But Nature knows no pain, though Arborines appear never more. A balm springs up in every wound. Over the hills, and far away beyond their utmost purple rim, and deep into the dying day the happy love-born one followed her love, happy to exchange her sylvan immortality for the spasm of mortal life,--happy, in her human self-abnegation, to lie close on his heart and whisper close in his ear, though he knew only the loving voice and never the loving lips. Through the world they passed, the Poet and his mystic viol. It gathered to itself the melodies that fluttered over sea and land,--songs of the mountains, and songs of the valleys,--murmurs of love, and the trumpet-tones of war,--bugle-blast of huntsman on the track of the chamois, and mother's lullaby to the baby at her breast. All that earth had of sweetness the nymph drew into her viol-home, and poured it forth anew in strains of more than mortal harmony. The fire and fervor of human hearts, the quiet ripple of inland waters, the anthem of the stormy sea, the voices of the flowers and the birds lent their melody to the song of her who knew them all.
The Poet died. Died, too, sweet Arborine, swooning away in the fierce grasp of this stranger Sorrow, to enter by the black gate of death into the full presence and recognition of him by loving whom she had learned to be.
The viol passed into strange hands and wandered down the centuries, but its olden echoes linger still. Fragrance of Southern woods, coolness of shaded waters, inspiration of mountain-breezes, all the secret forces of Nature that the wood-nymph knew, and the joy, the passion, and the pain that throb only in a woman's heart, lie still, silent under the silent strings, but wakening into life at the touch of a royal hand.
Do you not believe my story? But I have seen the viol and the royal hand!
The poplar drops beside the way Its tasselled plumes of silver-gray; The chestnut pouts its great brown buds, impatient for the laggard May.
The honeysuckles lace the wall; The hyacinths grow fair and tall; And mellow sun and pleasant wind and odorous bees are over all.
Down-looking in this snow-white bud, How distant seems the war's red flood! How far remote the streaming wounds, the sickening scent of human blood!