"As Eve went forth from Paradise, She, weeping, bore away One flower that, reared, in tears and sighs, Is growing to this day. "Where'er the children of the fall Are toiling to this hour, It blooms for each, it blooms for all, And Love we call this flower. "Red roses of the bygone year Are mingled with the mould, And other roses will appear Where they grew pale and old. "But where it grew, no other grows, No bloom restores the sere; So this resembles not the rose, And knows no other year. "So, welcome, when thy bloom is red, The glory of thy light; And welcome when thy bloom is shed, The long sleep of my night." And now the song is ended, and, listening, nature seems to sigh; and looking toward the old château, the front next you is in shadow, the window is open, and within you see _two_ ladies. The elder is standing by the girl, who sits still at the open window, looking up into the face of her old friend--the old friend who has known, in the early days of romance, what love is, for whom now "the bloom is shed, and mingling with the mould," but who remembers sadly the blush and glory of its light that died five-and-thirty years ago upon Canadian snows. Gently the old lady takes her hand, and sits beside her girlish kinswoman, and lays her other hand over that, and smiles with a strange look of affection, and admiration, and immeasurable compassion, that somehow seems to translate her, it is so sad and angelic. I cannot hear what she is saying, but the young lady looks up, and kisses her thin cheek, and lays her head upon her old shoulder. Behind, high over the steep roofs and pinnacles, and those glimmering weather-vanes, that seem sometimes to melt quite away, hangs the moon, unclouded--meet emblem of a pure love--no longer crossed by the sorrows of true love's course--Dian the Chaste, with her sad, pure, and beautifully misleading light--alas! the emblem, also, of mutation.