Hearts danced or hearts drooped in this vicinity.
Eyes that brimmed over with laughter or that were
veiled with tears looked' on these things as we look
on them now — drank in the shifting lights and
shadows on the grass — watched the waving of the
cedar's dark layers of shade against an angry sky,
"stern as the unlashed eye of God," and all the
birds were silent — once took in the sylvan vistas
of trees, lawn, fir-ridge, the broad-water where the
coots and moor-hens now play (as then) among the
green lily-pads and floating weeds, regardless of
Regulas in lead standing in their midst ; once dwelt
upon the lustrous flower-beds, on the sun-dial on
the terrace — noonday rendezvous of fantails — on the
" Alley of Sighs," with its clipped beeches, its grey-
stone seat half-way down, its rustle of dying leaves,
and traditions of intrigue; on the lime avenue full
of perfume in the sweet-o'-the-year, on the foot-
bridge across the moat, on the streak of blue autumn
mist that tracks the stream in yonder meadows
where the landrail is croaking, and that brings
magically near the beat of hoofs, the jingle of horses'
bells, the rumble of homeward wagons on the road,
and whiffs of the reapers' songs ; on the brief bril-
liance of the garden-panorama as the wintry-moon
gives the black clouds the slip and suddenly discloses
a white world of snow-muffled forms, that gleams
with the eerie pallor of a ghost, and is as suddenly
dissolved into darkness.
24 GARDEN-CRAFT.
