Love and Fate

Amid the sylvan solitude
Of unshorn grass and waving wood
And waters glancing bright and fast,
A softened voice was in her ear,
Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine
The hunter lifts his head to hear,
Now far and faint, now full and near--
The murmur of the wood swept pine.
A manly form was ever nigh,
A bold, free hunter, with an eye
Whose dark, keen glance had power to wake
Both fear and love--to awe and charm.
Faded the world that they had known,
A poor vain shadow, cold and waste,
In the warm present bliss alone
Seemed they of actual life to taste.

--Whittier.

It was in the month of June they were married; when the sun shone with
his brightest splendor; when the sky was of the clearest blue, when the
grass was of the freshest green, the woods in their rudest foliage, the
flowers in their richest bloom, and all nature in her most luxuriant
life! Yes, June was their honeymoon; the forest shades their bridal
halls, and birds and flowers and leaves and rills their train of
attendants. For weeks they lived a kind of fairy life, wandering
together through the depths of the valley forest, discovering through
the illumination of their love new beauties and glories in the earth and
sky; new sympathies with every form of life. Were ever suns so bright,
skies so clear, and woods so green as theirs in this month of beauty,
love, and joy!