Kitabı oku: «Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848», sayfa 6
THE SPANISH PRINCESS TO THE MOORISH KNIGHT
BY GRACE GREENWOOD
Thou darest not love me! – thou canst only see
The great gulf set between us – had'st thou love
'Twould bear thee o'er it on a wing of fire!
Wilt put from thy faint lip the mantling cup,
The draught thou'st prayed for with divinest thirst,
For fear a poison in the chalice lurks?
Wilt thou be barred from thy soul's heritage,
The power, the rapture, and the crown of life,
By the poor guard of danger set about it?
I tell thee that the richest flowers of heaven
Bloom on the brink of darkness. Thou hast marked
How sweetly o'er the beetling precipice
Hangs the young June-rose with its crimson heart —
And would'st not sooner peril life to win
That royal flower, that thou might'st proudly wear
The trophy on thy breast, than idly pluck
A thousand meek-faced daisies by the way?
How dost thou shudder at Love's gentle tones,
As though a serpent's hiss were in thine ear.
Albeit thy heart throbs echo to each word.
Why wilt not rest, oh weary wanderer,
Upon the couch of flowers Love spreads for thee,
On banks of sunshine? – voices silver-toned
Shall lull thy soul with strange, wild harmonies,
Rock thee to sleep upon the waves of song.
Hope shall watch o'er thee with her breath of dreams.
Joy hover near, impatient for thy waking,
Her quick wing glancing through the fragrant air.
Why dost thou pause hard by the rose-wreathed gate,
Why turn thee from the paradise of youth,
Where Love's immortal summer blooms and glows,
And wrap thyself in coldness as a shroud?
Perchance 'tis well for thee– yet does the flame
That glows with heat intense and mounts toward heaven.
As fitly emblem holiest purity,
As the still snow-wreath on the mountain's brow.
Thou darest not say I love, and yet thou lovest,
And think'st to crush the mighty yearning down,
That in thy spirit shall upspring forever!
Twinned with thy soul, it lived in thy first thoughts —
It haunted with strange dreams thy boyish years,
And colored with its deep, empurpled hue,
The passionate aspirations of thy youth.
Go, take from June her roses – from her streams
The bubbling fountain-springs – from life, take love,
Thou hast its all of sweetness, bloom and strength.
There is a grandeur in the soul that dares
To live out all the life God lit within;
That battles with the passions hand to hand,
And wears no mail, and hides behind no shield!
That plucks its joy in the shadow of death's wing —
That drains with one deep draught the wine of life,
And that with fearless foot and heaven-turned eye,
May stand upon a dizzy precipice,
High o'er the abyss of ruin, and not fall!
THE LIGHT OF OUR HOME
BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
Oh, thou whose beauty on us beams
With glimpses of celestial light;
Thou halo of our waking dreams,
And early star that crown'st our night —
Thy light is magic where it falls;
To thee the deepest shadow yields;
Thou bring'st unto these dreary halls
The lustre of the summer-fields.
There is a freedom in thy looks
To make the prisoned heart rejoice; —
In thy blue eyes I see the brooks,
And hear their music in thy voice.
And every sweetest bird that sings
Hath poured a charm upon thy tongue;
And where the bee enamored clings,
There surely thou in love hast clung: —
For when I hear thy laughter free,
And see thy morning-lighted hair,
As in a dream, at once I see
Fair upland scopes and valleys fair.
I see thy feet empearled with dews,
The violet's and the lily's loss;
And where the waving woodland woos
Thou lead'st me over beds of moss; —
And by the busy runnel's side,
Whose waters, like a bird afraid,
Dart from their fount, and, flashing, glide
Athwart the sunshine and the shade.
Or larger streams our steps beguile; —
We see the cascade, broad and fair,
Dashed headlong down to foam, the while
Its iris-spirit leaps to air!
Alas! as by a loud alarm,
The fancied turmoil of the falls
Hath driven me back and broke the charm
Which led me from these alien walls: —
Yes, alien, dearest child, are these
Close city walls to thee and me:
My homestead was embowered with trees,
And such thy heritage should be: —
And shall be; – I will make for thee
A home within my native vale
Where every brook and ancient tree
Shall whisper some ancestral tale.
Now once again I see thee stand,
As down the future years I gaze,
The fairest maiden of the land —
The spirit of those sylvan ways.
