'My soul doth melt
For the unhappy youth;'
'He surely cannot now
Thirst for another love;'

and luxuriate in a genial sense of godship where the tremulous pencil
had left the record of a sigh against--

'Each tender maiden whom he once thought fair.'

But it was a magnanimous godship; and, after a moment's leaning back
with closed eyes, to draw in all the sweet incense, how nobly would he
act, in imaginative vignette, the King Cophetua to this poor suppliant
of love; with what a generous waiving of his power--and with what a
grace!--did he see himself raising her from her knees, and seating her
at his right hand. Yet those pencil-marks, alas! mark but a secondary
interest in that volume. A little sketch on the fly-leaf, 'by another
hand,' witness the prettier memory. A sacred valley, guarded by smooth,
green hills; in the midst a little lake, fed at one end by a singing
stream, swallowed at the other by the roaring darkness of a mill; green
rushes prosperous in the shallows, and along the other bank an old
hedgerow; a little island in the midst, circled by silver lilies; and in
the distance, rising from out a cloud of tangled green, above the little
river, an old church tower. Below, though not 'in the picture,' a quaint
country house, surrounded by a garden of fair fruit-trees and wonderful
bowers, through which ran the stream, free once again, and singing for
joy of the light. In the great lone house a solitary old man, cherished
and ruled by--'The Miller's Daughter.' Was scene ever more in need of a
fairy prince? Narcissus sighed, as he broke upon it one rosy evening,
to think what little meaning all its beauty had, suffering that lack;