she is here, on this spot."

Thus musing, I leaned against a walnut-tree, beneath which I have
rested from that day to this whenever I return to my dear valley.
Beneath that tree, the confidant of my thoughts, I ask myself what
changes there are in me since last I stood there.

My heart deceived me not--she lived there; the first castle that I saw
on the slope of a hill was the dwelling that held her. As I sat
beneath my nut-tree, the mid-day sun was sparkling on the slates of
her roof and the panes of her windows. Her cambric dress made the
white line which I saw among the vines of an arbor. She was, as you
know already without as yet knowing anything, the Lily of this valley,
where she grew for heaven, filling it with the fragrance of her
virtues. Love, infinite love, without other sustenance than the
vision, dimly seen, of which my soul was full, was there, expressed to
me by that long ribbon of water flowing in the sunshine between the
grass-green banks, by the lines of the poplars adorning with their
mobile laces that vale of love, by the oak-woods coming down between
the vineyards to the shore, which the river curved and rounded as it
chose, and by those dim varying horizons as they fled confusedly away.

If you would see nature beautiful and virgin as a bride, go there of a
spring morning. If you would still the bleeding wounds of your heart,
return in the last days of autumn. In the spring, Love beats his wings
beneath the broad blue sky; in the autumn, we think of those who are
no more. The lungs diseased breathe in a blessed purity; the eyes will
rest on golden copses which impart to the soul their peaceful
stillness. At this moment, when I stood there for the first time, the
mills upon the brooksides gave a voice to the quivering valley; the