I REMEMBER the scene on the barren heath-a girl sat alone on the grass before the gipsy camp, braiding her hair in the afternoon shade. Her little dog jumped and barked at her busy hands, as though her employment had no importance. In vain did she rebuke it, calling it 'a pest,' saying she was tired of its perpetual silliness. She struck it on the nose with her reproving forefinger, which only seemed to delight it the more. She looked menacingly grave for a few moments, to warn it of impending doom; and then, letting her hair fall, quickly snatched it up in her arms, laughed, and pressed it to her heart.
DYING, YOU have left behind you the great sadness of the Eternal in my life. You have painted my thought's horizon with the sunset colours of your departure, leaving a track of tears across the earth to love's heaven. Clasped in your dear arms, life and death united in me in a marriage bond. I think I can see you watching there in the balcony with your lamp lighted, where the end and the beginning of all things meet My world went hence through the doors that you opened-you holding the cup of death to my lips, filling it with life from your own.
