THE MAGIC SPELL

  The magic spell, the dream is fled,
    The dream of joy sent from above;
  The idol of my soul is dead,
    And naught remains but hopeless love. 
  The song of birds, the scent of flowers,
    The tender light of parting day—­
  Unheeded now the tardy hours
    Steal sadly, silently away.

  But welcome now the solemn night,
    When watchful stars are gleaming high,
  For though thy form eludes my sight,
    I know thy gentle spirit’s nigh. 
  O! dear one, now I feel thy power,
    ’Tis sweet to rest when toil is o’er,
  But sweeter far that blessed hour
    When fond hearts meet to part no more.

J.W.D.M.

CHAPTER XXVII

ADIEU TO THE WOODS

Adieu!—­adieu!—­when quivering lips refuse
The bitter pangs of parting to declare;
And the full bosom feels that it must lose
Friends who were wont its inmost thoughts to share;
When hands are tightly clasp’d, ’mid struggling sighs
And streaming tears, those whisper’d accents rise,
Leaving to God the objects of our care
In that short, simple, comprehensive prayer—­
adieu!

Never did eager British children look for the first violets and primroses of spring with more impatience than my baby boys and girls watched, day after day, for the first snow-flakes that were to form the road to convey them to their absent father.

“Winter never means to come this year.  It will never snow again?” exclaimed my eldest boy, turning from the window on Christmas Day, with the most rueful aspect that ever greeted the broad, gay beams of the glorious sun.  It was like a spring day.  The little lake in front of the window glittered like a mirror of silver, set in its dark frame of pine woods.

I, too, was wearying for the snow, and was tempted to think that it did not come as early as usual, in order to disappoint us.  But I kept this to myself, and comforted the expecting child with the oft-repeated assertion that it would certainly snow upon the morrow.

But the morrow came and passed away, and many other morrows, and the same mild, open weather prevailed.  The last night of the old year was ushered in with furious storms of wind and snow; the rafters of our log cabin shook beneath the violence of the gale, which swept up from the lake like a lion roaring for its prey, driving the snow-flakes through every open crevice, of which there were not a few, and powdering the floor until it rivalled in whiteness the ground without.

“Oh, what a dreadful night!” we cried, as we huddled, shivering, around the old broken stove.  “A person abroad in the woods to-night would be frozen.  Flesh and blood could not long stand this cutting wind.”

“It reminds me of the commencement of a laughable extempore ditty,” said I to my young friend, A. C—–­, who was staying with me, “composed by my husband, during the first very cold night we spent in Canada”—­