405

Frankly they owned the charge: "And pardon us;
We did it all in love; we could not bear
That the cold world of waters and the strange
Beings that dwell within it should beguile
Our sister from us." Then they told her all;
How they had seen her stealthily bestow
The slippers in the cleft, and how by stealth
They took them thence and bore them down the brook,
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
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?
Ye cannot know what ye have done." She spake,
And hurried to her chamber, and the guests
Who yet had lingered silently withdrew.

The brothers followed to the maiden's bower,
But with a calm demeanor, as they came,

411

415

420

She met them at the door. "The wrong is great," 425 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
In the calm region of the middle sea.

430

Then her tears

Go, then. I need you not." They, overawed,
Withdrew from that grave presence.
Broke forth a flood, as when the August cloud,
Darkening beside the mountain, suddenly
Melts into streams of rain. That weary night
She paced her chamber, murmuring as she walked,

435

"O peaceful region of the middle sea!
O azure bowers and grots, in which I loved
To roam and rest! Am I to long for you,
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
Looking the tenderest love, and voices soft
As ripple of light waves along the shore,
Uttering the tenderest words! Oh! ne'er again
Shall I, in your mild aspects, read the peace
That dwells within, and vainly shall I pine
To hear your sweet low voices. Haply now
Ye miss me in your deep-sea home, and think
Of me with pity, as of one condemned

To haunt this upper world, with its harsh sounds
And glaring lights, its withering heats, its frosts,
Cruel and killing, its delirious strifes,

And all its feverish passions, till I die.”

440

445

450

455

460

So mourned she the long night, and when the morn Brightened the mountains, from her lattice looked The maiden on a world that was to her A desolate and dreary waste. That day She passed in wandering by the brook that oft Had been her pathway to the sea, and still Seemed, with its cheerful murmur, to invite Her footsteps thither. "Well may'st thou rejoice, 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 And prayed, with many tears, to Him whose hand

465

470

Touches the wounded heart and it is healed.

With prayer there came new thoughts and new de

sires.

She asked for patience and a deeper love

For those with whom her lot was henceforth cast,

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
Henceforth were given to quiet tasks of good
In the great world. Men hearkened to her words,
And wondered at their wisdom and obeyed,
And saw how beautiful the law of love
Can make the cares and toils of daily life.

475

480

486

490

Still did she love to haunt the springs and brooks, As in her cheerful childhood, and she taught The skill to pierce the soil and meet the veins Of clear cold water winding underneath, And call them forth to daylight. From afar She bade men bring the rivers on long rows Of pillared arches to the sultry town, And on the hot air of the summer fling The spray of dashing fountains. To relieve Their weary hands, she showed them how to tame 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, Were gathered at her bidding into pools,

494

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.

And in the months of drought led forth again,
In glimmering rivulets, to refresh the vales,
Till the sky darkened with returning showers.

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505

So passed her life, a long and blameless life,
And far and near her name was named with love
And reverence. Still she kept, as age came on,
Her stately presence; still her eyes looked forth
From under their calm brows as brightly clear
As the transparent wells by which she sat
So oft in childhood. Still she kept her fair
Unwrinkled features, though her locks were white. 510
A hundred times had summer, since her birth,
Opened the water lily on the lakes,
So old traditions tell, before she died.

A hundred cities mourned her, and her death
Saddened the pastoral valleys. By the brook,
That bickering ran beside the cottage door
Where she was born, they reared her monument.
Ere long the current parted and flowed round
The marble base, forming a little isle,

515

And there the flowers that love the running stream, 520 Iris and orchis, and the cardinal flower,

Crowded and hung caressingly around

The stone engraved with Sella's honored name.

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 John, 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

Two children in her mill, or will you have

The tale of Goody Cutpurse?

Alice.

Nay now, nay;

Those stories are too childish, Uncle John,
Too childish even for little Willy here,
And I am older, two good years, than he;
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,
And good Aunt Mary, busy as she is,

Lays down her knitting.

Uncle John.

Listen to me,

then.

"T was in the olden time, long, long ago, And long before the great oak at our door

5

10

15

6. Goody Cut-purse, or Moll Cut-purse, was a famous highway woman of Shakspere's time who robbed people as audaciously as did Jack Sheppard.