THE DAISY OF THE DALE 
301 
Until the grey twilight would he linger there and watch 
the buds fold themselves up for the night until they looked 
like rounded pearls, each placed apart; and when the 
pale, white moon rose up above the dark line of trees that 
crowned the hill, he would watch the flooded light break 
over the scene, and breathe a blessing on the lovely 
flowers while they slept. 
Oh, Love ! why didst thou not linger behind to see that 
gay cavalcade pass? for there was a form which thou 
mightest have mistaken, hadst thou not known her, for 
Diana, the huntress of the woods ; for never did the morn- 
ing as it looks down upon the thousands of beautiful eyes 
which open beneath it, light up two such floating orbs of 
love as those which glittered beneath that swan-white 
brow, and swam under the nut-brown ringlets of the Daisy 
of the Dale. Never did arm more exquisitely moulded or 
gracefully formed guide the reins of a milk-white palfrey ; 
or forest nymph more lovely cleave the morning air in her 
flight, than she who sat, sole queen of the chase, light 
as a bird upon her rounded saddle. 
The very hawk which was perched upon her wrist 
seemed to look into her face with love; and when he 
hovered high in the air in pursuit of the quarry, he needed 
no other lure than the blue heaven of her eyes to bring 
him back again to his stand. Even in the banquet-hall 
of her father’s ancient castle, when the stormy and mail- 
clad sons of war sat around the board, talking of moats 
they had crossed and turrets they had scaled, of the lances 
they had shivered and the helmets their heavy battle-axes 
had cloven, if they but once heard her light foot upon the 
dais, their conversation was changed to that of love, in- 
stead of war— -such softness breathed around the presence 
of the Daisy of the Dale. 
She seemed like the Spirit of Peace alighting in the 
midst of those armed warriors upon a mission of Love — 
as if the white folds of her floating tunic were a more 
impenetrable armour than the linked mail in which their 
sinewy limbs were sheathed, and the rim of Daisies which 
were twined within the silken braid that fettered her float- 
ing ringlets, a safer helmet than any that was ever wrought 
out of steel, three times whitened in the red heat of the 
blinding furnace : for it was such beauty as she possessed 
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