A wild, murky gloom, Filled with fierce eyes, fell round me, but kind Heaven Lifted at length the blackness; on my soul The keen glare fell no more, and I arose With the blue sky above me, and the earth Laughing around in all its glorious beauty." [Illustration: The Departure From H. C. Corbould. Drawn with alterations & engraved by Geo. B. Ellis Engraved expressly for Graham's Magazine] THE DEPARTURE. BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS. [Entered According to Act of Congress in the year 1848, by EDWARD STEPHENS, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.] [SEE ENGRAVING.] CHAPTER I. Oh do not look so bright and blest, For still there comes a fear, When hours like thine look happiest, That grief is then most near. There lurks a dread in all delight, A shadow near each ray, That warns us thus to fear their flight, When most we wish their stay. MOORE. Far down upon the Long Island shore, where the ocean heaves in wave after wave from the "outer deep," forming coves of inimitable beauty, promontories wooded to the brink, and broken precipices against which the surf lashes continually, there stood, some thirty years ago, an old mansion-house, with irregular and pointed roofs, low stoops, gable-windows, in short, exhibiting all those architectural eccentricities which our modern artists strive for so earnestly in their studies of the picturesque. The dwelling stood upon the bend of a cove; a forest of oaks spread away some distance behind the dwelling, and feathered a point of land that formed the eastern circle down to the water's edge. In an opposite direction, and curving in a green sweep with the shore, was a fine apple-orchard, and that end of the old house was completely embowered by plum, pear and peach trees, that sheltered minor thickets of lilac, cerenga, snow-ball and other blossoming shrubs. In their season, the ground under this double screen of foliage was crimson with patches of the dwarf rose, and the old-fashioned windows were half covered with the tall graceful trees of that snow-white species of the same queenly flower, which is only to be found in very ancient gardens, and seldom even there at the present time. In front of the old house was a flower-garden of considerable extent, lifted terrace after terrace from the water, which it circled like a crescent. The profusion of blossoms and verdure flung a sort of spring-like glory around the old building until the autumn storms came up from the ocean and swept the rich vesture from the trees, leaving the mansion-house bold, unsheltered and desolate-looking enough.