I
      fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower,
      separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and
      thus became absorbed by the stream; while other shadows issued
      momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors
      thus entombed. This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it,
      and I lost myself forthwith in revery. “If ever island were
      enchanted,” said I to myself, “this is it. This is the haunt of
      the few gentle Fays who remain from the wreck of the race. Are
      these green tombs theirs?—or do they yield up their sweet lives
      as mankind yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather waste
      away mournfully, rendering unto God, little by little, their
      existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow,
      exhausting their substance unto dissolution? What the wasting
      tree is to the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker
      by what it preys upon, may not the life of the Fay be to the
      death which engulfs it?”

      As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly
      to rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the
      island, bearing upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of
      the bark of the sycamore—flakes which, in their multiform
      positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have
      converted 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 departed, the Fay, now the mere ghost of her former self,
      went disconsolately with her boat into the region of the ebony
      flood—and that she issued thence at all I cannot say, for
      darkness fell over all things and I beheld her magical figure no
      more. THE ASSIGNATION


     Stay for me there! I will not fail. To meet thee in that hollow vale. (_Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of
Chichester_.) Ill-fated and mysterious man!—bewildered in the brilliancy of
      thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own
      youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath
      risen before me!—not—oh! not as thou art—in the cold valley and
      shadow—but as thou _shouldst be_—squandering away a life of
      magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own
      Venice—which is a star-beloved Elysium of the sea, and the wide
      windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and
      bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I
      repeat it—as thou _shouldst be_. There are surely other worlds
      than this—other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude—other
      speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall
      call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary
      hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life,
      which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies? It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the
      _Ponte di Sospiri_, that I met for the third or fourth time the
      person of whom I speak. It is with a confused recollection that I
      bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I
      remember—ah! how should I forget?—the deep midnight, the Bridge
      of Sighs, the beauty of woman, and the Genius of Romance that
      stalked up and down the narrow canal. It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza
      had sounded the fifth hour of the Italian evening. The square of
      the Campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old
      Ducal Palace were dying fast away. I was returning home from the
      Piazetta, by way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived
      opposite the mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice from
      its recesses broke suddenly upon the night, in one wild,
      hysterical, and long continued shriek. Startled at the sound, I
      sprang upon my feet: while the gondolier, letting slip his single
      oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness beyond a chance of recovery,
      and we were consequently left to the guidance of the current
      which here sets from the greater into the smaller channel. Like
      some huge and sable-feathered condor, we were slowly drifting
      down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a thousand flambeaux
      flashing from the windows, and down the staircases of the Ducal
      Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid and
      preternatural day. A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen
      from an upper window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim
      canal. The quiet waters had closed placidly over their victim;
      and, although my own gondola was the only one in sight, many a
      stout swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain upon
      the surface, the treasure which was to be found, alas! only
      within the abyss. Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the
      entrance of the palace, and a few steps above the water, stood a
      figure which none who then saw can have ever since forgotten.