And in thy looks again I trace
The light of her who gave thee birth;
She who endowed thy form and face
With glory which is not of Earth.
And as I gaze upon her now,
My heart sends up a prayer for thee,
That thou may'st wear upon thy brow
The light which now she beams on me.
And thou wilt wear that love and light
For thou'rt the bud to such a flower: —
Oh fair the day, how blest and bright,
Which finds thee in thy native bower!
AN INDIAN-SUMMER RAMBLE
BY ALFRED B. STREET
It was now the middle of October. White frosts had for some time been spreading their sheets of pearl over the gardens and fields, but the autumn rainbows in the forests were wanting. At last, however, the stern black frost came and wrought its customary magic. For about a week there was a gorgeous pageantry exhibited, "beautiful, exceedingly." But one morning I awoke, and found that the mist had made a common domain both of earth and sky. Every thing was merged into a gray dimness. I could just discern the tops of trees a few feet off, and here and there a chimney. There was a small bit of fence visible, bordering "our lane," and I could with difficulty see a glimmering portion of the village street. Some gigantic cloud appeared to have run against something in the heavens and dropped down amongst us. There were various outlines a few rods off, belonging to objects we scarce knew what. Horses pushed out of the fog with the most sudden effect, followed by their wagons, and disappeared again in the opposite fleecy barrier; pedestrians were first seen like spectres, then their whole shapes were exhibited, and finally they melted slowly away again, whilst old Shadbolt's cow, grazing along the grassy margin of the street, loomed up through the vapor almost as large as an elephant.
About noon the scene became clearer, so that the outline of the village houses, and even the checkered splendors of the neighboring woods could be seen; so much of Nate's sign, "Hammond's sto – " became visible, and even Hamble's great red stage-coach was exhibited, thrusting its tongue out as if in scorn of the weather.
In the afternoon, however, the mist thickened again, and the whole village shrunk again within it, like a turtle within its shell. The next morning dawned without its misty mask, but with it rose a gusty wind that commenced howling like a famished wolf. Alas! for the glories of the woods! As the rude gusts rushed from the slaty clouds, the rich leaves came fluttering upon them, blotting the air and falling on the earth thick as snow-flakes. Now a maple-leaf, like a scalloped ruby, would fly whirling over and over; next a birch one would flash across the sight, as if a topaz had acquired wings; and then a shred of the oak's imperial mantle, flushed like a sardonyx, would cut a few convulsive capers in the air, like a clown in a circus, and dash itself headlong upon the earth. Altogether it was an exciting time, this fall of the leaf. Ah! a voice also was constantly whispering in my ear, "we all do fade as the leaf!"
I took a walk in the woods. What a commotion was there! The leaves were absolutely frantic. Now they would sweep up far into the air as if they never intended to descend again, and then taking curvatures, would skim away like birds; others would cluster together, and then roll along like a great quivering billow; others again would circle around in eddies like whirlpools, soaring up now and then in the likeness of a water-spout, whilst frequently tall columns would march down the broad aisles of the forest in the most majestic manner, and finally fall to pieces in a violent spasm of whirling atoms. Even after the leaves had found their way to the earth they were by no means quiet. Some skipped uneasily over the surface; some stood on one leg, as it were, and pirouetted; some crept further and further under banks; some ran merry races over the mounds, and some danced up and down in the hollows. As for the trees themselves, they were cowering and shivering at a tremendous rate, apparently from want of the cloaks of which every blast was thus stripping them.
A day or two after came the veritable soft-looking, sweet-breathing Indian-Summer – "our thunder." No other clime has it. Autumn expires in a rain-storm of three months in Italy; and it is choked to death with a wet fog in England; but in this new world of ours, "our own green forest land," as Halleck beautifully says, it swoons away often in a delicious trance, during which the sky is filled with sleep, and the earth hushes itself into the most peaceful and placid repose. There it lies basking away until with one growl old Winter springs upon Nature, locks her in icy fetters, and covers her bosom with a white mantle that generally stays there until Spring comes with her soft eye and blue-bird voice to make us all glad again.
