The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

TALES OF NATURAL BEAUTY

About midway in the short vista which my dreamy
vision took in, one small circular island, profusely
verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream.
' So blended bank and shadow there
That each seemed pendulous in air:"
so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was
scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope
of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began.
My position enabled me to include in a single view
both the eastern and western extremities of the islet;
and I observed a singularly marked difference in their
aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of
garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the
eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with
flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented,
and asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe,
mirthful, erect-bright, slender, and graceful-of
eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy,
and party-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life
and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out
the heavens, yet everything had motion through the
gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with
wings.'
The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed
in the blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and
peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. The trees
were dark in color and mournful in form and attitude: wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and
spectral shapes, that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow
and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of
1 "Florem Putares nare per liquidum cethera."-P.
COMMIRE.
88