But not, like thee, to fond remembrance bring
The vanish'd hours of life's enchanting spring;
Short calendar of joys for ever fled!
Thou bidst the scenes of childhood rise to view,
The wild wood path which fancy loves to trace,
Where, veil'd in leaves, thy fruit of rosy hue,
Lurk'd on its pliant stem with modest grace.
But, ah! when thought would later years renew,
Alas! successive sorrows crowd the space.

"But perhaps the most charming spot of this enclosure was that which was
called the Repose of Virginia. At the foot of the rock which bore the name
of the Discovery of Friendship, is a nook, from whence issues a fountain,
forming, near its source, a little spot of marshy soil in the midst of a
field of rich grass. At the time Margaret was delivered of Paul, I made her
a present of an Indian cocoa which had been given me, and which she planted
on the border of this fenny ground, in order that the tree might one day
serve to mark the epocha of her son's birth. Madame de la Tour planted
another cocoa, with the same view, at the birth of Virginia. Those fruits
produced two cocoa trees, which formed all the records of the two families:
one was called the tree of Paul, the other the tree of Virginia. They grew
in the same proportion as the two young persons, of an unequal height; but
they rose, at the end of twelve years, above the cottages. Already their
tender stalks were interwoven, and their young branches of cocoas hung over
the basin of the fountain. Except this little plantation, the nook of the
rock had been left as it was decorated by nature. On its brown and humid
sides large plants of maidenhair glistened with their green and dark stars;
and tufts of wave-leaved hartstongue, suspended like long ribands of
purpled green, floated on the winds. Near this grew a chain of the
Madagascar periwinkle, the flowers of which resemble the red gilliflower;