202 UNDER THE TREES. 



contain the deepest of present and predict the 

 sweetest of future happiness. So deeply inter 

 woven is the real significance of these words with 

 the Imagination that, separated from it, they lose 

 all their magical glow and beauty. Youth moves 

 in no narrow territory ; its boundary lines fade out 

 into infinity. It feels no iron hand of limitation ; 

 it discerns no impassable wall of restriction. Life 

 stretches away before and about it limitless as space 

 and full of unseen splendors as the stars that crowd 

 and brighten it. The great wings of hope, un- 

 bruised yet by any beatings of the later tempests, 

 shine through the air, lustrous and tireless, as if all 

 flights were possible. And far off, on the remote 

 horizon lines where sight fails, the mirage of dreams 

 dissolves and reappears in a thousand alluring 

 forms. 



Love knows even less of limitation and infirmity. 

 Its eyes, sometimes oblivious of the things most ob 

 vious, pierce the remotest future, read the inner 

 most soul, discern the last and highest fruitions. 

 The seed in its hand, hard, black, unbroken, is 

 already a flower to its thought ; out of the bare, 

 stern facts of the present its magical touch brings 

 one knows not what of joy and loveliness. And 

 when youth and love are one, the heavens are not 

 bright enough for their thoughts, nor eternity long 

 enough for their deeds. Amid the shadows of life 

 they seem to have caught a momentary radiance 

 from beyond the clouds ; amid sorrows and sins and 