Well, this beautiful season arrived as aforesaid, and a day "turned up" that seemed to be extracted from the very core of the season's sweetness. The landscape was plunged into a thick mist at sunrise, but that gradually dwindled away until naught remained but a delicate dreamy film of tremulous purple, that seemed every instant as if it would melt from the near prospect. Further off, however, the film deepened into rich smoke, and at the base of the horizon it was decided mist, bearing a tinge, however, borrowed from the wood-violet. The mountains could be discerned, and that was all, and they only by reason of a faint jagged line struggling through the veil proclaiming their summits. The dome above was a tender mixture of blue and silver; and as for the sunshine, it was tempered and shaded down into a tint like the blush in the tinted hollow of the sea-shell.
It was the very day for a ramble in the woods; so Benning, Watson, and I, called at the dwelling of three charming sisters, to ask their mamma's consent (and their own) to accompany us. These three Graces all differed from each other in their styles of beauty. The eyes of one were of sparkling ebony, those of the other looked as if the "summer heaven's delicious blue" had stained them, whilst the third's seemed as though they had caught their hue from the glittering gray that is sometimes seen just above the gold of a cloudless sunset.
We turned down the green lane that led from the village street, and were soon in the forests. The half-muffled sunlight stole down sweetly and tenderly through the chaos of naked branches overhead; and there was a light crisp, crackling sound running through the dry fallen leaves, as though they had become tired of their position, and were striving to turn over. So quiet was the air that even this faint sound was distinctly audible. Hark! whang! whang! there rings the woodman's axe – crack! crash! b-o-o-m! – Hurrah! what thunder that little keen instrument has waked up there, and what power it has! Say, ye wild, deep forests, that have shrunk into rocky ravines, and retreated to steep mountains, what caused ye to flee away from the valleys and uplands of your dominion? Answer, fierce eagle! what drove thee from thy pine of centuries to the desolate and wind-swept peak, where alone thou couldst rear thy brood in safety? Tell, thou savage panther, what made the daylight flash into thy den so suddenly, that thou didst think thy eye-balls were extinguished?
And thou, too, busy city, that dost point up thy spires where two score years ago the forest stood a frown upon the face of Nature – what mowed the way for thee? And, lastly, thou radiant grain-field, what prepared the room for thy bright and golden presence? Whew! if that isn't a tremendous flight, I don't know what is! But the axe, as Uncle Jack Lummis says of his brown mare, is "a tarnal great critter, any how!"
How Settler Jake's cabin will gleam those approaching winter nights from the "sticks" that axe of his will give him out of the tree he has just prostrated. It is really pleasant to think of it. There will be the great fire-place, with a huge block for a back-log; then a pile will be built against it large enough for a bonfire – and then such a crackling and streaming! why the dark night just around there will be all in a blush with it. And the little window will glow like a red star to the people of the village; and then within, there will be the immense antlers over the door, belonging to a moose Jake shot the first year he came into the country, all tremulous with the light, and the long rifle thrust through it will glitter quick and keen; and the scraped powder-horn hung by it will be transparent in redness; even the row of bullets on the rude shelf near the window will give a dull gleam, whilst our old acquaintance, the axe, will wink as if a dozen eyes were strewn along its sharp, bright edge. And then the brown and tortoise-shell cat belonging to the "old woman" will partake of the lustre; and the old woman herself – a little, active, bustling body, will be seated in one corner of the fire-place, after having swept clean the hearth; and "Sport" will have coiled his long body on a bear-skin near her. Lastly, the settler himself will be sitting upon a stool opposite "Betsey," with his elbows on his knees, smoking a pipe as black as his face at the "spring logging." But stop – where was I? Oh, in the woods!"
"Look! look!" cries Susan, the owner of the gray orbs, with an accent of delight, "see that beautiful black squirrel eating!"
We all looked, and sure enough, there is the little object in a nook of warm bronze light, with his paws to his whiskered face, cracking nuts, one after another, as fast as possible. But he stops, with his paws still uplifted, looks askance for a moment, and away he shoots then through the "brush-fence" at our side like a dart.
We soon find the tree whence he gathered his fruit. It is a noble hickory, with here and there a brown leaf clinging to its boughs. A stone or two brings the globes that hold the nuts to the earth. They have commenced cracking, and with a little exertion we uncover the snow-white balls. We are now all determined to rob the tree. It has no business to be displaying its round wealth so temptingly. And, beside, it will, if let alone, most probably entice boys from the little black school-house out yonder to "play truant." So it is unanimously voted that Benning, who is light and active, should climb the tree. Up he goes, like one of those little striped woodpeckers that are so often seen in the woods tapping up the trees, and immediately his hands and feet make the branches dance, whilst the green globes drop like great hail-stones on the earth. We then commence stripping the nuts from their covers, and soon the base of the tree is covered with them. We then stow the ivories away in our bags, and start for new havoc.
