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What wanton Spring is to the earth, thy carnival season is to thee! It transforms the magnificence of color of the lagune-city into a dazzling radiance, the smiles to Olympic laughter, the love-whispers to exultant songs, the noisy, busy life of the mighty commercial city into a mad whirlpool, which draws everything into its circle, and releases nothing it has once seized.

What wanton Spring is to the earth, thy carnival season is to thee! It transforms the magnificence of color of the lagune-city into a dazzling radiance, the smiles to Olympic laughter, the love-whispers to exultant songs, the noisy, busy life of the mighty commercial city into a mad whirlpool, which draws everything into its circle, and releases nothing it has once seized.

Long ago the King and Queen died in Larrierepensee, and there the Princess Maddala reigns with a goodly Prince beside her, nor cares for her lost sister; but songless, discrowned, desolate, Maya walks the earth. All ye whose fires burn bright on the hearth, whose dwellings ring with child-laughter, or are hushed with love-whispers and the peace of home, pity the Princess Maya!

When we were speaking about the former of these verses, I told them that by "the grass of the field" we must understand not only grass, but the wild flowers which grow upon the green slopes of Palestine in the spring-time, when God "Lets His own love-whispers creep Over hills and craggies steep."

What wanton Spring is to the earth, thy carnival season is to thee! It transforms the magnificence of color of the lagune-city into a dazzling radiance, the smiles to Olympic laughter, the love-whispers to exultant songs, the noisy, busy life of the mighty commercial city into a mad whirlpool, which draws everything into its circle, and releases nothing it has once seized.

The sky's rapturous blue, the vivid tints of grass and leaves, the dismaying splendor of blood-red roses, the milky strawberry-flower, the brilliant whiteness of the lily, the turquoise eyes of water-plants, all these gave her a pleasure intense as pain; and the songs of the winds, the love-whispers of June midnights, the gathering roar of autumn tempests, the rattle of thunder, the breathless and lurid pause before a tropic storm, all these the Spark enhanced and vivified; till, seeing how blest in herself and the company of Nature the Child of the Kingdom grew, Queen Lura deliberated silently and long whether she should return the gift of the Fairy Cordis, and let Maya live so tranquil and ignorant forever, or whether she should awaken her from her dreams, and set her on her way through the world.