It sounded like a welcome already overshadowed with
the coming farewell. As in all sweetest music, a tinge of
sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the
pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy
cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be
deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and
flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with
Sorrow for very love.
As the song concluded the stream bore my little boat with a
gentle sweep round a bend of the river; and lo! on a broad lawn,
which rose from the water's edge with a long green slope to a
clear elevation from which the trees receded on all sides, stood
a stately palace glimmering ghostly in the moonshine: it seemed
to be built throughout of the whitest marble. There was no
reflection of moonlight from windows--there seemed to be none; so
there was no cold glitter; only, as I said, a ghostly shimmer.
Numberless shadows tempered the shine, from column and balcony
and tower. For everywhere galleries ran along the face of the
buildings; wings were extended in many directions; and numberless
openings, through which the moonbeams vanished into the interior,
and which served both for doors and windows, had their separate
balconies in front, communicating with a common gallery that rose
on its own pillars.
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