We come now to the brush-fence. It is a perfect chevau-de-frize. It looks at us with a sort of defying, bristling air, as if it said as Wilson, the horse-jockey, says when some one endeavors to hoodwink him in a bargain, "You can't come it!"
We wont try here, but a little lower down there is a gap made by John Huff's cow, that uses her horns so adroitly in the attack of a fence, no matter how difficult, that I verily believe she could pick a lock. We pass through the kindly breach and skirt the fence for some little distance to regain the path. The fence on this side is densely plumed with blackberry vines. What a revel I held there two months ago. The fruit hung around in rich masses of ebony, each little atom composing the cone having a glittering spot upon it like a tiny eye. How the black beauties melted on my tongue in their dead-ripe richness. One bush in particular was heavy with the clusters. After despoiling the edges I opened the heart, and there, hidden snugly away, as if for the wood-fairies, were quantities of the sable clusters, larger and more splendid than any I had seen. I immediately made my way into the defences of that fortress. There was a merciless sacking there, reader, allow me to tell you. But that is neither "here nor there" on the present occasion.
How beautifully the soft, tender dark light slumbers on objects where the great roof of the forest will allow it. There is an edge of deep golden lace gleaming upon that mound of moss, and here, the light, breaking through the overhanging beech, has so mottled the tawny surface of the leaves beneath as to make it appear as if a leopard-skin had been dropped there.
B-o-o-m, b-o-o-m, boom-boom – whi-r-r-r-r-r – there sounds the drum of the partridge. We'll rouse his speckled lordship probably below, causing him to give his low, quick thunder-clap so as to send the heart on a leaping visit to the throat.
We now descend the ridge upon which we have been for some time, to a glade at the foot. The sweet haze belonging to the season is shimmering over it. It is a broad space surrounded on all sides by the forest. The first settler in this part of the country had "located" himself here, and this was his little clearing. His hut stood on an eminence in one corner. He lived there a number of years. He was a reserved, unsocial man, making the forest his only haunt, and his rifle his only companion. He was at last found dead in his cabin. Alone and unattended he had died, keeping to the last aloof from human society. The hut was next occupied by a singular couple – an old man and his idiot son. The father was of a fierce, savage temper, but seemed very fond, although capriciously so, of his child. Sometimes he would treat him with the greatest tenderness, then again, at some wayward action of the idiot, he would burst upon him with an awful explosion of passion. The old man had evidently been a reckless desperado in other days, and many in the village suspected strongly that he had once been a pirate. He was addicted to drinking, and now and then, when bitten by the adder, would talk strangely. He would commence narrating some wonderful hurricane he had experienced on the Spanish Main, and would launch out upon the number of times he had headed boarding parties, and once, in a state of great intoxication at the village tavern, he rambled off into a story about his having made an old man walk the plank. He would, however, check himself on all these occasions before he went far. He became involved in a fight one time with a great lounging fellow about the village, whose propensity to bully was the only salient point in his character. They clinched – the old man was thrown, and the bystanders had just time to pull the bully away, to prevent a long keen knife in the grasp of Murdock (for such was the old man's name) from being plunged into his side.
Suddenly the idiot-boy disappeared. The passers-by had frequently seen him (for he was an industrious lad) working in the little patch belonging to the cabin, but from a certain time he was seen no more, and the old man lived alone in his cabin. A change, too, gradually grew over him. He became silent and deeply melancholy, and his countenance settled into an expression of stern, rigid sorrow. His eye was awful. Wild and red, it seemed as if you could look through it into a brain on fire.
At last he commenced rubbing his right hand with his left. There he would fasten his gaze, and chafe with the most determined energy. He would frequently stop and hold the hand to his eye for a moment, and then recommence his strange work. To the inquiries of the village people concerning his son, he would give no answer. He would roll upon the inquirer for an instant his fierce, mad eye, and then prosecute his mysterious chafing more rigorously than ever.
