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little damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile on
her face. Consider the great variety of truthful and delicate thought
in the few lines we have quoted the wonder of the little maiden at the
fleetness of her favorite-the "little silver feet"--the fawn challenging
his mistress to a race with "a pretty skipping grace," running on
before, and then, with head turned back, awaiting her approach only to
fly from it again-can we not distinctly perceive all these things? How
exceedingly vigorous, too, is the line,
"And trod as if on the four winds!"
A vigor apparent only when we keep in mind the artless character of
the speaker and the four feet of the favorite, one for each wind. Then
consider the garden of "my own," so overgrown, entangled with roses and
lilies, as to be "a little wilderness"--the fawn loving to be there,
and there "only"--the maiden seeking it "where it should lie"--and
not being able to distinguish it from the flowers until "itself would
rise"--the lying among the lilies "like a bank of lilies"--the loving to
"fill itself with roses,"
"And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold,"
and these things being its "chief" delights-and then the pre-eminent
beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines, whose very hyperbole
only renders them more true to nature when we consider the innocence,
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