“Votaries of the Maypole,” cried the flower-decked priest, “merrily all day long have the woods echoed to your mirth.  But be this your merriest hour, my hearts!  Lo! here stand the Lord and Lady of the May, whom I, a clerk of Oxford and high priest of Merry Mount, am presently to join in holy matrimony.—­Up with your nimble spirits, ye morrice-dancers, green men and glee-maidens, bears and wolves and horned gentlemen!  Come! a chorus now rich with the old mirth of Merry England and the wilder glee of this fresh forest, and then a dance, to show the youthful pair what life is made of and how airily they should go through it!—­All ye that love the Maypole, lend your voices to the nuptial song of the Lord and Lady of the May!”

This wedlock was more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount, where jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual carnival.  The Lord and Lady of the May, though their titles must be laid down at sunset, were really and truly to be partners for the dance of life, beginning the measure that same bright eve.  The wreath of roses that hung from the lowest green bough of the Maypole had been twined for them, and would be thrown over both their heads in symbol of their flowery union.  When the priest had spoken, therefore, a riotous uproar burst from the rout of monstrous figures.

“Begin you the stave, reverend sir,” cried they all, “and never did the woods ring to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole shall send up.”

Immediately a prelude of pipe, cittern and viol, touched with practised minstrelsy, began to play from a neighboring thicket in such a mirthful cadence that the boughs of the Maypole quivered to the sound.  But the May-lord—­he of the gilded staff—­chancing to look into his lady’s eyes, was wonder-struck at the almost pensive glance that met his own.

“Edith, sweet Lady of the May,” whispered he, reproachfully, “is yon wreath of roses a garland to hang above our graves that you look so sad?  Oh, Edith, this is our golden time.  Tarnish it not by any pensive shadow of the mind, for it may be that nothing of futurity will be brighter than the mere remembrance of what is now passing.”

“That was the very thought that saddened me.  How came it in your mind too?” said Edith, in a still lower tone than he; for it was high treason to be sad at Merry Mount.  “Therefore do I sigh amid this festive music.  And besides, dear Edgar, I struggle as with a dream, and fancy that these shapes of our jovial friends are visionary and their mirth unreal, and that we are no true lord and lady of the May.  What is the mystery in my heart?”

Just then, as if a spell had loosened them, down came a little shower of withering rose-leaves from the Maypole.  Alas for the young lovers!  No sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion than they were sensible of something vague and unsubstantial in their former pleasures, and felt a dreary presentiment of inevitable change.  From the moment that they truly loved they had subjected themselves to earth’s doom of care and sorrow and troubled joy, and had no more a home at Merry Mount.  That was Edith’s mystery.  Now leave we the priest to marry them, and the masquers to sport round the Maypole till the last sunbeam be withdrawn from its summit and the shadows of the forest mingle gloomily in the dance.  Meanwhile, we may discover who these gay people were.