And that is why, standing on this round knoll, beneath the
merrily-rustling cherry-trees, and listening to the murmurous song,
I heard my boyhood speak to me, and felt again the old breath on my
brow. The sun died away across the old swaying woods; the rattling
hone upon the scythe; the measured sweep; the mellow music--all were
gone away. The day was done, and the long twilight came--twilight,
which mixes the crimson of the darkling west, the yellow moonlight in
the azure east, and the red glimmering starlight overhead, into one
magic light. And so we went home merrily, with pleasant thoughts and
talk; such pleasant thoughts I wish to all. Thus wrote one who ever
delighted in the rural evenings and their sounds;--and thus listened
the young persons, whose conversation, light and trivial though it
seem, we have not thought it a loss of time to chronicle, from morn
till eve.
They gazed with quiet pleasure upon the lovely landscape, and listened
to the negroes as they sang their old, rude, touching madrigals,
shouting, at times, to the horses of their teams, and not seldom
sending on the air the loud rejoiceful outburst of their laughter.
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