The Slender Poe Anthology Read Free Page B

valley, from the river to the mountainsthat girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick,short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkledthroughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purpleviolet, and the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke toour hearts in loud tones, of the love and of the glory of God.
    And, here and there, in groves about this grass, like wildernesses ofdreams, sprang up fantastic trees, whose tall slender stems stood notupright, but slanted gracefully toward the light that peered at noon-dayinto the centre of the valley. Their mark was speckled with the vividalternate splendor of ebony and silver, and was smoother than all savethe cheeks of Eleonora; so that, but for the brilliant green of the hugeleaves that spread from their summits in long, tremulous lines, dallyingwith the Zephyrs, one might have fancied them giant serpents of Syriadoing homage to their sovereign the Sun.
    Hand in hand about this valley, for fifteen years, roamed I withEleonora before Love entered within our hearts. It was one evening atthe close of the third lustrum of her life, and of the fourth of my own,that we sat, locked in each other’s embrace, beneath the serpent-liketrees, and looked down within the water of the River of Silence at ourimages therein. We spoke no words during the rest of that sweet day, andour words even upon the morrow were tremulous and few. We had drawn theGod Eros from that wave, and now we felt that he had enkindled within usthe fiery souls of our forefathers. The passions which had for centuriesdistinguished our race, came thronging with the fancies for which theyhad been equally noted, and together breathed a delirious bliss overthe Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. A change fell upon all things.Strange, brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burn out upon the treeswhere no flowers had been known before. The tints of the green carpetdeepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, theresprang up in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. Andlife arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen, withall gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. Thegolden and silver fish haunted the river, out of the bosom of whichissued, little by little, a murmur that swelled, at length, into alulling melody more divine than that of the harp of Aeolus-sweeter thanall save the voice of Eleonora. And now, too, a voluminous cloud, whichwe had long watched in the regions of Hesper, floated out thence, allgorgeous in crimson and gold, and settling in peace above us, sank, dayby day, lower and lower, until its edges rested upon the tops of themountains, turning all their dimness into magnificence, and shutting usup, as if forever, within a magic prison-house of grandeur and of glory.
    The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the Seraphim; but she was amaiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led among theflowers. No guile disguised the fervor of love which animated her heart,and she examined with me its inmost recesses as we walked togetherin the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, and discoursed of the mightychanges which had lately taken place therein.
    At length, having spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad changewhich must befall Humanity, she thenceforward dwelt only upon this onesorrowful theme, interweaving it into all our converse, as, in the songsof the bard of Schiraz, the same images are found occurring, again andagain, in every impressive variation of phrase.
    She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom — that, like theephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die; butthe terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration which sherevealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the River ofSilence. She grieved to think that, having entombed her in the Valleyof the Many-Colored Grass, I would quit forever its happy recesses,transferring the