She will speak, surely she will.
How lightly those soft lashes lie, as if a word would lift
them.--Helen!--I will be calm and patient as a child. This lovely smile
is deepening, it will melt to words again.--Hark! that spring,--that
same curious murmur! We have checked our sweetest words to hear it, we
have stood here listening to it, till we fancied, in its talk-like
tones, wild histories, beautiful and sad, the secrets of the woods.--Oh
God!--and have such memories no power here now? In mine ear alone doth
the spring murmur now. Death! what is't?--Awake! awake,--by the love
that is _stronger_ than death,--awake!--
I thought that scene would shift. It had a heavy, dream-like mistiness.
_This_ is reality again. _These_ are the pine trees that I dreamed of.
See! how beautiful! With the sharp outline and the vivid hue such as our
childhood's unworn sense yields, they are waving now. Look, Andre, there
she sits, the young and radiant stranger,--there, in the golden sunset
she is sitting still, braiding those flowers,--see, how the rich life
flashes in her eye, and yet, just now I dreamed that she was dead,
and--and--Oh my God!
(_A voice without_.
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