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

verted into anything it pleased, - while I thus mused,
it appeared to me that the form of one of those very
Fays about whom I had been pondering, made its
way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the
western end of the island. She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom
of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy,
but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade.
Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the
islet and re-entered the region of light. " The revolution which has just been made by the Fay," continued I, musingly, " is the cycle of the brief year of
her life. She has floated through her winter and
through her summer. She is a year nearer unto
Death: for I did not fail to see that as she came into
the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its blackness
more black."
And again the boat appeared, and the Fay; but
about the attitude of the latter there was more of care
and uncertainty, and less of elastic joy. She floated
again from out the light, and into the gloom (which
deepened momently), and again her shadow fell from
her into the ebony water, and became absorbed into
its blackness. And again and again she made the
circuit of the island (while the sun rushed down to
his slumbers), and at each issuing into the light, there
was more sorrow about her person, while it grew
feebler, and far fainter, and more indistinct; and at
each passage into the gloom, there fell from her a
darker shade, which became whelmed in a shadow
more black. But at length, when the sun had utterly
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