Rosamund Gray was the most beautiful young creature that eyes ever
beheld. Her face had the sweetest expression in it--a gentleness--a
modesty--a timidity--a certain charm--a grace without a name.
There was a sort of melancholy mingled in her smile. It was not the
thoughtless levity of a girl--it was not the restrained simper of
premature womanhood--it was something which the poet Young might have
remembered, when he composed that perfect line,
"Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair."
She was a mild-eyed maid, and every body loved her. Young Allan Clare,
when but a boy, sighed for her.
Her yellow hair fell in bright and curling clusters, like
"those hanging locks
Of young Apollo."
Her voice was trembling and musical. A graceful diffidence pleaded for
her whenever she spake--and, if she said but little, that little found
its way to the heart.
Young, and artless, and innocent, meaning no harm, and thinking none;
affectionate as a smiling infant--playful, yet inobtrusive, as a weaned
lamb--every body loved her. Young Allan Clare, when but a boy, sighed
for her.
* * * * *
The moon is shining in so brightly at my window, where I write, that I
feel it a crime not to suspend my employment awhile to gaze at her.
See how she glideth, in maiden honor, through the clouds, who divide on
either side to do her homage.
Beautiful vision!--as I contemplate thee, an internal harmony is
communicated to my mind, a moral brightness, a tacit analogy of mental
purity; a calm like _that_ we ascribe in fancy to the favored
inhabitants of thy fairy regions, "argent fields."
I marvel not, O moon, that heathen people, in the "olden times," did
worship thy deity--Cynthia, Diana, Hecate. Christian Europe invokes thee
not by these names now--her idolatry is of a blacker stain: Belial is
her God--she worships Mammon.
False things are told concerning thee, fair planet--for I will ne'er
believe, that thou canst take a perverse pleasure in distorting the
brains of us poor mortals. Lunatics! moonstruck! Calumny invented, and
folly took up, these names. I would hope better things from thy mild
aspect and benign influences.
Lady of Heaven, thou lendest thy pure lamp to light the way to the
virgin mourner, when she goes to seek the tomb where her warrior lover
lies.
Friend of the distressed, thou speakest only _peace_ to the lonely
sufferer, who walks forth in the placid evening, beneath thy gentle
light, to chide at fortune, or to complain of changed friends, or
unhappy loves.
Do I dream, or doth not even now a heavenly calm descend from thee into
my bosom, as I meditate on the chaste loves of Rosamund and her Clare?