The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the Seraphim; but she was a
maiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led among the
flowers. No guile disguised the fervor of love which animated her
heart, and she examined with me its inmost recesses as we walked
together in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, and discoursed of
the mighty changes which had lately taken place therein.
At length, having spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad change
which must befall Humanity, she thenceforward dwelt only upon this one
sorrowful theme, interweaving it into all our converse, as, in the
songs of the bard of Schiraz, the same images are found occurring,
again and again, in every impressive variation of phrase.
She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom- that, like
the ephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die;
but the terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration
which she revealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the
River of Silence. She grieved to think that, having entombed her in
the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, I would quit forever its happy
recesses, transferring the love which now was so passionately her
own to some maiden of the outer and everyday world.
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