"A king lived long ago,
In the morning of the world,"
who had two children, Despard and Goldilocks. They were twin brother
and sister, but no more alike than a queen-lily and a nightshade, a
raven and a dove.
Goldilocks was a bright young damsel, with hair like fine threads of
gold, and a face so radiant that people questioned if the blood in her
veins might not be liquid sunshine. Her eyes were as soft as violets;
and her laugh was like the music of a spring robin.
Despard, on the other hand, was as melancholy as an owl. His raven
hair cast gloomy shadows, and his mournful eyes pierced you with a
sudden sorrow. He was too low-spirited to chase butterflies, weave
daisy-chains, and dance with Goldilocks among the flowers. He liked
better to play at a mimic funeral, and deck himself as chief mourner,
in a friar's robe with sable plumes. He could never understand why
laughing Goldilocks should object to making believe die, and be buried
in the large jewel-coffer, which stood for a tomb.
He always said that, if he lived to be a man, he should grow all the
more wretched, and creep over the earth like a great black cloud. When
Despard spoke so hopelessly, Goldilocks paused in her song or her
play, and stealthily brushed a rare tear from her eye. She was afraid
her brother's words might prove true.
These children lived in what is called the Golden Age, when the
rivers flowed with milk and wine, and yellow honey dripped from
oak-trees. Their childhood would probably have lasted forever; but the
Silver Age came on, and every thing was changed. Then, it was
sometimes too warm, and sometimes too cold. People began to live in
caves, and weave houses of twigs. The king, their father, died, and
went, so it was said, to the "Isles of the Blessed."
The children were shipwrecked upon a foreign shore, all because of a
sudden swell of the ocean. Here they were desolate and homesick. The
strange people among whom they had fallen did not know they were the
children of a king. No one was left to care for them but their old
nurse, named Sibyl.
This aged woman was growing lame, and her hair was gray; yet she loved
the twins, and would spin all the day long, to buy black bread for
them, and now and then a little choice fruit.
"Alas," she sighed, "alas, for the Golden Age, when the forests had
never been robbed, when oxen were not called to draw the plough, and
the beautiful earth laughed, and tossed up fruit and flowers without
waiting to be asked!"
The frocks that Sibyl made for Goldilocks were coarse; but on fair
spring days she took from the chest a delicate, rosy robe, embroidered
with gold, and smiled to see how it adorned the child.
But as for Despard, she had no hope that he would ever look well in
any thing. She would part Goldilocks' wonderful hair, and say,--
"Old Sibyl knows who is her love; she knows who would be glad to give
her pomegranates and grapes, when she is too old to spin, and too weak
to sit up."