[91] But I think the taste for trim hedges
and upright trunks has its usual influence over him here also, and
that he merely means to tell the princess that she is delightfully
tall and straight.
The princess is, however, pleased by his address, and tells him to
wait outside the town, till she can speak to her father about him. The
spot to which she directs him is another ideal piece of landscape,
composed of a "beautiful grove of aspen poplars, a fountain, and a
meadow,"[92] near the road-side: in fact, as nearly as possible such a
scene as meets the eye of the traveller every instant on the
much-despised lines of road through lowland France; for instance, on
the railway between Arras and Amiens;--scenes, to my mind, quite
exquisite in the various grouping and grace of their innumerable
poplar avenues, casting sweet, tremulous shadows over their level
meadows and labyrinthine streams. We know that the princess means
aspen poplars, because soon afterwards we find her fifty maid-servants
at the palace, all spinning and in perpetual motion, compared to the
"leaves of the tall poplar"; and it is with exquisite feeling that it
is made afterwards[93] the chief tree in the groves of Proserpine; its
light and quivering leafage having exactly the melancholy expression
of fragility, faintness, and inconstancy which the ancients attributed
to the disembodied spirit.
Pages:
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148