The Pilgrims of the Rhine | Page 7

not mourned a tomb?) But fiction draws a poetry from grief, As
art its healing from the withered leaf. Play thou, sweet Fancy, round the
sombre truth, Crown the sad Genius ere it lower the torch! When death
the altar and the victim youth, Flutes fill the air, and garlands deck the
porch. As down the river drifts the Pilgrim sail, Clothe the rude
hill-tops, lull the Northern gale; With childlike lore the fatal course
beguile, And brighten death with Love's untiring smile. Along the
banks let fairy forms be seen "By fountain clear, or spangled starlike
sheen."* Let sound and shape to which the sense is dull Haunt the soul
opening on the Beautiful. And when at length, the symbol voyage done,
Surviving Grief shrinks lonely from the sun, By tender types show
Grief what memories bloom From lost delight, what fairies guard the

tomb. Scorn not the dream, O world-worn; pause a while, New strength
shall nerve thee as the dreams beguile, Stung by the rest, less far shall
seem the goal! As sleep to life, so fiction to the soul.
* "Midsummer Night's Dream."

THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE

CHAPTER I.
IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO QUEEN
NYMPHALIN.
IN one of those green woods which belong so peculiarly to our island
(for the Continent has its forests, but England its woods) there lived, a
short time ago, a charming little fairy called Nymphalin. I believe she is
descended from a younger branch of the house of Mab; but perhaps that
may only be a genealogical fable, for your fairies are very susceptible
to the pride of ancestry, and it is impossible to deny that they fall
somewhat reluctantly into the liberal opinions so much in vogue at the
present day.
However that may be, it is quite certain that all the courtiers in
Nymphalin's domain (for she was a queen fairy) made a point of
asserting her right to this illustrious descent; and accordingly she
quartered the Mab arms with her own,--three acorns vert, with a
grasshopper rampant. It was as merry a little court as could possibly be
conceived, and on a fine midsummer night it would have been worth
while attending the queen's balls; that is to say, if you could have got a
ticket, a favour not obtained without great interest.
But, unhappily, until both men and fairies adopt Mr. Owen's
proposition, and live in parallelograms, they will always be the victims
of /ennui/. And Nymphalin, who had been disappointed in love, and
was still unmarried, had for the last five or six months been
exceedingly tired even of giving balls. She yawned very frequently, and
consequently yawning became a fashion.

"But why don't we have some new dances, my Pipalee?" said
Nymphalin to her favourite maid of honour; "these waltzes are very
old-fashioned."
"Very old-fashioned," said Pipalee.
The queen gaped, and Pipalee did the same.
It was a gala night; the court was held in a lone and beautiful hollow,
with the wild brake closing round it on every side, so that no human
step could easily gain the spot. Wherever the shadows fell upon the
brake a glow-worm made a point of exhibiting itself, and the bright
August moon sailed slowly above, pleased to look down upon so
charming a scene of merriment; for they wrong the moon who assert
that she has an objection to mirth,--with the mirth of fairies she has all
possible sympathy. Here and there in the thicket the scarce
honeysuckles--in August honeysuckles are somewhat out of
season--hung their rich festoons, and at that moment they were
crowded with the elderly fairies, who had given up dancing and taken
to scandal. Besides the honeysuckle you might see the hawkweed and
the white convolvulus, varying the soft verdure of the thicket; and
mushrooms in abundance had sprung up in the circle, glittering in the
silver moonlight, and acceptable beyond measure to the dancers: every
one knows how agreeable a thing tents are in a /fete champetre/! I was
mistaken in saying that the brake closed the circle entirely round; for
there was one gap, scarcely apparent to mortals, through which a fairy
at least might catch a view of a brook that was close at hand, rippling in
the stars, and checkered at intervals by the rich weeds floating on the
surface, interspersed with the delicate arrowhead and the silver
water-lily. Then the trees themselves, in their prodigal variety of
hues,--the blue, the purple, the yellowing tint, the tender and silvery
verdure, and the deep mass of shade frowning into black; the willow,
the elm, the ash, the fir, and the lime, "and, best of all, Old England's
haunted oak;" these hues were broken again into a thousand minor and
subtler shades as the twinkling stars pierced