poets have been wont to give it. With many the cruelty of cold or its treacherous nature is most significant. Hans Christian Andersen, for example, in the story of The Ice Maiden has taken a similar theme, but has emphasized the seductive treachery of the Spirit of Cold. Here Bryant has given the true fairy, innocent of evil purpose, yet inflicting grievous wrong through its nature; sorrowing over the dead Eva, but without the remorse of human beings. The time of the story is placed in legendary antiquity by the exclusion of historic times in lines 35-41, and the antiquity is still more positively affirmed by the lines at the close accounting for our not now seeing the Little People of the Snow. The children had asked for a fairy tale, and it is made more real by being placed at so ethereal a distance.] Alice. One of your old world stories, Uncle Such as you tell us by the winter fire, Till we all wonder it has grown so late. Uncle John. The story of the witch that ground to death 5 Two children in her mill, or will you have The tale of Goody Cutpurse? Those stories are too childish, Uncle John, Too childish even for little Willy here, And I am older, two good years, than he; Io No, let us have a tale of elves that ride By night with jingling reins, or gnomes of the mine, Or water-fairies, such as you know how To spin, till Willy's eyes forget to wink, 6. Goody Cut-purse, or Moll Cut-purse, was a famous highway woman of Shakspere's time who robbed people as auda. riously as did Jack Sheppard. |