ordinary lifetime still between her and that grave which she
made haste to prepare, in the hope that her course was nearly
run. Who can think of her, at the age of seventy-two,
heart-broken and desolate, going back to the home of her youth
in the fond expectation of finding consolation, without a pang
of sympathetic pity? She found everything changed."

_That_, indeed, is to all of us the greatest grief, when we return to
the home of our youth. It is as if, during the years of our absence, we
had expected everything to stand as still as in the palace of the
Sleeping Beauty while the charm rested upon it. We are fain to see the
trees in their young greenness as when they sheltered our childhood, to
find the hedgerows blooming with the same violets, to hear the
mill-stream murmuring with the same music. Time furrows our brows with
wrinkles, and streaks our hair with silver; our hearts grow colder; our
minds lose their elasticity and freshness; our friends pass away from
our side. But still we think to ourselves that in the old scenes all
things are as they were. We say to ourselves: The bird sings as of old
in the elm-trees at the garden-foot; the rose-bush blossoms as of old
against our favourite window.

"The varying year with blade and sheaf
Clothes and re-clothes the happy plains;
Here rests the sap within the leaf,
Here stays the blood along the veins.
Faint shadows, vapours lightly curled,
Faint murmurs from the meadows come,
Like hints and echoes of the world
To spirits folded in the womb."