Nay, not alone in them, but also in memory.  The fair vision will not fade from us, though the paddle has dipped its last crystal drop from the waves, and the boat is drawn upon the shore.  We may yet visit many lovely and lonely places,—­meadows thick with violet, or the homes of the shy Rhodora, or those sloping forest-haunts where the slight Linnaea hangs its twin-born heads,—­but no scene will linger on our vision like this annual Feast of the Lilies.  On scorching mountains, amid raw prairie-winds, or upon the regal ocean, the white pageant shall come back to us again, with all the luxury of summer heats, and all the fragrant coolness that can relieve them.  We shall fancy ourselves again among these fleets of anchored lilies,—­again, like Urvasi, sporting amid the Lake of Lotuses.

For that which is remembered is often more vivid than that which is seen.  The eye paints better in the presence, the heart in the absence, of the object most dear.  “He who longs after beautiful Nature can best describe her,” said Bettine; “he who is in the midst of her loveliness can only lie down and enjoy.”  It enhances the truth of the poet’s verses, that he writes them in his study.  Absence is the very air of passion, and all the best description is in memoriam.  As with our human beloved, when the graceful presence is with us, we cannot analyze or describe, but merely possess, and only after its departure can it be portrayed by our yearning desires; so is it with Nature:  only in losing her do we gain the power to describe her, and we are introduced to Art, as we are to Eternity, by the dropping away of our companions.

FIFTY AND FIFTEEN.

  With gradual gleam the day was dawning,
    Some lingering stars were seen,
  When swung the garden-gate behind us,—­
    He fifty, I fifteen.

  The high-topped chaise and old gray pony
    Stood waiting in the lane: 
  Idly my father swayed the whip-lash,
    Lightly he held the rein.

  The stars went softly back to heaven,
    The night-fogs rolled away,
  And rims of gold and crowns of crimson
    Along the hill-tops lay.

  That morn, the fields, they surely never
    So fair an aspect wore;
  And never from the purple clover
    Such perfume rose before.

  O’er hills and low romantic valleys
    And flowery by-roads through,
  I sang my simplest songs, familiar,
    That he might sing them too.

  Our souls lay open to all pleasure,—­
    No shadow came between;
  Two children, busy with their leisure,—­
    He fifty, I fifteen.

* * * * *

  As on my couch in languor, lonely,
    I weave beguiling rhyme,
  Comes back with strangely sweet remembrance
    That far-removed time.

  The slow-paced years have brought sad changes,
    That morn and this between;
  And now, on earth, my years are fifty,
    And his, in heaven, fifteen.