Sad and heavy, I was returning to the village.  Between me and the church-spire rose a little hill, and on its summit a group of trees insulated from all the rest of the wood, with their own share of radiance hovering on them from the west and their own solitary shadow falling to the east.  The afternoon being far declined, the sunshine was almost pensive and the shade almost cheerful; glory and gloom were mingled in the placid light, as if the spirits of the Day and Evening had met in friendship under those trees and found themselves akin.  I was admiring the picture when the shape of a young girl emerged from behind the clump of oaks.  My heart knew her:  it was the vision, but so distant and ethereal did she seem, so unmixed with earth, so imbued with the pensive glory of the spot where she was standing, that my spirit sunk within me, sadder than before.  How could I ever reach her?

While I gazed a sudden shower came pattering down upon the leaves.  In a moment the air was full of brightness, each raindrop catching a portion of sunlight as it fell, and the whole gentle shower appearing like a mist, just substantial enough to bear the burden of radiance.  A rainbow vivid as Niagara’s was painted in the air.  Its southern limb came down before the group of trees and enveloped the fair vision as if the hues of heaven were the only garment for her beauty.  When the rainbow vanished, she who had seemed a part of it was no longer there.  Was her existence absorbed in nature’s loveliest phenomenon, and did her pure frame dissolve away in the varied light?  Yet I would not despair of her return, for, robed in the rainbow, she was the emblem of Hope.

Thus did the vision leave me, and many a doleful day succeeded to the parting moment.  By the spring and in the wood and on the hill and through the village, at dewy sunrise, burning noon, and at that magic hour of sunset, when she had vanished from my sight, I sought her, but in vain.  Weeks came and went, months rolled away, and she appeared not in them.  I imparted my mystery to none, but wandered to and fro or sat in solitude like one that had caught a glimpse of heaven and could take no more joy on earth.  I withdrew into an inner world where my thoughts lived and breathed, and the vision in the midst of them.  Without intending it, I became at once the author and hero of a romance, conjuring up rivals, imagining events, the actions of others and my own, and experiencing every change of passion, till jealousy and despair had their end in bliss.  Oh, had I the burning fancy of my early youth with manhood’s colder gift, the power of expression, your hearts, sweet ladies, should flutter at my tale.