Were rifled of their sweetest flowers to twine
The door posts, and to lie among the locks
Of maids, the wedding guests; and from the boughs
Of mountain orchards had the fairest fruit
Been plucked to glisten in the canisters.

Then, trooping over hill and valley, came Matron and maid, grave men and smiling youths, Like swallows gathering for their autumn flight. In costumes of that simpler age they came, That gave the limbs large play, and wrapt the form In easy folds, yet bright with glowing hues As suited holidays. All hastened on To that glad bridal. There already stood The priest prepared to say the spousal rite, And there the harpers in due order sat, And there the singers. Sella, midst them all, Moved strangely and serenely beautiful,

With clear blue eyes, fair locks, and brow and cheek
Colorless as the lily of the lakes,

Yet moulded to such shape as artists give
To beings of immortal youth. Her hands

Had decked her sister for the bridal hour

With chosen flowers, and lawn whose delicate threads
Vied with the spider's spinning. There she stood
With such a gentle pleasure in her looks
As might beseem a river-nymph's soft eyes
Gracing a bridal of the race whose flocks
Were pastured on the borders of her stream.

She smiled, but from that calm sweet face the smile Was soon to pass away. That very morn The elder of the brothers, as he stood Upon the hillside, had beheld the maid, Emerging from the channel of the brook, With three fresh water lilies in her hand, Wring dry her dripping locks, and in a cleft Of hanging rock, beside a screen of boughs, Bestow the spangled slippers. None before

Had known where Sella hid them. Then she laid
The light brown tresses smooth, and in them twined
The lily buds, and hastily drew forth

And threw across her shoulders a light robe
Wrought for the bridal, and with bounding steps
Ran toward the lodge. The youth beheld and marked
The spot and slowly followed from afar.

Now had the marriage rite been said; the bride
Stood in the blush that from her burning cheek
Glowed down the alabaster neck, as morn
Crimsons the pearly heaven halfway to the west.
At once the harpers struck their chords; a gush
Of music broke upon the air; the youths
All started to the dance. Among them moved
The queenly Sella with a grace that seemed
Caught from the swaying of the summer sea.
The young drew forth the elders to the dance,
Who joined it half abashed, but when they felt
The joyous music tingling in their veins,

They called for quaint old measures, which they trod
As gayly as in youth, and far abroad

Came through the open windows cheerful shouts
And bursts of laughter. They who heard the sound
Upon the mountain footpaths paused and said,
“A merry wedding." Lovers stole away
That sunny afternoon to bowers that edged
The garden walks, and what was whispered there
The lovers of these later times can guess.

Meanwhile the brothers, when the merry din
Was loudest, stole to where the slippers lay,
And took them thence, and followed down the brook
To where a little rapid rushed between

Its borders of smooth rock, and dropped them in.
The rivulet, as they touched its face, flung up

Its small bright waves like hands, and seemed to take
The prize with eagerness and draw it down.
They, gleaming through the waters as they went,
And striking with light sound the shining stones,

Slid down the stream. The brothers looked and watched
And listened with full beating hearts, till now
The sight and sound had passed, and silently
And half repentant hastened to the lodge.

The sun was near his set; the music rang
Within the dwelling still, but the mirth waned;
For groups of guests were sauntering toward their homes.
Across the fields, and far, on hillside paths,

Gleamed the white robes of maidens. Sella grew

Weary of the long merriment; she thought

Of her still haunts beneath the soundless sea,
And all unseen withdrew and sought the cleft
Where she had laid the slippers. They were gone.
She searched the secret cleft, and next she stooped
And with spread palms felt carefully beneath

The tufted herbs and bushes, and again,

And yet again she searched the rocky cleft.

"Who could have taken them?" That question cleared The mystery. She remembered suddenly

That when the dance was in its gayest whirl,
Her brothers were not seen, and when, at length,
They reappeared, the elder joined the sports
With shouts of boisterous mirth, and from her eye
The younger shrank in silence. "Now, I know
The guilty ones," she said, and left the spot,
And stood before the youths with such a look
Of anguish and reproach that well they knew
Her thought, and almost wished the deed undone.

Frankly they owned the charge: "And pardon us; We did it all in love; we could not bear

That the cold world of waters and the strange
Beings that dwell within it should beguile
Our sister from us." Then they told her all;
How they had seen her stealthily bestow

The slippers in the cleft, and how by stealth

They took them thence and bore them down the brook, And dropped them in, and how the eager waves

Gathered and drew them down: but at that word
The maiden shrieked-a broken-hearted shriek-
And all who heard it shuddered and turned pale
At the despairing cry, and "They are gone,'
She said, "gone-gone forever. Cruel ones!
'Tis you who shut me out eternally

From that serener world which I had learned
To love so well. Why took ye not my life?
Ye cannot know what ye have done." She spake,
And hurried to her chamber, and the guests
Who yet had lingered silently withdrew.

The brothers followed to the maiden's bower, But with a calm demeanor, as they came, She met them at the door. "The wrong is great," She said, "that ye have done me, but no power Have ye to make it less, nor yet to soothe My sorrow; I shall bear it as I may, The better for the hours that I have passed

In the calm region of the middle sea.

Go, then. I need you not." They, overawed,

Withdrew from that grave presence. Then her tears
Broke forth a flood, as when the August cloud,

Darkening, beside the mountain, suddenly
Melts into streams of rain. That weary night
She paced her chamber, murmuring as she walked,
"O peaceful region of the middle sea!

O azure bowers and grots, in which I loved

To roam and rest! Am I to long for you,