which left in me a feeling like this--

"I saw thee ne'er before;
I see thee never more;
But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one,
Have made thee mine, till all my years are done."

I cannot put more of it into words. She closed her arms about me
again, and went on singing. The rain in the leaves, and a light
wind that had arisen, kept her song company. I was wrapt in a
trance of still delight. It told me the secret of the woods, and
the flowers, and the birds. At one time I felt as if I was
wandering in childhood through sunny spring forests, over carpets
of primroses, anemones, and little white starry things--I had
almost said creatures, and finding new wonderful flowers at every
turn. At another, I lay half dreaming in the hot summer noon,
with a book of old tales beside me, beneath a great beech; or, in
autumn, grew sad because I trod on the leaves that had sheltered
me, and received their last blessing in the sweet odours of
decay; or, in a winter evening, frozen still, looked up, as I
went home to a warm fireside, through the netted boughs and twigs
to the cold, snowy moon, with her opal zone around her. At last
I had fallen asleep; for I know nothing more that passed till I
found myself lying under a superb beech-tree, in the clear light
of the morning, just before sunrise. Around me was a girdle of
fresh beech-leaves. Alas! I brought nothing with me out of
Fairy Land, but memories--memories. The great boughs of the
beech hung drooping around me. At my head rose its smooth stem,
with its great sweeps of curving surface that swelled like
undeveloped limbs. The leaves and branches above kept on the