The morning twilight even then was breaking;
and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned
with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival,
running along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. Her running
was the running of panic; and often she looked back as to some dreadful
enemy in the rear. But, when I leaped ashore, and followed on her steps
to warn her of a peril in front, alas! from me she fled as from another
peril, and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay ahead. Faster
and faster she ran; round a promontory of rocks she wheeled out of
sight; in an instant I also wheeled round it, but only to see the
treacherous sands gathering above her head. Already her person was
buried; only the fair young head and the diadem of white roses around
it were still visible to the pitying heavens; and, last of all, was
visible one white marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair
young head, as it was sinking down to darkness--saw this marble arm, as
it rose above her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering,
rising, clutching, as at some false deceiving hand stretched out from
the clouds--saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, and then
uttering her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the arm--these all
had sunk; at last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed; and
no memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my own
solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the desert seas, that,
rising again more softly, sang a requiem over the grave of the buried
child, and over her blighted dawn.
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