[From _Marcus Warland_ (1852)]
Marcus sat beside the Long Moss Spring, the morning sun-beams glancing
through the broad leaves of the magnolia and the brilliant foliage of
the holly, and playing on his golden hair. He held in his hand a
fishing-rod, whose long line floated on the water; and though his eye
was fixed on the buoyant cork, there was no hope or excitement in its
gaze. His face was pale and wore a severe expression, very different
from the usual joyousness and thoughtlessness of childhood. Even when
the silvery trout and shining perch, lured by the bait, hung
quivering on the hook, and were thrown, fluttering like wounded birds
through the air, to fall panting, then pulseless, at his side, he
showed no consciousness of success, no elation at the number of his
scaly victims. Tears, even, large and slowly gathering tears, rolled
gradually and reluctantly down his fair oval cheeks; they were not
like the sudden, drenching shower, that leaves the air purer and the
sky bluer, but the drops that issue from the wounded bark formed of
the life-blood of the tree.
Beautiful was the spot where the boy sat, and beautiful the vernal
morning that awakened Nature to the joy and the beauty of youth. The
fountain, over whose basin he was leaning, was one of those clear,
deep, pellucid springs, that gush up in the green wilds of southern
Georgia, forming a feature of such exquisite loveliness in the
landscape, that the traveler pauses on the margin, feeling as if he
had found one of those enchanted springs of which we read in fairy
land, whose waters are too bright, too pure, too serene for earth.
The stone which formed the basin of the fountain was smooth and
calcareous, hollowed out by the friction of the waters, and gleaming
white and cold through their diaphanous drapery. In the centre of this
basin, where the spring gushed in all its depth and strength, it was
so dark it looked like an opaque body, impervious to the eye, whence
it flowed over the edge of its rocky receptacle in a full, rejoicing
current, sweeping over its mossy bed, and bearing its sounding tribute
to the Chattahoochee, "rolling rapidly." The mossy bed to which we
have alluded was not the verdant velvet that covers with a short,
curling nap the ancient rock and the gray old tree, but long, slender,
emerald-green plumes, waving under the water, and assuming through its
mirror a tinge of deep and irradiant blue. Nothing can be imagined
more rich and graceful than this carpet for the fountain's silvery
tread, and which seems to bend beneath it, as the light spray rustling
in the breeze. The golden water-lily gleamed up through the crystal,
and floated along the margin on its long and undulating stems.