I found her looking very often at the
magnolias; even holding them in her hand, and standing before the
table with a pensive air. I suppose she was thinking of Beatrice
Cenci, or of Tasso and Leonora, or of the wife of Marino Faliero, or
of some other of those sad old Italian tales of love and woe So easily
Prue went to Italy!
Thus the spring comes in my heart as well as in the air, and leaps
along my veins as well as through the trees. I immediately travel. An
orange takes me to Sorrento, and roses, when they blow, to Paestum.
The camelias in Aurelia's hair bring Brazil into the happy rooms she
treads, and she takes me to South America as she goes to dinner. The
pearls upon her neck make me free of the Persian gulf. Upon her
shawl, like the Arabian prince upon his carpet, I am transported to
the vales of Cashmere; and thus, as I daily walk in the bright spring
days, I go round the world.
But the season wakes a finer longing, a desire that could only be
satisfied if the pavilions of the clouds were real, and I could stroll
among the towering splendors of a sultry spring evening.
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