"There's much to be said," I replied as profoundly as I could.
The air he now lulled youth asleep with was a very cheerless
threnody, but he brightened once more at praise of his delightful
orchard.
"You like it, sir? You speak kindly, sir. It is my all; root and
branch: how many a summer's moons have I seen shine hereon! I know
it--there is bliss to come;--miraculous Paradise for men even dull as
I. Yet 'twill be strange to me--without my house and orchard. Age
tends to earth, sir, till even an odour may awake the dead--a branch
in the air call with its fluttering a face beyond Time to vanquish
dear. 'Soul, soul,' I cry, 'forget thy dust, forget thy vaunting
ashes!'--and speak in vain. So's life!"
And when we had gone in again, and candles had been lit in his fresh
and narrow chamber, seeing a viol upon a chest, I begged a little
music.
He quite eagerly, with a boyish peal of laughter, complied; and sat
down with a very solemn face, his brows uplifted, and sang between the
candles to a pathetic air this doggerel:--
There's a dark tree and a sad tree,
Where sweet Alice waits, unheeded,
For her lover long-time absent,
Plucking rushes by the river.
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