It was on a warm, bright summer afternoon that I woke to the sense
both of what I had lost and what I had gained. I had wandered out
into the country, for in those days I had a great desire to be
alone. I stood long beside a stile in the pastures, a little
village below me, and the gables and chimneys of an old farmhouse
stood up over wide fields of young waving wheat. A cuckoo fluted in
an elm close by, and at the sound there darted into my mind the
memory, seen in an airy perspective, of innumerable happy and
careless days, spent in years long past, with eager and light-
hearted companions, in whose smiling eyes and caressing motions was
reflected one's own secret happiness. How full the world seemed of
sweet surprises then! To sit in an evening hour in some quiet,
scented garden in the gathering dusk, with the sense of a delicious
mystery flashing from the light movements, the pensive eyes, the
curve of arm or cheek of one's companion, how beautiful that was!
And yet how simple and natural it seemed. That was all over and
gone, and a gulf seemed fixed between those days and these. And
then there came first that sad and sweet regret, "the passion of
the past," as Tennyson called it, that suddenly brimmed the eyes at
the thought of the vanished days; and there followed an intense
desire to live in it once again, to have made more of it, a
rebellious longing to abandon oneself with a careless disregard to
the old rapture.
Pages:
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370