"Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Maypole of Merry Mount" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

Merry England, and the wilder glee of this fresh forest; and then a
dance, to show the youthful pair what life is made of, and how
airily they should go through it! All ye that love the Maypole, lend
your voices to the nuptial song of the Lord and Lady of the May!"

This wedlock was more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount,
where jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual
carnival. The Lord and Lady of the May, though their titles must be
laid down at sunset, were really and truly to be partners for the
dance of life, beginning the measure that same bright eve. The
wreath of roses, that hung from the lowest green bough of the Maypole,
had been twined for them, and would be thrown over both their heads,
in symbol of their flowery union. When the priest had spoken,
therefore, a riotous uproar burst from the rout of monstrous figures.

"Begin you the stave, reverend Sir," cried they all; "and never did
the woods ring to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole shall send
up!"

Immediately a prelude of pipe, cithern, and viol, touched with
practised minstrelsy, began to play from a neighboring thicket, in
such a mirthful cadence that the boughs of the Maypole quivered to the
sound. But the May Lord, he of the gilded staff, chancing to look into
his Lady's eyes, was wonder struck at the almost pensive glance that
met his own.

"Edith, sweet Lady of the May," whispered he reproachfully, "is yon
wreath of roses a garland to hang above our graves, that you look so
sad? O, Edith, this is our golden time! Tarnish it not by any
pensive shadow of the mind; for it may be that nothing of futurity
will be brighter than the mere remembrance of what is now passing."

"That was the very thought that saddened me! How came it in your
mind too?" said Edith, in a still lower tone than he, for it was
high treason to be sad at Merry Mount. "Therefore do I sigh amid
this festive music. And besides, dear Edgar, I struggle as with a
dream, and fancy that these shapes of our jovial friends are
visionary, and their mirth unreal, and that we are no true Lord and
Lady of the May. What is the mystery in my heart?"

Just then, as if a spell had loosened them, down came a little
shower of withering rose leaves from the Maypole. Alas, for the
young lovers! No sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion than
they were sensible of something vague and unsubstantial in their
former pleasures, and felt a dreary presentiment of inevitable change.
From the moment that they truly loved, they had subjected themselves
to earth's doom of care and sorrow, and troubled joy, and had no
more a home at Merry Mount. That was Edith's mystery. Now leave we the
priest to marry them, and the masquers to sport round the Maypole,
till the last sunbeam be withdrawn from its summit, and the shadows of