The last rays of
the sun lighted up the garden overlooked by the casement,--if garden it
could be called,--a spot that had once been most beautiful, when young
and fair hands plucked the noxious weed, and took delight in nursing
into fairest life, flowers, whose loveliness might well have vied with
any; but, long since, those hands had mouldered into dust, and the spot
lay neglected; yet, in spite of neglect, beautiful still. There was no
enclosure to mark it from the fields beyond, that stretched, far as the
eye could discern, till lost in a rich growth of woods, but a few
ornamental trees and graceful shrubs, with here and there a plot, now
gay, with autumn flowers, alone kept alive, in the heart of the
beholder, a remembrance of its purpose. A quiet scene of rural beauty
it was, and so thought the maiden, as, rousing from her reverie, she
gazed on garden, fields, and distant woods, but more lovingly and
lingeringly dwelt her glance on a lake that lay embosomed between the
meadow and the grove, partly skirted by trees that grew even to its
edge, and partly by the rich grass, whose vivid color betrayed the
influence of those placid waters, that now reflected every glowing tint,
and every delicate hue of the peerless sunset sky.
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