Unto dim, half-conscious deeps,

Transports me, lulled and dreaming, on its twilight tides divine.

Those dreams! ah me! the splendor,

So mystical and tender,

Wherewith like soft heat-lightnings they gird their meaning round,

And those waters calling, calling,

With a nameless charm, enthralling,

5

Like the ghost of music melting on a rainbow spray of 10 sound.

Alas! dim, dim, and dimmer

Grows the preternatural glimmer

Of that trance the South Wind brought me on her subtle

wings of balm;

For behold! its spirit flieth,

And its fairy murmur dieth,

And the silence closing round me is a dull and soulless

calm.

subtle not easily perceived. -gird: wrap or encircle. preternatural :

uncommon.

15

THE SNOW IMAGE-I

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, one of the most distinguished of American writers, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on the 4th of July, 1804, and died in. Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1864. His early life was a lonely one, and his books, though full of delicate imagery, often have a strangely 5 melancholy tone. The following lesson is abridged from one of his fanciful tales.

One afternoon of a cold winter's day, when the sun shone forth with chilly brightness after a long storm, two children asked leave of their mother to run out and 10 play in the new-fallen snow. The elder child was a little girl, whom her parents used to call Violet. Her brother was known by the name of Peony, on account of the ruddiness of his broad and round little phiz, which made everybody think of sunshine and great scarlet flowers. 15 The father of these two children, a certain Mr. Lindsey, it is important to say, was an excellent man, a dealer in hardware, and was sturdily accustomed to take what is called the common-sense view of all matters that came under his consideration. The mother's character, on the 20 other hand, had a strain of poetry in it that had survived out of her imaginative youth.

The children dwelt in a city, and had no wider playplace than a little garden before the house, divided by a white fence from the street, and with a pear tree and two

or three plum trees overshadowing it, and some rosebushes just in front of the parlor windows. The trees and shrubs, however, were now leafless, and their twigs were enveloped in the light snow.

"Yes, Violet, -yes, my little Peony," said their kind 5 mother, "you may go out and play in the new snow."

Accordingly the good lady bundled up her darlings in woolen jackets and wadded sacks, and put comforters round their necks, and a pair of striped gaiters on each little pair of legs, and worsted mittens on their hands, and 10 gave them a kiss apiece by way of a spell to keep away Jack Frost. Forth sallied the two children with a hop, skip, and jump that carried them at once into the very heart of a huge snowdrift, whence Violet emerged like a snow bunting, while little Peony floundered out with his 15 round face in full bloom. Then what a merry time had they! To look at them frolicking in the wintry garden, you would have thought that the dark and pitiless storm had been sent for no other purpose than to provide a new plaything for them.

At last, when they had frosted one another all over with handfuls of snow, Violet was struck with a new idea.

20

"You look exactly like a snow image, Peony," said she, "if your cheeks were not so red. Let us make an image out of snow, an image of a little girl, and it shall be 25 our sister, and shall run about and play with us all winter long. Won't it be nice?"

Oh, yes!" cried Peony, as plainly as he could speak, for he was but a little boy; "that will be nice! And mamma shall see it!"

"Yes," answered Violet, "mamma shall see the new 5 little girl. But she must not make her come into the warm parlor, for you know our little snow sister will not love. the warmth."

And forthwith the children began this great business of making a snow image that should run about; while their 10 mother, who was sitting at the window and overheard some of their talk, could not help smiling at the gravity with which they set about it. They really seemed to imagine that there would be no difficulty whatever in creating a live little girl out of the snow.

15

Violet assumed the chief direction and told Peony what to do, while with her own delicate fingers she shaped out all the nicer parts of the snow figure. It seemed, in fact, not so much to be made by the children as to grow up under their hands while they were playing and prattling 20 about it. Their mother was quite surprised at this, and the longer she looked the more surprised she grew.

25

66

"O Violet," said Peony, in his bluff tone, but a very sweet tone, too, as he came floundering through the half-trodden drifts, "how beau-ti-ful she begins to look!"

"Yes," said Violet, thoughtfully and quietly, "our snow sister does look very lovely. I did not quite know, Peony, that we could make such a sweet little girl as this."

The mother, as she listened, thought how fit and delightful an incident it would be if fairies, or, still better, if angel children were to come from paradise and play invisibly with her own darlings, and help them to make their snow image, giving it the features of celestial babyhood! 5 "My little girl and boy deserve such playmates, if mortal children ever did," said the mother to herself; and then she smiled again at her own motherly pride.

Now, for a few moments, there was a busy and earnest but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet 10 and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit, while Peony acted rather as a laborer, and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently had a proper understanding of the matter, too.

-

15

"Peony, Peony!" cried Violet, for her brother was again at the other side of the garden, — “bring me those light wreaths of snow that have rested on the lower branches of the pear tree. You can clamber on the snowdrift, Peony, and reach them easily. I must have them to 20 make some ringlets for our snow sister's head."

"Here they are, Violet," answered the little boy. "Take care you do not break them. Well done! well done! how pretty!"

"Is she not lovely?" said Violet, in a satisfied tone. 25 “And now we must have some little shining bits of ice to make the brightness of her eyes. She is not finished yet.