CHAUCER’S translation of the Romaunt of the Rose.

So passed the three days of rain.  After breakfast the following morning, Hugh went to find Harry, according to custom, in the library.  He was reading.

“What are you reading, Harry?” asked he.

“A poem,” said Harry; and, rising as before, he brought the book to Hugh.  It was Mrs. Hemans’s Poems.

“You are fond of poetry, Harry.”

“Yes, very.”

“Whose poems do you like best?”

“Mrs. Hemans’s, of course.  Don’t you think she is the best, sir?”

“She writes very beautiful verses, Harry.  Which poem are you reading now?”

“Oh! one of my favourites—­The Voice of Spring.”

“Who taught you to like Mrs. Hemans?”

“Euphra, of course.”

“Will you read the poem to me?”

Harry began, and read the poem through, with much taste and evident enjoyment; an enjoyment which seemed, however, to spring more from the music of the thought and its embodiment in sound, than from sympathy with the forms of nature called up thereby.  This was shown by his mode of reading, in which the music was everything, and the sense little or nothing.  When he came to the line,

     “And the larch has hung all his tassels forth,”

he smiled so delightedly, that Hugh said: 

“Are you fond of the larch, Harry?”

“Yes, very.”

“Are there any about here?”

“I don’t know.  What is it like?”

“You said you were fond of it.”

“Oh, yes; it is a tree with beautiful tassels, you know.  I think I should like to see one.  Isn’t it a beautiful line?”

“When you have finished the poem, we will go and see if we can find one anywhere in the woods.  We must know where we are in the world, Harry—­what is all round about us, you know.”

“Oh, yes,” said Harry; “let us go and hunt the larch.”

“Perhaps we shall meet Spring, if we look for her—­perhaps hear her voice, too.”

“That would be delightful,” answered Harry, smiling.  And away they went.

I may just mention here that Mrs. Hemans was allowed to retire gradually, till at last she was to be found only in the more inaccessible recesses of the library-shelves; while by that time Harry might be heard, not all over the house, certainly, but as far off as outside the closed door of the library, reading aloud to himself one or other of Macaulay’s ballads, with an evident enjoyment of the go in it.  A story with drum and trumpet accompaniment was quite enough, for the present, to satisfy Harry; and Macaulay could give him that, if little more.

As they went across the lawn towards the shrubbery, on their way to look for larches and Spring, Euphra joined them in walking dress.  It was a lovely morning.

“I have taken you at your word, you see, Mr. Sutherland,” said she.  “I don’t want to lose my Harry quite.”