A breeze arising suddenly, realized
the beautiful and wild idea of the most imaginative of our modern
bards [Footnote: Coleridge.]--
It fann'd his cheek, it raised his hair,
Like a meadow pale in spring;
It mingled strangely with his fears,
Yet it fell like a welcoming.
The youth stood silent and astonished for a few minutes. It seemed to
him that the extraordinary Being he had seen, half his terror, half
his protectress, was still hovering on the gale which swept past him,
and that she might again make herself sensible to his organs of sight.
"Speak!" he said, wildly tossing his arms, "speak yet again--be once
more present, lovely vision!--thrice have I now seen thee, yet the
idea of thy invisible presence around or beside me, makes my heart
beat faster than if the earth yawned and gave up a demon."
But neither sound nor appearance indicated the presence of the White
Lady, and nothing preternatural beyond what he had already witnessed,
was again audible or visible. Halbert, in the meanwhile, by the very
exertion of again inviting the presence of this mysterious Being, had
recovered his natural audacity. He looked around once more, and
resumed his solitary path down the valley into whose recesses he had
penetrated.
Nothing could be more strongly contrasted than the storm of passion
with which he had bounded over stock and crag, in order to plunge
himself into the Corri-nan-shian, and the sobered mood in which he now
returned homeward, industriously seeking out the most practicable
path, not from a wish to avoid danger, but that he might not by
personal toil distract his attention, deeply fixed on the
extraordinary scene which he had witnessed.
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