Things continued so for about a fortnight after the disappearance of the idiot, when one dark night the village was alarmed by the appearance of flames from the clearing. Hurrying to the spot, they were just in time to see the blazing roof of the hut fall in. The next morning disclosed, amidst the smouldering ashes, a few charred bones. Murdock was not again seen or heard of from that night.
The glade is now quiet and lonely as if human passions had never been unloosed there in the terrific crime of parricide – the consequent remorse merging into madness, and a fiery retributory death. Upon the grassy mound, which the frost has not yet blighted, a beautiful white rabbit has just glided. The lovely creature darts onward, then crouches – now lays his long ears flat upon his shoulders, and now points them forward in the most knowing and cunning manner. He plays there in his white, pure beauty, as if in purposed contrast to the blood-stained and guilty wretch who expired on the same spot in his flaming torture. But the little shape now points his long, rose-tinted ears in our direction, and then he does not disappear as much as melt from our sight like the vanishing of breath from polished steel. We then enter fully into the glade. One of the trees at the border is a magnificent chestnut. I remember it in June, with its rich green leaves hung over with short, braided cords of pale gold. These braided blossoms have yielded fruit most plenteously. How thickly the chestnuts, with their autumn-colored coats and gray caps, are scattered around the tree, whilst the large yellow burrs on the branches, gaping wide open, are displaying their soft velvet inner lining in which the embedded nuts have ripened, and which in their maturity they have deserted.
After changing the position of the little glossy things from the earth to our satchels, we cross the glade, and strike a narrow road that enters the forests in that direction. We pass along, our feet sinking deep in the dead leaves, until we come to an opening where a bridge spans a stream. It is a slight, rude structure, such as the emigrating settler would (and probably did) make in a brief hour to facilitate his passage across. Let us sketch the picture to our imagination for a moment. We will suppose it about an hour to sunset of a summer's day. There is a soft richness amidst the western trees, and the little grassy opening here is dappled with light and shade. The emigrant's wagon is standing near the brink, with its curved canvas top, white as silver, in a slanting beam, and the broad tires of its huge wheels stained green with the wood-plants and vines they have crushed in their passage during the day. The patient oxen, which have drawn the wagon so far, are chewing their cud, with their honest countenances fixed straight forward. Around the wagon is hung a multitude of household articles – pans, pails, kettles, brooms, and what not; and on a heap of beds, bedding, quilts, striped blankets, &c., is the old woman, the daughter, about eighteen, and a perfect swarm of white-headed little ones. The father, and his two stalwort sons, are busy in the forest close at hand. How merrily the echoes ring out at each blow of their axes, and how the earth groans with the shock of the falling trees. The two largest of the woodland giants are cut into logs – the others are also divided into the proper lengths. The logs are placed athwart the stream several feet distant from each other – the rest are laid in close rows athwart, and lo! the bridge. Over the whole scene the warm glow of the setting sun is spread, and a black bear, some little distance in the forest, is thrusting his great flat head out of a hollow tree, overseeing the proceedings with the air of a connoisseur.
The bridge is now old and black, and has decayed and been broken into quite a picturesque object. One of the platform pieces has been fractured in the middle, and the two ends slant upwards, as if to take observations of the sky; and there is a great hole in the very centre of the bridge. Add to this the moss, which has crept over the whole structure, making what remains of the platform a perfect cushion, and hanging in long flakes of emerald, which fairly dip in the water, and the whole object is before you. The stream has a slow, still motion, with eddies, here coiling up into wrinkles like an old man's face, and there dimpling around some stone like the smiling cheek of a young maiden, but in no case suffering its demureness to break into a broad laugh of ripples. In one spot tall bullrushes show their slender shapes and brown wigs; in another there is a collection of waterflags; in another there are tresses of long grass streaming in the light flow of the current, whilst in a nook, formed by the roots of an immense elm on one side, and a projection of the bank on the other, is a thick coat of stagnant green – a perfect meadow for the frogs to hold their mass meetings in, differing from ours, however, from the fact of theirs being composed of all talkers and no listeners.
Let us look at the stream a little, which has here expanded into a broad surface, and view its "goings on." There is a water-spider taking most alarming leaps, as if afraid of wetting his feet; a dragon-fly is darting hither and yon, his long, slender body flashing with green, golden and purple hues; a large dace has just apparently flattened his nose against the dark glass inward, dotting a great and increasing period outward. A bright birch-leaf, "the last of its clan," has just fallen down, and been snapped at most probably by a little spooney of a trout, thinking it a yellow butterfly; and on the bottom, which, directly under our eyes is shallow, are several water-insects crawling along like locomotive spots of shadow and reflected through the tremulous medium into distorted shapes. However, we have lingered here long enough – let us onward.
What on earth is that uproar which is now striking our ear. Such hoarse notes, such rapid flutterings, whizzings, deep rumbling sounds, and such a rustle of dead leaves surely betoken something. We turn an elbow of the road, and a flashing of blue wings, and darting of blue shapes in the air, now circling round, now shooting up, and now down, with a large beech tree for the centre, meet our eyes. The tumult is explained. A colony of wild pigeons is busy amongst the beech-nuts, which the frost has showered upon the earth. The ground for some distance around the tree is perfectly blue with the birds picking, and fighting, and scrambling. It is ludicrous to see them. Here a score or two are busy eating, looking like a collection of big-paunched, blue-coated aldermen at a city feast; there, all are hurrying and jostling, and tumbling over one another like the passengers of a steamboat when the bell rings for dinner. By the side of yonder bush there is a perfect duel transpiring between two pugnacious pigeons dashing out their wings fiercely at each other with angry tones, their beautiful purple necks all swollen, and their red eyes casting devouring looks, whilst two others are very quietly, yet swiftly, as if making the most of their time, causing all the nuts in sight, and which probably induced the quarrel, disappear down their own throats. See! here is a pigeon who has over-estimated his capacity of swallowing, or has encountered a larger nut than usual, for he is exhibiting the most alarming symptoms of choking. He stretches his neck and opens his bill like a cock in the act of crowing, at the same time dancing up and down on his pink legs as if his toes had caught fire. However, he has mastered the nut at last with a vigorous shake of his neck, and bobs industriously again at his feast.
Determining to have some of the brown luscious mast, we make a foray amongst the gorging host, and succeeded in causing a cloud of them to take wing, and in securing a quantity of the spoil.
We then start again on our way, but do not advance far before – b-r-r-r-r-r-h – off bursts a partridge, and shoots down the vista of the road, with the dark sunshine glancing from his mottled back. If little "Spitfire" was here, how he would yelp and dance, and dart backward and forward, and shake his tail, so as to render it doubtful whether it wouldn't fly off in a tangent.
Rattat, tattat, tat – tat – t-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r – there is the great red-headed woodpecker, or woodcock, as he is called by the country people, looking like a miniature man with a crimson turban and sable spear, attacking the bark of yon old oak. He is making a sounding-board of the seamed mail of the venerable monarch, to detect by the startled writhing within the grub snugly ensconced, as it thinks, there, in order to transfix it with his sharp tongue through the hole made by his bill. He ceases his work though as we approach – and now he flies away.
A mile farther, we come to the strawberry-field belonging to Deacon Gravespeech, the outlines of whose dark, low farm-house are etched on the mist which is again slowly spreading over the landscape, for it is now near sunset. Having left the forest, we see the mild red orb, like an immense ruby, just in the act of sinking in the bank of pale blue which now thickens the Western horizon. But what have we here? A splendid butternut tree, with quantities of the oval fruit scattered about amidst the brown leaves, in their coats of golden green. What a rich lustre is upon them, made brighter by the varnish, and how delightful their pungent perfume. Let us crack a few of the strong, deeply-fluted shells. In their tawny nooks nestle the dark, golden-veined meats, which with the most delicious sweetness crumble in the mouth.
Of all the fruits of the Northern forests give me the butternut; and, speaking of fruits puts me in mind of the strawberry field. I was here with a small party one day last June. The field was then scattered thickly over with the bright crimson spotting fruit, and the fingers of all of us were soon dyed deeply with the sweet blood. There is great skill in picking strawberries, let me tell you, reader, although it is a trifle. Go to work systematically, and don't get excited. Gather all as you go, indiscriminately. Don't turn to the right for two splendid berries, and leave the one in front, for it is just as likely, before you gather the two, a cluster, with five ripe tempting fellows, will cause you to forget the others, and in whirling yourself around, and stretching over to seize the latest prize, your feet and limbs not only destroy the first and second, but a whole collection of the blushing beauties hid away in a little hollow of buttercups and dandelions.